Conjugality as social change: A Zimbabwean case

Jackson, Cecile (2012) Conjugality as social change: A Zimbabwean case. Journal of Development Studies, 48 (1). pp. 41-54. ISSN 0022-0388

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Abstract

Understanding intrahousehold relations between spouses is central to understanding gendered wellbeing in developing countries, and therefore has engaged the attentions of economists, anthropologists, political theorists and interdisciplinary development studies. In all these fields contractualism in conceptualising conjugality and intrahousehold relations is ubiquitous, yet it implies an overly static and compelling structuralist logic, which this article questions. A better understanding of agency and change, in relation to marriage, matters for both the conceptualisation of intrahousehold relations, and for a range of policy initiatives, for example gender equity, or indeed HIV/AIDS, where the ability of women to instigate change in conjugality and sexual cultures is significant. This article makes no claim to represent contemporary Shona gender relations in Zimbabwe, but offers a temporal analysis of changing conjugality in south-central Zimbabwe from the colonial period into the late 1980s 1 to critique the theoretical stance of contractual approaches, through revealing the ways in which marriage has been reformulated through women's agency.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Gender and Development Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Experimental Economics (former - to 2017)
Depositing User:	Abigail Dalgleish
Date Deposited:	14 Apr 2011 12:15
Last Modified:	11 Aug 2023 16:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/29329
DOI:	10.1080/00220388.2011.629649

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