Publication date: 21 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088573
Number of illustrations: 4
Marriage Matters
Imagining love and belonging in Uganda
Lotte Meinert (Editor), Julaina A. Obika (Editor), Nanna Schneidermann (Editor)
Statistics show steep declines in formal partnerships in Uganda. Yet marriage, commitment, love and relationships still matter profoundly to individuals, family, generations, friends and wider society. What does it mean to be married or not married in contemporary Uganda?
Marriage Matters engages with new and classic anthropological theory, gender studies, marriage, relatedness and temporality. Through rich empirical cases, the book examines how partnership, kinship, child filiation and friendship are changing in Uganda, as are ideas about love and commitment, and in doing so contributes to the burgeoning scholarship on marriage and partnership structures in anthropology and beyond.
This volume presents collaborative ethnographies that brings together the voices of scholars from Uganda and Europe to discuss how Ugandan realities are changing and how anthropology has changed as well. Geographically, the volume covers Northern Uganda, affected by long years of civil conflict, and relatively peaceful Eastern Uganda that nevertheless shares many similar social and economic conditions with Northern Uganda. These two different contexts provide a special opportunity to consider the dynamics between marriage, violence, love, commitment, economics and politics.
List of tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Marriage matters in Uganda: an introduction
Nanna Schneidermann, Julaina A. Obika and Lotte Meinert
Interlude song: Lim Nyom Peke: No Money for Marriage
Lucky David Wilson and Otim Alpha Ozaite
1 From clan to class? Wedding committees, friendship and love in Gulu City
Nanna Schneidermann and Jimmy Otim
2 DNA paternity testing in Kampala and Jinja: local understandings and the future of relationships
Anna Baral
3 Bride wealth as trade-offs, security or exploitation? Multiple generation and gender perspectives on marriage realities in Lira
Mary Ejang and Lotte Meinert
4 Frail fatherhood: belonging and care
Susan Reynolds Whyte
5 When does a house become a home? Homemaking, belonging and the mutual discontent of men and women in Uganda
Hanne O. Mogensen and Julaina A. Obika
Interlude Song: Middle East
Docky Sandie Akello
6 Turning points: Oloya’s gendered path to mental health and marriage
Lioba Lenhart
7 Genealogy of romantic love in Acholi: constructs, movement and temporality
Daniel Komakech
8 Recognition in church weddings Stephen Langole and Susan Reynolds Whyte
9 The future tense of marrying: time and tensions in bride wealth and education in Kwapa and Ik
Lotte Meinert
Afterword: How marriage matters: in comparison and belonging
Koreen M. Reece
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800088573
Number of illustrations: 4
Publication date: 21 July 2025
PDF ISBN: 9781800088573
EPUB ISBN: 9781800088580
Read Online ISBN: 9781800088573
Hardback ISBN: 9781800088559
Paperback ISBN: 9781800088566
Lotte Meinert (Editor) 
Lotte Meinert is Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University.
Julaina A. Obika (Editor)
Julaina A. Obika is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies, Gulu University.
Nanna Schneidermann (Editor)
Nanna Schneidermann is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University.
‘This creative and original volume, the product of a rich collaboration between African and European scholars, illuminates marriage in myriad new ways. Emphasising multivocality and comparison, and engaging with emerging forms, this is a stunning collection – a model for studies of changing patterns of marriage and family life across time and cultures.’
Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh
‘Through exemplary collaborative research and vivid portraits of Ugandan couples and communities, this volume offers profound insights into one of our most fundamental political and social institutions: marriage. Going beyond familiar dichotomies, the authors generate fresh perspectives on materiality, temporality and belonging – transcending borders and enriching our understanding of global intimacies.’
Holly Porter, University of Cambridge
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Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense
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