Marrying in a single moment

Zimbabwean Baptist ethics and the management of kin relations

Bibliographic Data

ID2103697
AuthorsLeanne Williams Green (0000-0003-4538-0492, Trinity College, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume91
Issue5
Pages893-912
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972021000632
OpenAlexW3162215867
LanguageEN
References cited44

Scholarship 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

Autonomy · Environmental ethics · Obligation · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Value (mathematics · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Law