Julia Pauli

Creating Illegitimacy: Negotiating Relations and Reproduction within Christian Contexts in Northwest Namibia

Abstract The stigmatization of children born out of wedlock is not yet common in the rural community of Fransfontein, Northwest Namibia. Comparable to other regions of southern Africa, the birth of a child is very much valued and welcomed regardless of the parent’s marital status, and out-of-wedlock births are very widespread. However, these perceptions are gradually changing. During Sunday mass in the local Protestant church the term /ai-/goas(b), ‘sin child’, is increasingly being used to name children originating from extramarital affairs of wealthy married men. This moral discourse is sustained by elite men’s wives, who fear their husbands’ out-of-wedlock children will place claims on their husbands’ wealth. The central aim of the paper is to understand these emerging moral evaluations and discuss their implications as well as creations of novel Christian spaces and new forms of distinction and exclusion.

African Marriages in Transformation

In this article, I will outline central transformations of African marriages and link these changes to four broad anthropological approaches which I label as metanarratives. I use the term ‘metanarrative’ to stress the rather high degree of coherence within these four anthropological interpretative frameworks. Similarly, James Ferguson applies the concept of a ‘metanarrative’ to analyze the way anthropologists among others have perceived and constructed ‘modernity’ and ‘urbanization’ in the Zambian Copperbelt (Ferguson, 1999: 14–17).

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

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.

Marriage as an end or the end of marriage? : Change and continuity in Southern African marriages

Marriage used to be widespread and common throughout Southern Africa. However, over the past decades marriage rates have substantially declined in the whole region. Marriage has changed from a universal rite of passage into a conspicuous celebration of middle class lifestyles. Bridewealth or lobola remains important and is supplemented by a plethora of new rituals and expenditures. Yet, despite marriages recent turn towards exclusivity, the institution nevertheless continues to be an important frame of reference for most people. The contributions in this special issue explore reconfigurations of marriages and weddings in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia through the last decades. While there are numerous anthropological studies on marriage in Southern Africa for the period up to the 1980s, a remarkable paucity of studies has to be noted for the time since then. The ethnographic and comparative findings on Southern African weddings and marriages compiled in this special issue pick up an important anthropological legacy and stimulate future research and theorising.

Pathways into the Middle: Rites of Passage and Emerging Middle Classes in Namibia

This anthropological chapter analyses how members of the Namibian middle class have thoroughly changed the form and meaning of important rites of passage from open ceremonies to exclusive pathways into and for the middle class. The term ‘middle class’ is used as an analytical category to describe social differentiation and inequality. The author also looks at practices of ‘being and becoming middle class’, blending approaches that perceive ‘middle class’ as an aspirational category with those that focus on boundary making aspects of ‘middle class(es)’. In addition, the term elite is used to mark social differentiations that depend on context and scale. During apartheid, only a small indigenous elite existed within the artificial ‘homelands’, while a ‘white’ minority occupied national elite and middle-class positions. With independence in 1990, a new, ‘black’ middle class emerged in urban areas, which is still strongly connected to its rural ‘homeland’. The author suggests labelling this group as ‘class commuters’. When visiting their rural ‘homelands’, they blend into the local rural elite. But during most of their time, they are part of the urban Namibian middle classes.

Namibian Elite Generations: Mattia Fumanti, The Politics of Distinction: African Elites from Colonialism to Liberation in a Namibian Frontier Town (Canon Pyon, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2016), vii + 311 pp., hardback, £65.00, ISBN 978-1-907774-46-1.

provide important analysis of the wider social tensions and individual frustration embodied by social transformations. In summary, this timely edited collection provides the first critical discussions of an often applied but inadequately understood concept. The chapters are rich, interesting, stimulating and very valuable. Melber rounds off the volume with a Conclusion that continues to question the status of the middle class as an analytical concept. As it is best understood through in-depth country-specific knowledge, and by analysing the relationships with those classes above and below, perhaps Melber could be persuaded to organise some critical companion volumes on the stagnation of Africa’s lower classes and the unassailable dominance of the upper classes; these would both provide more interesting perspectives and helps us further to understand those Africans in the middle.

Was bedeutet Heirat, wenn nur noch wenige heiraten? Zum Wandel von Heirats- und Konsumpraktiken in Namibia

Zusammenfassung Zu heiraten war in vielen Regionen Afrikas lange Zeit weit verbreitet und ublich. Wie ethnologische Arbeiten der ersten Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts zeigen, war Heirat vor der Kolonialzeit eines der wichtigsten Ubergangsrituale und strukturierte alle Bereiche des Lebens. Seit einigen Jahrzehnten sind die Heiratsraten allerdings in vielen afrikanischen Landern dramatisch gesunken. Anhand einer ethnographischen Fallstudie aus dem landlichen Namibia untersucht der Beitrag, welche Bedeutung Heirat heute in einer Region hat, in der kaum noch geheiratet wird. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Hochzeiten trotz geringer Heiratsraten nicht an Wert verloren haben. Vielmehr scheint die neu entstandene Exklusivitat von Hochzeiten, die das Resultat eines kostspieligen Aneignungsprozesses lokaler und globaler Konsumguter ist, den Wert des Heiratens noch zu steigern. Damit kann auch erklart werden, warum das jahrzehntelange Warten auf eine Hochzeit fur viele unverheiratete Frauen wie Manner akzeptabel wird. Schlusselworter: Heirat, Hochzeitsfest, Elite, Namibia, Ritual ----- On the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Transformations of marriage and consumption practices in Namibia. Summary As anthropological research from the first half of the twentieth century indicates, in pre-colonial Africa marriage was a universal and widespread rite of transition that structured all areas of life. For several decades now, however, marriage rates have been declining in various African regions. Based on an ethnographic case study from rural Namibia, this article scrutinizes the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. Quite the opposite: because of the contemporary exclusivity of weddings, resulting from appropriations of local and global consumption goods, the value of marriage has increased. This also explains why many unmarried women and men endure years of waiting for marriage. Keywords: marriage, weddings, elites, Namibia, ritual ----- Bibliographie: Pauli, Julia: Was bedeutet Heirat, wenn nur noch wenige heiraten? Zum Wandel von Heirats- und Konsumpraktiken in Namibia, GENDER, 2-2014, S. 70-84. https://doi.org/10.3224/gender.v6i2.18126

Sharing Made Us Sisters

It almost felt like an ethnographic deja vu. I was chatting with Mona, a teacher in her forties, in front of her house in Fransfontein, northwest Namibia, when Christina joined us.1 Mona and same-aged Christina had grown up together. They considered and called each other sisters—!gasas in the local language Khoekhoegowab. Mona was telling me about her recent health problems, especially high blood pressure and shortness of breath, and the little help she received from those around her in her household. But then Mona smiled, looking at Christina, and proclaimed that Christina was the only one who was really there for her, who cared for her. I asked the two why this is so, and they replied, “Because we are sisters. We are similar. Growing up together made us sisters.”