Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:09:17.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Marrying Out” for Love: Women’s Narratives of Polygyny and Alternative Marriage Choices in Contemporary Senegal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article examines the ways in which childhood and youth experiences of living in polygynous households shape the aspirations of middle-class Muslim Senegalese women to companionate marriage. Increasingly, such aspirations are fulfilled through marriage with European men. In contrast to an enduring popular discourse according to which women live happily with polygyny throughout the Senegambian region, this article shows how some middle-class women’s choice to “marry out” is explicitly linked to family narratives and personal experiences of suffering. In a context in which many of these women face strong familial opposition to marriage with non-Muslim European men, this article suggests that the women’s narratives provide moral legitimacy to their “alternative” choices.

Résumé:

Cet article examine comment et de quelles manières les expériences des enfants et des jeunes qui vivent dans des ménages polygames, façonnent les aspirations des femmes sénégalaises musulmanes de la classe moyenne au mariage de compagnonnage. De plus en plus, de telles aspirations sont satisfaites par le mariage avec des hommes européens. Contrairement à un discours populaire qui perdure selon lequel les femmes vivent heureuses dans la polygynie dans toute la région de Sénégambie, cet article montre comment le choix de certaines femmes de la classe moyenne à «se marier en dehors» est explicitement lié à des récits de famille et des expériences de souffrances personnelles. Cet article suggère que les récits des femmes assurent la légitimité morale à leurs choix “alternatifs” dans un contexte où beaucoup d’entre elles font face à une forte opposition familiale au mariage avec des hommes européens non-musulmans.

Keywords

Senegalese womenpolygynymarriagecompanionate marriagemoral legitimacyfamily narratives
Type
ASR FORUM ON WOMEN AND GENDER IN AFRICA: PART 2
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 155 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Démographie (ANSD). 2012. “Enquête Démographique et de Santé à Indicateurs Multiples Sénégal (EDS-MICS) 2010–11.” Dakar: ANSD.Google Scholar
Ames, David W. 1955. “The Economic Base of Wolof Polygyny.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 11 (4): 391–403.Google Scholar
Antoine, Philippe, and Nanitelamio, Jeanne. 1995. “Peut-on échapper à la polygamie à Dakar?” Chronique du CEPED 32.Google Scholar
Bâ, Mariama. 1979. Une Si Longue Lettre. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines.Google Scholar
Bingo. 1960. “Une enquête de Bingo: La jeunesse d’Afrique vous parle . . .” January.Google Scholar
Bloch, Alexia 2011. “Intimate Circuits: Modernity, Migration and Marriage among Post-Soviet Women in Turkey.” Global Networks 11 (4): 502–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bop, Codou. 1996. “Les femmes chefs de famille à Dakar.” In Femmes du Sud, Chefs de Famille, edited by Bisilliat, Jeanne, 129–50. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Buggenhagen, Beth A. 2012. Muslim Families in Global Senegal: Money Takes Care of Shame. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Burnham, Philip. 1987. “Changing Themes in the Analysis of African Marriage.” In Tranformations of African Marriage, edited by Parkin, David and Nyamwaya, David, 37–54. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Charsley, Katharine. 2012. “Transnational Marriage.” In Transnational Marriage: New Perspectives from Europe and Beyond, edited by Charsley, Katharine, 3–22. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Charsley, Katharine. 2013. Transnational Pakistani Connections: Marrying “Back Home.” London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coe, Cati. 2014. The Scattered Family: Parenting, African Migrants, and Global Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Jennifer. 2014. “Working Mis/understandings: The Tangled Relationship between Kinship, Franco-Malagasy Binational Marriages, and the French State.” Cultural Anthropology 29 (3): 527–51.Google Scholar
Constable, Nicole. 2005. Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Creevey, Lucy. 1996. “Islam, Women, and the Role of the State in Senegal.” Journal of Religion in Africa 26 (3): 268–307.Google Scholar
Dial, Fatou B. 2008. Mariage et Divorce à Dakar. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Dilley, Roy M. 2014. Nearly Native, Barely Civilized: Henri Gaden’s Journey through Colonial French West Africa (1894–1939). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Diop, Abdoulaye-Bara. 1985. La Famille Wolof. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Fainzang, Sylvie, and Journet, Odile. 1988. La Femme de Mon Mari. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Fainzang, Sylvie, and Journet, Odile. 1991. “L’Institution polygamique comme lieu de construction sociale de la féminité.” In Sexe et Genre: De la Hiérarchie entre les Sexes, 217–25. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.Google Scholar
Fair, Laura. 2009. “Making Love in the Indian Ocean: Hindi Films, Zanzibari Audiences, and the Construction of Romance in the 1950s and 1960s.” In Love in Africa, edited by Thomas, Lynn M. and Cole, Jennifer, 58–82. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fernandez, Nadine T. 2013. “Moral Boundaries and National Borders: Cuban Marriage Migration to Denmark.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 20 (3): 270–87.Google Scholar
Goode, William. 1964. The Family. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1973. “Polygyny, Economy and the Role of Women.” In The Character of Kinship, edited by Goody, Jack, 175–90. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Groes-Green, Christian. 2014. “Journeys of Patronage: Moral Economies of Transactional Sex, Kinship, and Female Migration from Mozambique to Europe.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20: 237–55.Google Scholar
Hannaford, Dinah. 2015. “Technologies of the Spouse: Intimate Surveillance in Senegalese Transnational Marriages.” Global Networks 15 (1): 43–59.Google Scholar
Hannaford, Dinah, and Foley, Ellen E.. 2015. “Negotiating Love and Marriage in Contemporary Senegal: A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” African Studies Review 58 (2): 205–25.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Jennifer S., and Wardlow, Holly. 2006. Modern Loves: The Anthropology of Romantic Courtship and Companionate Marriage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Hilary. 2013. The Metis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Claude. 1960. “Essai d’interprétation du phénomène économique dans les socitétés traditionelles d’autosubsistance.” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 4: 38–67.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Claude. 1975. Femmes, Greniers et Capitaux. Paris: Maspero.Google Scholar
Mutongi, Kenda. 2009. “‘Dear Dolly’s’ Advice: Representations of Youth, Courtship, and Sexualities in Africa, 1960–1980.” In Love in Africa, edited by Thomas, Lynn M. and Cole, Jennifer, 83–108. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ndiaye, Salif, Demba Diouf, Papa, and Ayad, Mohamed. 1994. “Enquête Démographique et de Santé au Sénégal (EDS-II) 1992/93.” Dakar: Direction de la Prévision et de la Statistique.Google Scholar
Neveu Kringelbach, Hélène. 2013. Dance Circles: Movement, Morality and Self-Fashioning in Urban Senegal. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Neveu Kringelbach, Hélène. 2015. “Gendered Educational Trajectories and Transnational Marriage among West African Students in France.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 22 (3): 288–302.Google Scholar
Rytter, Mikkel. 2013. Family Upheaval: Generation, Mobility and Relatedness among Pakistani Migrants in Denmark. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Salomon, Christine. 2009. “Vers le nord.” Autrepart 49: 223–40.Google Scholar
Sow, Fatou, Rennick, Anne C., and Boone, Catherine. 1989. “Senegal: The Decade and Its Consequences.” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 17 (2): 32–36.Google Scholar
Thomas, Lynn M. 2009. “Love, Sex, and the Modern Girl in 1930s Southern Africa.” In Love in Africa, edited by Thomas, Lynn M. and Cole, Jennifer, 31–57. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Lynn M., and Cole, Jennifer. 2009. “Thinking through Love in Africa.” In Love in Africa, edited by Cole, Jennifer and Thomas, Lynn M., 1–30. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wane, Yaya. 1969. “Les Toucouleur du Fouta Tooro, stratification sociale et structure familiale.” Initiations et Etudes Africaines (IFAN) 25.Google Scholar
Wardlow, Holly, and Hirsch, Jennifer S.. 2006. “Introduction.” In Modern Loves: The Anthropology of Romantic Courtship and Companionate Marriage, edited by Hirsch, Jennifer S. and Wardlow, Holly, 1–31. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
White, Owen. 1999. Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895–1960. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar