Marriage Matters : Imagining love and belonging in Uganda

Abstract

Statistics show steep declines in formal partnerships in Uganda. Yet marriage, commitment, love and relationships still matter profoundly to individuals, family, generations, friends and wider society. What does it mean to be married or not married in contemporary Uganda?

Marriage Matters engages with new and classic anthropological theory, gender studies, marriage, relatedness and temporality. Through rich empirical cases, the book examines how partnership, kinship, child filiation and friendship are changing in Uganda, as are ideas about love and commitment, and in doing so contributes to the burgeoning scholarship on marriage and partnership structures in anthropology and beyond.

This volume presents collaborative ethnographies that brings together the voices of scholars from Uganda and Europe to discuss how Ugandan realities are changing and how anthropology has changed as well. Geographically, the volume covers Northern Uganda, affected by long years of civil conflict, and relatively peaceful Eastern Uganda that nevertheless shares many similar social and economic conditions with Northern Uganda. These two different contexts provide a special opportunity to consider the dynamics between marriage, violence, love, commitment, economics and politics.