11. The Appeal of Absent Husbands in Contemporary Senegal

Hannaford, Dinah

doi:10.36019/9781978830134-013

Cited by 1 publication

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“…However, anthropologists also recognize that people around the world have become disenfranchised from the romantic love and companionate marriage ideals. Ethnographic studies of marriage dissolution (Alexy 2020; Haenn 2019; Medeiros 2018) and women's decisions to “opt out” of marriage (Davidson and Hannaford 2022) reveal the complex factors contributing to these phenomena. Reductively, some scholars have proposed that matrifocality is a source of marital instability because the matrifocal household challenges the patriarchal male (Scott 1996) and because reciprocal relationships between women circumvent the need for a male provider (Safa 2005).…”

Section: Anthropological Approaches To the Black Matrifocal Family An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Emerging studies highlight the ways that emotional intimacy and bonds between women circumvent the desire or need for a conjugal partner, or at least the need for co‐residence with a conjugal partner (Freeman 2022; Hannaford 2022). In her study of Senegalese women who opt to marry transnational migrants who are rarely home with them, Hannaford (2022) found that “female friendship and the emotional and fiscal support of natal kin . .…”

Section: Anthropological Approaches To the Black Matrifocal Family An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotional Intimacy and the Black Matrifocal Family in Northeast Brazil

Medeiros

2022

Feminist Anthropology

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In this article, I explore the affective landscape of matrifocal kinship in Brogodó to examine how the emotional intimacy that Black women shared with their women kin buffered the effects of unmet marital expectations, marital conflict, and divorce. I describe how women viewed their relationships with their families as a source of love and emotional intimacy that was more reliable and fulfilling than what they could expect from husbands who did not meet the romantic love ideal. Research that relies too heavily on functional assumptions about the relationship between matrifocality and marriage dissolution misses how the desire for emotional intimacy influences women's perspectives on and decision‐making around marriage dissolution. I argue that women's reliance on consanguineal kin as an affective alternative to romantic love and companionate marriage was a critical factor in their decisions to end their marriages. I also assert that rather than weakening extended family ties, in Brogodó the spread of notions of romantic love and companionate marriage strengthened the matrifocal family model by reinforcing women's views that consanguineal rather than affinal kin were at the center of their worlds.

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Section: Anthropological Approaches To the Black Matrifocal Family An...mentioning

confidence: 99%