The Decline of Marriage in Namibia: Kinship and Social Class in a Rural Community

Julia Pauli

book: The Decline of Marriage in Namibia

Open Access Published by transcript Verlag 2019

The Decline of Marriage in Namibia

Kinship and Social Class in a Rural Community

Julia Pauli

In the series Kultur und soziale Praxis

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839443033

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Southern Africa, marriage used to be widespread and common. However, over the past decades marriage rates have declined significantly. Julia Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite as a case study, the book tells the entwined stories of class formation and marriage decline in post-apartheid Namibia.

Author / Editor information

Julia Pauli is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her main research interests are gender and kinship studies, transnational migration, and class formation processes. She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico (since 1995) and Namibia (since 2003). For "Anthropology Southern Africa" she co-edited a special issue on continuity and change in Southern African marriages with Rijk van Dijk (2016/2017).

Reviews

»This monograph provides a superb ethnography and a fruitful resource for understanding most of thecore issues that revolve around marriage and the lack there of ina Namibian community. It has much value as an anthropological study that indicates how new consumptions patterns affect traditional institutions.«
Stephanie Rudwick, Modern Africa, 7/2 (2019)

Supplementary Materials

Leseprobe

Topics

Frontmatter Open Access Download PDF	1
Content Open Access Download PDF	5
List of tables Open Access Download PDF	7
List of figures Open Access Download PDF	8
Acknowledgements Open Access Download PDF	9
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	15
PART I
Fransfontein fieldwork Open Access Download PDF	47
History through biography Open Access Download PDF	73
Postapartheid livelihoods Open Access Download PDF	99
PART II
Contemporary Fransfontein marriages Open Access Download PDF	127
From decline to distinction Open Access Download PDF	167
PART III
Forming families Open Access Download PDF	199
Intimacy outside marriage Open Access Download PDF	227
Conclusion Open Access Download PDF	257
Reference list Open Access Download PDF	267

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 296
Keywords: Namibia; Elites; Consumption; Kinship; Class; Family; Social Inequality; Postcolonialism; Ethnology; African History; Africa

eBook

Published: February 27, 2019
ISBN: 9783839443033