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- Title
CELEBRATING DISTINCTIONS: COMMON AND CONSPICUOUS WEDDINGS IN RURAL NAMIBIA.
- Authors
Pauli, Julia
- Abstract
In many parts of southern Africa, weddings have become expensive, blending local ritual practices with Western middle-class consumption habits. Ethno-graphic fieldwork in the Fransfontein region of northwest Namibia indicates that the transformations in wedding consumption are linked to social class formation. Until the 1970s, wedding celebrations in Fransfontein were relatively modest affairs. With the establishment of new bureaucracies and the emergence of localized elites at the end of the 1970s, wedding celebrations gradually developed into costly celebrations of class distinction. An important outcome of this is that it has become increasingly more difficult for most people to marry; consequently, marriage rates have substantially declined. (Marriage rates, conspicuous consumption, elites, Namibia)
- Subjects
AFRICA; WEDDINGS -- Social aspects; MARRIAGE; MARITAL statistics; WEDDINGS; CONSUMPTION (Economics); MIDDLE class; SOCIAL classes; ECONOMICS
- Publication
Ethnology, 2011, Vol 50, Issue 2, p153
- ISSN
0014-1828
- Publication type
Article