Gender and Sexuality

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage within Ongoing Struggles over African Marriage in South Africa

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This paper examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black
lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such
South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, I argue
that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with
contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities
reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of
African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of
associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in many
cases, facilitate their acceptance. At the same time, continuing contestation over such
understandings helps drive instances of opposition.

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Publication Information

: ., 2018

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Language

English

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Subject(s)

South Africa
Same-sex marriage
Romantic love
Lesbian and gay identities
Kinship
Heterosexual counterparts

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Article

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