Rivals

Polygynous partnerships and future orientations in eastern Uganda

Bibliographic Data

ID7159088
AuthorsR Whyte (0000-0001-7253-6478, University of Copenhagen, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume19
Issue3
Pages465-482
Publication date2025-07-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Eastern African Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1753-1055 • E-ISSN: 1753-1063
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17531055.2025.2600175
OpenAlexW4417306654
LanguageEN
References cited12

In East Africa, patterns of partnership have shifted over historical time, from my first fieldwork beginning in 1969 to my recent research on frail partnerships and child filiation. But shifts also occur in the lived time of a partnership. Becoming a co-wife, or ‘rival’, changes the relationship a woman has to her husband. While competition, jealousy, envy, and tensions often characterise the relations between co-wives in the present, this article explores orientations to the future in polygynous marriages. The argument is that a co-wife often displaces the alignment between a couple’s expectations, anticipations, and hopes about their future lives. I show this through material from long-term and repeated fieldwork in Bunyole, now Butaleja District, in Eastern Uganda. Beginning with an unfolding situation recorded in my journal in 1970, I show how one woman’s expectations of a future with her husband were dashed and then pursued successfully with another man. Love medicine was used in anticipation of threats to a relationship to ensure a husband’s affection and hurt a potential rival. Recent fieldwork in Bunyole revealed women’s dislike of polygyny; they found it difficult to imagine and work together for a future when husbands’ attentions were shared with co-wives

Affection · General partnership · Polygyny · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Issues · Marriage and Sexual Relationships

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