Abstract
AbstractScholarship about Southern Africa registers a persistent tension between the prospect of relations created in a processual manner over time and the role of discrete ritual or lifecycle events. Marriage is one of the sites where this tension becomes particularly evident, not only in bridewealth transactions but also in an increasing prominence given to European-style ‘white weddings’. For Baptist Christians living in urban Zimbabwe, the tension raises a host of ethical considerations. This group of Christians seeks to establish and maintain social relations that they value for cultural and for religious reasons, while also facing the ethical task of moderating the degree of obligation that these relations can exert over them. They do so in order to maintain the moral autonomy necessary to live ethical Baptist lives, and attempt to achieve this goal by creating marriages according to a model of immediate transformation, rather than one of gradual unfolding. I suggest that drawing from recent discussions in the anthropological study of ethics offers a way to discuss choice and evaluation in marriage practice in ways not reducible to class interest or social and material expediency alone.
Highlights
Not all who marry in Zimbabwe register their marriages, but those who do can choose to register them under either the Customary Marriages Act or the Civil Marriages Act
Fairside’s leaders reimagine marriage practices in ways that are culturally recognizable but whose form and meaning are determined by Baptist Christianity and not by marriage conceived as a process
Baptists in Harare seek to transform their social relations in a single moment
Summary
Not long after I began fieldwork in Zimbabwe’s bustling capital city, I attended a wedding where the couple did not get married. These literatures outlined marriage as a processual affair – as an unfolding of kin relations made through a series of social transactions over time (Radcliffe-Brown 1950; Bourdillon 2004 [1976]; Comaroff 1980a; Krige and Comaroff 1981; Kuper 1982). There has been the growth of highly visible marriage events, often characterized by elaborate European-style ‘white wedding’ ceremonies, deserving of greater analytical attention (Pauli and van Dijk 2016) These formal aspects of marriage have long crystallized concerns around social change. An attention to ethics offers insight into the meanings and evaluations conferred on marriage by this group, and on the wider symbolic and practical outworking of marriage events in time
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
