ABSTRACT

This book investigates how customary practices in South Africa have led to negotiation and contestation over human rights, gender and generational power.

Drawing on a range of original empirical studies, this book provides important new insights into the realities of regulating personal relationships in complex social fields in which customary practices are negotiated. This book not only adds to a fuller understanding of how customary practices are experienced in contemporary South Africa, but it also contributes to a large discussion about the experiences, impact and ongoing negotiations around changing structures of gender and generational power and rights in contemporary South Africa.

It will be of interest to researchers across the fields of sociology, family/customary law, gender, social policy and African Studies.

chapter 2|19 pages

Lobolo and the making of men 1

chapter 3|18 pages

Very long engagements

The persistent authority of bridewealth in a post-apartheid South African community

chapter 4|16 pages

Inhlawulo, Kin and Custom

Young men negotiating fatherhood and respectable masculinity

chapter 7|19 pages

The power of state law

Female initiation, consent and generational entanglements 1

chapter 8|17 pages

Negotiation of inheritance rights by widows

A case study in rural South Africa

chapter 9|20 pages

Resisting for one and all

Gender and generations amidst guns in rural KwaZulu-Natal

chapter |2 pages

Glossary and Notes