The last few decades have seen a significant increase in the incidences of consensual
unions, particularly in the urban spaces of African societies. The trend has heightened …

A large body of work on consensual unions suggests a unitary household conception of
consensual unions either as a precursor or an alternative to marriage. Another set of …

Scholars have identified various ways in which people negotiate entry into marriage,
including child betrothal, arranged marriage, forced marriage, self-choice marriage and …

In this article, I use ethnographic and historical evidence to consider marriage as a particular
locus of what Maria Lugones has called “the colonial/modern gender system.” By bringing …

One of the major changes in family formation is the increasing tendency for people to enter
into co-resident patterning without formalising the union through religious, civil or traditional …

This article examines the role of customary law in the South African legal system in the
context of the Constitution's attempts to foster cultural diversity and a common citizenship …

This report is based on a field research conducted between March 10 and March 19, 2008 in
the Northern Region of Ghana. It was carried out by the Commission on Human Rights and …

From the perspective of family law, South Africa seems particularly interesting as it
recognizes a multiplicity of marriage forms, according to its laws: not only common law …

This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance
of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among …

Some 65 years ago Radcliffe-Brown wrote that marriage is “not an event or a condition but a
developing process.” This position became modified two decades later when John Comaroff …