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- Convenors:
-
Christine Jourdan
(Concordia University)
Kathleen Rice (University of Toronto)
- Stream:
- Relational movements: Kin and Gender/Mouvements relationnels: Parenté et genre
- Location:
- FSS 4015
- Start time:
- 5 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
The panel examines current bridewealth practices from the perspective of identity. Across a wide range of societies, we focus on bridewealth in relations to socio-economic, and political transformations. It emphasizes the meaning of bridewealth for people involved in bridewealth transactions.
Long Abstract:
Bridewealth is a topic of longstanding interest within the discipline of anthropology; a sizeable canon discusses bridewealth in relation to topics such as social reproduction, kinship, gift exchange, and the traffic in women under conditions of patriarchy. Much of this work has approached the topic from a relatively 'wide' lens, querying what is accomplished through bridewealth exchange and what underlying societal values and relations are sustained and produced through bridewealth negotiations and transactions. With notable exceptions, women themselves have often been muted in such discussions despite their centrality for bridewealth tout court. Given the persistence of bridewealth across a range of societies, and now also in urban centers, in this panel we revisit the topic from the perspective of identity. How is bridewealth interpreted and experienced in contexts where more and more aspects of life are interpreted trough economic-rationalist principles? As social, economic, and political transformations continue to transform family, domesticity, and impetuses for marriage, childbearing, and reproduction, how can we account for the persistence of bridewealth? How have topics such as human rights and gender equality come to bear on people's experience of bridewealth? How is bridewealth being sustained or transformed through the dramatic increase in human migration in the era of globalization? Drawing on ethnographic research from a range of societies, this panel explores such questions, and others through analyses of contemporary bridewealth exchange Colleagues interested in these themes are welcome to contact us.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Georg Pfeffer (Freie Universität Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
Rather than dowry, bridewealth obligations are the rule among some 100 million indigenous people of the Middle Indian highlands. They will be introduced in their socio-cultural context by reference to the general propositions on bridewealth.
Paper long abstract:
The sweeping generalization "marriage...organizes inequality" (Collier 1988: vii) will be examined in the light of my ethnographic work over the past decades among the Adivasi (indigenous people) in the highlands of Middle India. To this day, these "Scheduled Tribes" live either as shifting or as plough cultivators under acephalous conditions practicing their own localized religion. In sharp contrast to the authoritarian and prudish upbringing of mainstream lowlanders, young women and men among these highlangers enjoy a remarkable personal freedom of movement and choice that includes frequent pre-marital visits and elopements which may or may not lead to a formalized marriage. Within a complex pattern of kinship regulations, the considerable bridewealth payments are usually advanced by petty commercial agents who are clients of the cultivators. Following the frequent elopements, these credits may lead to extended chains of long-term debts, or ties of obligations between the different but equal local descent groups.
Kathleen Rice (University of Toronto)
Paper short abstract:
Conflicts over large lobola (bridewealth) speak to the meaning of kindship and value in South Africa. Women claim that large lobola indicates a man’s love and commitment to gender equality in marriage. Men and elders wonder what is being paid for if not gendered and generational privilege.
Paper long abstract:
The persistence of bridewealth is often referenced to explain the exceptionally low rates of marriage in South Africa today. In an era of widespread and worsening unemployment, researchers argue that the cost of bridewealth is prohibitive for most young South Africans, and a range of scholars have attempted to account for and explain the persistence of this practice in the face of economic circumstances that render bridewealth payment largely unachievable. In this paper I draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a rural Xhosa village in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, to analyse debates over the meaning of large lobola (bridewealth) payments in a community where few young people can afford to marry. Specifically, I document disagreement and ongoing negotiation between young women, young men, and elders over the meaning of these payments. Drawing on discourses of human rights and gender equality that are pervasive in South African public life, young women claim that large lobola indicates a man's love, and, therefore, his intention to treat a wife with egalitarian respect. Young men and elders, however, take issue with young women's claims to gender equality following bridewealth payment: what, they wonder, is being paid for if not gendered and generational privilege? In analysing such claims, I contend that interpersonal conflicts over the meaning of large bridewealth payments are indicative of broader conflicts about the meaning of kindship, status, and value.
Christine Jourdan (Concordia University) Alexis Black (Concordia University )
Paper short abstract:
This study conducts a discursive analysis of interviews with women in the Solomon Islands to analyze the place of bridewealth on the micro-level, in the creation and maintenance of their individual identities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper revisits bridewealth by focusing, not on exchange as has been often the case, but rather on its place in the narratives of self that women create for themselves in urban communities where it is still practiced. This study performs a discursive analysis of interviews with individual women collected over a period of several years of fieldwork in the Solomon Islands. This analysis explores the language and frames used by women to discuss their experiences with bridewealth. Discursive analysis of these narratives allows for a closer perspective on bridewealth and its function on the micro level, in the individual lives of women and girls. We will be asking: What role does bridewealth play in the construction of the identities of urban women in the Solomon Islands and how do women understand and explain these experiences? How do the narratives of these women concerning their experiences with bridewealth contrast with the classic narratives of exchange and kinship that have been forwarded by anthropology? What is the role of bridewealth in these women's lives currently, and in the futures of their children?
Leila Qashu (Concordia University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines marriage practices among Arsi Oromo women in Ethiopia. Through their voices I explore contexts and significations of marriages, bridewealth/exchanges, and how community members are changing and adapting wedding contracts in view of social, religious, economic, and political changes.
Paper long abstract:
Though it is constantly changing, scholars and activists have often characterized Arsi Oromo society as patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal, with lineage and clan at the core of society. Marriage, which is exogamous, is very consequential for Arsi women and men, in terms of social relations, politics, property/land ownership, and rights. Today, though some youth are continuing their studies or choosing their spouses, in rural areas marriages are still generally decided and contracted by fathers, men searching for second wives, and elders. Historically young women did not have a say in the matter, but now some youth refuse marriage for different reasons. However, wedding contractions and ceremonies still tend to be perceived as asymmetrical, with men deciding and managing the social and economic terms of agreement, and women preparing the logistical arrangements and emotional support at home. The Arsi marriage process still remains central to examining different ways genders are conceived, negotiated, and manipulated. Today two of the most commonly practiced wedding ceremonies are gabbara/halanga (lit. bridewealth/whip) and wolgara (lit. exchange of two wombs (daughters)). Butaa (marriage by abduction), the subject of my current research, and binbeeto (marriage of a sister's widow) are less frequent, but still persist. In this paper, I will draw on ongoing interdisciplinary and multi-sited fieldwork since 2002 among the Arsi Oromo to offer both historic and contemporary analyses of weddings and the ways identities are negotiated and transformed in the process (Baxter 1996, Qashu 2009). Through Arsi women's voices I will explore marriages, bridewealth/exchanges, and adaptations.
Gregory Forth (University Of Alberta)
Paper short abstract:
Concerning an eastern Indonesian society, the paper discusses the continuing importance of bridewealth and connections by ‘blood’ in maintaining asymmetric affinal alliance in the face of changes entailed in increasing integration into a modern economy and conversion to Catholicism
Paper long abstract:
The Nage of the eastern Indonesian island of Flores traditionally practised a form of asymmetric affinal alliance, with the mother's brother's daughter as a man's preferred spouse. According to some criteria, they still do so. Despite various social and economic changes, not least of which is conversion to Catholicism and a consequent prohibition of first cousin marriage, Nage still retain bridewealth and the complementary wife-giver's 'counter-gift' and, unlike people in some other parts of Indonesia, they require that bridewealth and counter-gift be fulfilled with livestock and other traditional valuables. In accordance with the asymmetric prescription, Nage maintain the prohibition on marriages which reverse the direction of bridewealth exchange, thus resulting in an illicit symmetric or direct exchange of spouses and goods between two affinally related 'houses'. At the same time, in counting membership of houses and more inclusive kin groups, Nage value what they conceive as ties of 'blood', or physical kinship, which can run contrary to relations based on previous bridewealth exchange. Focusing on a particular marriage, the paper thus also shows how blood and bridewealth concern separate values in Nage society, relating respectively to internal and external relations maintained within or by Nage kin groups.