The materiality of marriage payments
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2186823 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hylton White (0000-0002-0587-3973, University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 297-308 |
| Publication date | 2016-11-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropology Southern Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2332-3264 • E-ISSN: 2332-3256 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23323256.2016.1243448 |
| OpenAlex | W2566904029 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 28 |
It is generally agreed that rates of marriage are declining in Southern Africa. It is also clear that for people who are wealthy enough to marry, the long-standing constitution of marriage as process is increasingly replaced by a making of marriage as event. What I wish to add to both of these broad assessments is something that this focus on the decline of marriage might risk overlooking, which is the proliferation of partial or unfinished but nonetheless deeply consequential unions: bonds of affinity that, in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal, as in many other parts of Southern Africa, are set in motion by histories of material prestation, including but not limited to marriage payments as such. Engaging with recent theoretical work by Michael Lambek, I explore this social consequentiality of marriage payments — finished or not — by focusing on the efficacy and the afterlives of the act of prestation itself. I suggest that these transactions constitute sensuous figurations of both kinship and affinity, in a process that draws its effects from the recognition of an act by a sensing audience, including, very importantly, the audience of the dead. This produces enchainments of marriage payments in social processes that outlive their performance, whether they are part of a concluded bond or not
Aesthetics · Art · Bond · Business · Constitution · Kinship · Materiality (auditing · Payment · Political science · Sociology · Work (physics · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · History · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture
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Modernizing Marriage
Articulations of kinship and capital in Southern African anthropology
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The struggle for marriage
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The Meaning of marriage payments
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Rules and processes, the cultural logic of dispute in an African context
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A Post-Fordist Ethnicity
Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value
Dispensing with marriage
The value of (performative) acts
Marxian value theory
The tent versuslobola
Marriage, kinship and childcare in the aftermath of Aids
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The struggle for marriage
Not marrying in South Africa
Slow marriage," "fastbogadi
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The White Wedding
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1.33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |