"My happiest time" or "my saddest time"? The spatial and generational construction of marriage among youth in rural Malawi and Lesotho
"My happiest time" or "my saddest time"? The spatial and generational construction of marriage among youth in rural Malawi and Lesotho
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DOI：
10.1111/tran.12211
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发表时间：
2018-06-01
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Robson, Elsbeth
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ansell, Nicola;Hajdu, Flora;Robson, Elsbeth
非洲青少年之间的婚姻目前是联合国机构和国际非政府组织运动的中心焦点。然而，婚姻只得到了地理学家的有限关注，在很大程度上没有引起青年地理学家的注意。在这篇文章中，我们探索了在两个不同婚姻习俗的非洲农村环境中年轻人结婚动机和经历的年龄关系地理：母系马拉维南部和父系莱索托。我们利用参与性研究活动和对80名年龄在10岁至24岁之间的人进行的生活史访谈。虽然年轻人的态度和经历是多种多样和复杂的，但两种背景下出现了截然不同的描述。特别是，莱索托的年轻女性对婚姻的评价非常负面，而马拉维的年轻女性对婚姻的评价要积极得多。通过这些例子，我们突出了年轻人的婚姻选择和经历是如何通过关系产生的。关于是否结婚、何时结婚以及嫁给谁的决定反映了社会对资源、劳动力和责任的世代分配的根深蒂固的期望，这些期望与包括贫困、失业、土地稀缺和艾滋病在内的当代社会和经济进程相交。婚姻的经历也是通过与社会经济条件相关的空间结构和背景所处的实践而产生的。因此，婚姻作为年轻人生活中的一个重要结合点，在个人生命过程的关系构建以及年龄、性别、特别是世代关系的(重建)中发挥着关键作用。
Marriage among African teenagers is currently a central focus of campaigns by UN agencies and international NGOs. Yet marriage has received only limited attention from geographers and has largely escaped the attention of geographers of youth. In this paper we explore the relational geographies of age that underlie young people's motivations for, and experiences of, marriage in two rural African settings with differing marriage practices: matrilocal southern Malawi and patrilocal Lesotho. We draw on participatory research activities and life history interviews conducted with 80 people aged between 10 and 24 years old. While the young people's attitudes and experiences were varied and complex, starkly different accounts emerged from the two settings. In particular, young women in Lesotho offered very negative assessments of marriage, while those in Malawi were very much more positive. Through these examples, we highlight how young people's marriage choices and experiences are relationally produced. Decisions about whether, when and whom to marry reflect socially entrenched expectations concerning generational allocations of resources, labour and responsibilities, which intersect with contemporary social and economic processes including poverty, unemployment, land scarcity and AIDS. Experiences of marriage, too, are produced through practices that are spatially structured and contextually situated in relation to socio-economic conditions. Thus marriage, as a vital conjuncture in young people's lives, plays a key role in the relational construction of individual lifecourses and in (re)constructing relationships of age, gender and, especially, generation.