BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:South Africa and the Politics of African Polygamy - Prof Natasha E
 rlank\, University of Johannesburg
DTSTART:20151202T170000Z
DTEND:20151202T180000Z
UID:TALK62646@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:Broadly\, this paper is about the valences and salience of pol
 ygamy as an African practice\, both as a trope under constant reinvention 
 as a recessive and particularly African gene\, but also as a space for the
  assertion of a Christian pan-Africanism. In this paper\, I want to look a
 t the relationship between Christianity and polygamy in South Africa and A
 frica\, especially during the middle of the 20th century. During the first
  half of the twentieth century\, polygamy as a connected sphere of debate 
 and contestation\, reflected the views of anthropologists\, missionaries a
 nd African Christians\, in a way which helps to constitute African Christi
 anity as a heterogeneous arena of contest in ways which transcended missio
 nary attempts at the control of Christianity. Polygamy\, unlike other cust
 omary practices which were easy to judge as either contrary or not contrar
 y to protestant ecumenical Christianity\, was the subject of much intense 
 debate. Did being a polygamist render one ineligible for receiving the sac
 rament? What were the duties of converted polygamous men towards their wiv
 es? These questions preoccupied African Christian men to a great extent. T
 o a much lesser extent were questions ever asked of women\, though\, and h
 ow they felt about polygamy. What were the global flows of knowledge\, bet
 ween ecumenical Christians in the north\, and African Christians\, which h
 elped continually to reconstitute polygamy as a subject of debate?\nWhile 
 this paper is about African polygamy\, for two reasons it is connected to 
 the peculiar settler colony which falls roughly below the Tropic of Capric
 orn. In the 1860s\, before similar moves across the rest of sub-Saharan Af
 rica\, Bishop Colenso in Natal came out radically in support of polygamy. 
  This moment provides the first of a pair of bookends connecting South Afr
 ica to the rest of Africa and the subject of polygamy. The second bookend 
 is of course Jacob Zuma\, certainly substantial enough to support a whole 
 row of books\, but also Africa’s most celebrated polygamist.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S2\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambrid
 ge CB3 9DT
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR