Abstract
ABSTRACT The fate of marriage gifts during a customary law divorce is significant for the interaction of legal orders in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the context of scholars' fixation with conflict of laws. In analysing this fatet, this article introduces normative intersectionality as a theoretical framework for a nuanced understanding of how laws and socio-economic forces interact in post-colonial settings. Normative intersectionality rejects a legal positivist view of rights, which neglects people's adaptation of indigenous norms to socioeconomic changes. In this sense, normative intersectionality is useful for addressing the traditional Igbo law of matrimonial property, which regards a married woman's property rights as subsumed in her husband's rights. Using the division of marriage gifts in Southern Nigeria as a case study, the article draws attention to how legal orders speak to, rather than against, each other, and in so doing, stresses the adaptive character of indigenous laws. It argues that normative intersectionality illumines the interplay of gender equality, property rights and legal pluralism. Accordingly, it urges judges to use the imitative nature of legal pluralism in post-colonial settings to remedy entrenched systems of injustice and inequality, which often hide under the banner of tradition. Keywords: Adaptive legal pluralism, marriage gifts, African customary law, matrimonial property rights.
Highlights
What happens to a couple’s marriage gifts in the event of a customary law divorce in southern Nigeria?1 Marriage gifts are items of material value received by a bride from her family and friends to ease her marital experience.[2]
Since these varying measures are present in all African States, weak legal pluralism is the reality in Africa
Using data from interviews and focus group discussions we conducted in Imo, Abia, Anambra and Enugu states between 2014 and 2016, we argue that legal pluralism in Africa is essentially imitative in nature
Summary
What happens to a couple’s marriage gifts in the event of a customary law divorce in southern Nigeria?1 Marriage gifts are items of material value received by a bride from her family and friends to ease her marital experience.[2]. It is opposition from elderly women, whose resistance counters the agency of young girls opposed to the practice With their resistance, these elderly women serve as structural support for perpetuating genital cutting.[10] Another example is how women sustain the custom of bride-wealth payment through their non-exercise of agency against this custom.[11] These two examples demonstrate the mutually reinforcing ways through which customary norms and cultural institutions condition each other. These elderly women serve as structural support for perpetuating genital cutting.[10] Another example is how women sustain the custom of bride-wealth payment through their non-exercise of agency against this custom.[11] These two examples demonstrate the mutually reinforcing ways through which customary norms and cultural institutions condition each other Underlying this cultural conditioning is the interplay of power, property and philosophy within historical contexts. Presenting law as an intersectional creature offers some advantages to law and society scholars
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