Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the local concept of ‘fatherhood’ in the Igembe community of the Kenyan central highlands, and then discusses how ‘father’s rights’ can be or cannot be conceptualised in the local context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the local concept of 'fatherhood' in the Igembe community of the Kenyan central highlands, and then discusses how 'father's rights' can be or cannot be conceptualised in the local context. In the civil cases over unpaid bride-wealth items filed at state law courts that the author analysed elsewhere, the complainants (mostly wives' fathers) from the Igembe community claiming items to be paid sued their daughter's husbands. Is that claim based on the concept of 'father's rights' to bride-wealth for one's daughter? To tackle this question, this paper should consider several other aspects of fatherhood in the local context. Based on an ethnographical observation, this paper clarifies local conceptualisation of fatherhood, which cannot be well comprehended with the modern human rights discourses based on the legal imagination of autonomous individuals.