Book Review of Marriage by Force? Contestation Over Consent and Coercion in Africa

Abstract

This edited collection will be welcomed by African scholars for the detailed examination and analysis it contains of the historical roots of contemporary African marriage laws and social and cultural attitudes and practices. The essays also bring much needed interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on what are sometimes relatively uninformed and fraught discussions by Westerners of traditional and contemporary conjugal and matrimonial relationships in Africa. The volume is the product of the efforts of a network of scholars who undertook a shared and collaborative examination of the intersection of “slavery,” “forced marriage,” “arranged marriage” and related social arrangements on the African continent in the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. Many of the papers contained in the collection were presented at a symposium held at the third Conable Conference in International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York. Funders for the symposium and the edited volume included a diverse group of academic institutions, institutes, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).