Tempora et mores: Family values and the possessions of a post-apartheid countryside
This paper examines a set of responses to the challenges that post-apartheid South Africa's political economy poses to projects of domestic reproduction in the former Bantustan countryside of Zululand, where unemployment has limited the capacities of young men to create marital household. In th...
| Published in: | Journal of religion in Africa |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2001
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| In: |
Journal of religion in Africa
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
KwaZulu
/ Belief in spirits
/ Family conflict
/ Unemployment
/ Economic crisis
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| RelBib Classification: | BB Indigenous religions ZB Sociology |
| Further subjects: | B
Social environment
B Socioeconomic change B Mysticism B Südafrikanische Republik Rural population KwaZulu Natal Magic Mysticism Ancestor cult Family Socioeconomic change Social change Soziale Faktoren B Einflussgröße B Rural population B Magic B Africa B Family B Unemployment B Social change B Ancestor cult |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | This paper examines a set of responses to the challenges that post-apartheid South Africa's political economy poses to projects of domestic reproduction in the former Bantustan countryside of Zululand, where unemployment has limited the capacities of young men to create marital household. In the case study on which the paper is based, one such man's misfortunes are connected by divination to the spirit of an older kinsman who disappeared while working as a labor migrant. I argue that this connection and the rituals meant to confront it turn on fraught symbolic relations between the present and two pasts: the past of apartheid migrancy and a projected past of custom. Like the ghosts by which they are manifest, these times trouble domestic life in the present because of contradictory developments forcing unemployed migrants back on the values of private spheres, while they undermine the bases of rural households. (J Relig Afr/DÜI) |
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| ISSN: | 0022-4200 |
| Contains: | In: Journal of religion in Africa
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