Very often, in studies of African societies, the understanding of ‘marriage’ will take as a point of departure marriage in patrilineal societies. In contexts of patrilineal kinship systems marriage is key: without marriage no reproduction of the patrilineage.
In European/Western interpretations of and interventions into African societies – from Christian missionaries over colonial administrators to national governments and donor-sponsored development planners – patriliny has often been taken for granted, or rather: African societies have been understood as patrilineal, and if marriage was found not to be a key institution, interventions – missionary interventions among others – would make sure that it became so. If matrilineal kinship systems were recognized at all, they would be considered problematic: immoral, primitive, difficult to deal with, and anyhow soon to disappear.
Actually, however, matriliny has proved quite resilient and is still alive and kicking in many parts of Africa. But matrilineal kinship structures are still unrecognized and unseen by nation states and development organizations, one of the possible reasons being a general discomfort with the fact that in matrilineal contexts marriage may be a passing and temporary arrangement. Marriage stability seems to be preferred by states as well as by Christian churches.
The paper will discuss types of marriage and implications of marriage in matrilineal societies, drawing on fieldwork in northern Mozambique, but also taking anthropological reports from matrilineal societies elsewhere in Africa into consideration. Closely connected to interpretations of marriage are understandings of gender power relations and women’s positions in society. Questioning often taken-for-granted ideas of marriage thus also opens up for different ways of looking at women, motherhood and gender power relations.