The struggle for marriage: elite and non-elite weddings in rural Namibia

Abstract

Namibian weddings have become lavish and expensive rituals. Recent studies have discussed how these marriage transformations are linked to late capitalism and the spread of modernisation ideologies. Much of this research concludes that marriage has become a middle class institution, rather detached from the lives of the unmarried, poor majority of Namibians. However, this overly dichotomous construction of the current situation fails to include non-affluent couples who marry against their economic odds. In this article, we want to shed light on this group and their weddings, locally classified as “struggle marriages.” We scrutinise how marriages are accomplished. Special attention is given to the role of kin in marriage negotiations and practices. Our argument is based on 18 months of collaborative ethnography in the rural area of Fransfontein in southern Kunene region, north-west Namibia, between 2003 and 2006. While anthropologist Julia Pauli was living in the community, the other author of this paper, Francois Dawids, got married. In this paper, we use his wedding as a starting point and extend our observations and reflections with additional cases and further ethnographic information.