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Full-Text Articles in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
A New Twist On The “Un-African” Script: Representing Gay And Lesbian African Weddings In Democratic South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough
A New Twist On The “Un-African” Script: Representing Gay And Lesbian African Weddings In Democratic South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
This essay examines the media coverage surrounding two African weddings of lesbian and gay couples in South Africa, as a lens onto the evolving cultural politics of black queerness in that country. Two decades after South Africa launched a world-leading legal framework for LGBTI protections, I argue that these media representations depict the growing inclusion of black LGBTIQ people as a process of bridging the supposed “gap” between homosexuality and African culture. This new “bridging the gap” script seemingly rejects the older, dominant script portraying homosexuality as intrinsically “un-African.” But I argue that it instead reproduces the “un-African” script in …
South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough
South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …
Care, Intimacy And Same-Sex Partnership In The 21st Century, Barry D. Adam
Care, Intimacy And Same-Sex Partnership In The 21st Century, Barry D. Adam
Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology Publications
The paper addresses the emergence of same sex relationships as a public policy issue in contemporary society. Historical and cross-cultural evidence shows how same-sex relationships have been an integral part of the kinship system, household economies, and iconography of many societies, and that desire and relationship are produced in diverse ways at the confluence of kinship, gender, and life stage expectations circulating in different societies. Recent history of the advanced, industrial societies is characterised by sharp shifts in the conceptualization of same sex relationship, from sin, sickness, and crime to a patchwork of “relationship recognition” forms in just a few …