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?