A ritual connection: Urban youth marrying in the village in Botswana

Abstract

Much of the current work on marriage in Africa investigates how relationships are becoming transnationalized (crossing nation-state borders) as well as transculturalized (crossing cultures) and how the commercialization and commoditization of weddings is occurring in the process. Objects are playing an ever-increasing role in wedding arrangements and seem to link local weddings with global worlds of style. Masquelier (2004), for example, demonstrates how in marriages in Niger young girls not only are attracted by the prospect of marrying a partner who has traveled but also expect particular Western commodities to be part of the marriage arrangements and the bride price. In a number of other African situations, the combination of a variety of desires in the context of arranging marriages-or “marriage-scapes” (Constable 2009)-demonstrates remarkable similarity (Johnson-Hanks 2007; Cole & Thomas 2009; Pauli 2009). In some cases, religion is becoming a mediating factor in arranging this commoditized styling of marriage that is capable of connecting different life worlds. In Ghana, for example, transnational Pentecostalism mediates marriage relations between partners and their families (van Dijk 2004; Soothill 2007; Bochow 2008, 2010). This extends into the Ghanaian diaspora overseas and such marriages are attractive, requiring Western consumer and luxury items to achieve a specific (aspired) status.