Migration, Marriage Rituals and Contemporary Cosmopolitanism in Urban Zambia

Abstract

Different types of rituals to contract marriage have developed in urban Zambia that combine customary girl’s initiation and marriage rituals with novel forms of ritual performances. The participants bring into being in symbolic forms different ‘tribes’ and traditions, which they compare, contrast, and connect. They construe a virtual reality of multiplicity of traditions; categories for interaction on which actual relations may be formed. These ritual practices are analysed within perspectives on cosmopolitanism as processes of meaning-making and is an attempt to connect pluralist perspectives on cosmopolitanism as relations between diverse cultures with universalist perspectives that search for forms of interaction between humans that do not entail prior classifications such as tribe, nation, or class.