Redefining kin and family social relations: burial societies and emergency relief in Botswana

Abstract

This paper discusses the provision of financial relief to members' households by women-centred local institutions known as burial societies (diswaeti) in the event of death. In burial societies, mortality occupies the centre stage, not as a final defeat of human effort but as an inspiration for individual and collective responsibility. The omnipresence of death and dying in Botswana (due to the AIDS pandemic, social victimization, road-related carnage and so on), does not necessarily precipitate despondency; instead it underwrites commitments by members of burial societies to new sensibilities and to imaginative interventions that regenerate, rather than wear out, kin relations. By providing emergency financial and non-financial support, burial societies find practical ways to minimize social tensions and reduce animosity between individuals, family and kin relations. In the burial society community therefore, the social process of providing emergency financial and non-financial relief is more than an instrumental task: it is a nuanced cultural process that redefines kin and family social relations. (Journal of Social Development in Africa: 2003 18 (1): 85-110)