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Full-Text Articles in Law
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
This article examines the persistent authority of the customary practice for forming recognized marriages in many South African communities, centered on bridewealth and called “lobola.” Marriage rates have sharply fallen in South Africa, and many South Africans blame this on the difficulty of completing lobola amid intense economic strife. Using in-depth qualitative research from a village in KwaZulu-Natal, where lobola demands are the country’s highest and marriage rates its lowest, I argue that lobola’s authority survives because lay actors, and especially women, have innovated new repertoires of lobola behavior that allow them to pursue emerging needs and desires for marriage …
Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough
Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such policies are relatively rare and typically focused on discrete policies—same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, etc.—with comparatively little investigation of potential connections among policies. This article begins to develop a more holistic approach focused on explaining and understanding what I call conjugal-recognition regimes. Adapting the concept from the existing literature on welfare regimes, I argue that conjugal-recognition regimes exist when an identifiable pattern or principle organizes an institution’s conjugal-recognition policy and thereby shapes social relations at multiple levels, from the individuals in conjugal relationships to the multiple …