TRANS GLOBAL FAMILIES: THE APPLICATION OF AFRICAN ETHICAL AND CONCEPTUAL SYSTEMS TO AFRICAN-WESTERN RELAIONSHIPS AND FAMILIES

This article argues that African ethical and conceptual systems have an important contribution to make to theorization of complex African-western families which are forming in some locations around the globe as the result of migration and cross cultural marriages/relationships. Drawing on my research into transculturation in heterosexual African and (non African) Australian relationships, I argue that despite formidable obstacles both in terms of the hegemony of the monogamous nuclear family model, and patriarchal attitudes toward female sexuality, “Africanization” of relationship and family structures can occur in western locations in ways which are not antithetical to women’s rights, responsibilities and desires. The nuclearization of the family may be taking root in Africa, but this is not a one way migration. As Niara Sudarkasa says, when nuclear and extended family structures which evolved in Europe and Africa (respectively) are transported to other cultural contexts, “transformations in . . . familial roles and relationships have occurred and will occur” (2004: 2).

Key words: African ethical and conceptual systems, African-western families, transculturation, post kinship studies

Background Information About the Research

In my psycho-social research into relationships between first generation African immigrants and non African women and men, many interviewees talked about ethical dilemmas, emotional distress, and economic hardship related to immigration processes (Stopford, 2006). A particular focus was the phenomenon of African men who had wives and families in Africa duplicitously marrying non African Australian women of diverse ethnicities for their “papers.” Most participants, including non African Australian women who had been deeply hurt by deception and shocked by the unexpected arrival of an African wife, were conscious of the global and local political/economic conditions which severely disadvantage non elite Africans, forcing them to adopt a variety of strategies to gain access to more affluent western countries.

On the whole, my interlocutors were remarkably insightful and compassionate about the ways in which these global economic and political forces (including of course the legacy of colonialism) impact on African—western relationships and families and limit the potential for trust, honesty and mutuality. As one white respondent put it; “Why should they be honest with you . . . when white people have done so much damage in Africa, why shouldn’t they just come and get what they can?”

However, while they were aware of the negative impact of western economic and political hegemony on the viability of long term African Australian relationships and families, few of my respondents mentioned other socio-cultural forces which also work against the survival of marriages between African migrants and non African Australian partners. These forces I describe as the Christian-Judaic model of monogamous nuclear family, and patriarchal attitudes toward female sexuality, both of which serve to prevent the development of ethical trans global complex family systems which can better serve a variety of economic, psychological and sexual needs. In regards to the silence of my respondents, even those non African women who had had to confront the existence of African wives seemed not to have realized that African traditions of extended and plural families might have offered a humane solution to their ethical and emotional dilemmas, while the majority of my African respondents seemed either loathe to discuss polygyny with a non African interviewer, or were themselves opposed to plural relationships and families.

Of 20 respondents, there were two in particular (a non African woman and an African man) who spoke at length about the differences between western and African attitudes toward sexuality and marriage. In this article I will use “Josephine” and “Kwasi’s” narratives, and their dialogue with me, as the ground from which to explore some of the complex dynamics at play in this contact zone. Using a method of process and analysis derived partially from relational psychoanalysis, I try to explore both conscious and unconscious processes at play in the narrative of my respondents, and in the conversations between myself and my interlocutors (see Stopford, 2004). In accordance with relational psychoanalytic principles, and critical race (see Ladson Billings, 1994) and collaborative cross cultural research practice (see for example, Haig-Brown, 2001), open discussion and analysis of my subjectivity as researcher is included. This includes a section toward the conclusion of the article on my own experience as a member of an extended African – western family which illustrates the way African ethical and conceptual systems can contribute to the creation of non exploitative subject positions for women in complex cross cultural, trans global relationship and family systems. As my research methodology included a participatory dimension, my respondents read and commented on my analysis of interview texts, and neither Josephine nor Kwasi had any objection to my interpretation.

Kinship and the Nuclear Family

Recent anthropological efforts (see for example Franklin & McKinnon, 2001; Shneider, 1984) “no longer situate kinship as the basis of culture, but conceive it as one cultural phenomenon complexly interlinked with other phenomena, cultural, political and economic” (Butler, 2002: 34). In a specific arena of kinship studies, feminist and queer theorists such as Judith Butler (2002) and David Eng (2003) unhook kinship from the heterosexual nuclear family, and urge recognition of homosexual kinship structures and practices which successfully address “fundamental forms of human dependency” (Butler, 2002:14). In another important area of kinship studies, African scholars such as Niara Sudarkasa (1996, 2005) and Oyeronke Oyewumi (2002, 2003) draw on perspectives on motherhood and family grounded in African realities to challenge both western assumptions about the superiority of the nuclear family, and western feminist dismissal of motherhood as theoretically uninteresting.

However, there appears to be no comparable development as yet of “post-kinship” studies on cross cultural, non nuclear, heterosexual family and kinship structures, either in the West or in Africa. While there is extensive research and theoretical discussion on monogamous and polygynous marriage and family formations in Africa (for example, Parkin & Nyamwaya, 1987; Oduyoye & Kanyoro, 1992) and on polygyny in the Mormon church in the United States (for example, Bennion, 1999;Von Wagoner, 1989) apart from Nkiru Nzegwu’s comments on Ghanaian male/British female marriages in Ghana (1996: pp 187-189), there appears to be no other research or analysis which specifically addresses the impact of conflicting cultural attitudes toward the nuclear family and polygyny in African/non-African couples and families, or any at all which looks at non nuclear African-western relationships/marriages and families in western locations.[1]

There is, however, one important mention in Paul Stoller’s book “Money has no smell: The Africanization of New York City” (2002). In this work, Stoller briefly discusses the situation of Senegalese traders in New York who have wives and children in Senegal and who “believe that it is their inalienable right to have sexual relationships with other women” (p.160), especially while traveling. Also, as Muslims, they are entitled to have up to four wives as long as they can afford to support them. In Stoller’s words; “To say the least, these assumptions clash violently with contemporary social sensibilities in America” (p.160). The African Australian interpersonal contact zone is one where there is a similar collision of “social sensibilities” within economic and political structures which disadvantage Africans, and cultural practices which silence them.

In my research, although the majority of my African respondents are not Muslim, all grew up in African social settings where non nuclear family structures were common, and where men frequently had more than one wife. These experiences and histories are obviously an important backdrop to any discussion of marriage, child rearing and sexual practice in the African migrant/western contact zone, yet in our conversations about migration needs and “bogus” marriages, not one of my respondents voiced the possibility that for some African men with wives in Africa it is not necessarily unethical or coldly utilitarian to marry women in Australia as well. Some may indeed marry for purely pragmatic reasons and in the process deliberately mislead women about their true feelings and motivations, but others may be quite willing openly to have more than one wife and family and to fulfill the requisite responsibilities if only this were a permissible option.

A Typical Scenario

Before interview analysis, I want to contextualize this discussion in a practical way through first outlining a scenario which seems to have been typical for non elite African male migrants who came to Australia in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Let’s imagine a non-elite rural West African family which is struggling to pay school fees, medical bills and so on. Since there is little scope for material progress in the African setting for a number of reasons, improvement in the material life of this family is dependent on the husband and father gaining access to an industrialized country. He manages eventually to get a temporary visa to Australia, but the only way to stay in this country is to marry a resident because he does not qualify under Australia’s immigration policy for a non-spousal resident visa. He meets and becomes sexually involved with a non-African Australian woman who is keen to marry and have a family. He needs to marry for visa reasons, he likes this woman and he has no personal objection to having two families, but he fears that disclosure that he already has a family in Africa almost certainly will result in her withdrawal. What are his options?

Paying someone is perhaps a better solution in that no-one will get hurt, but this can be an expensive, risky (since it is illegal) and stressful arrangement, which is not always affordable or achievable. And even though he does feel duty bound to marry an Australian resident to help his wife and family in Africa, and this is his conscious motivation, he has feelings for the non-African woman, and is capable of caring for any children that they may conceive. His preference is to retain his connection and commitment to his African wife and children, as well as having an Australian wife, and African Australian children. If he were living in Africa, where a variety of marriage and family arrangements co-exist (Hay & Stickler, 1995), a polygamous family arrangement would be an option, and although it would doubtless be challenging, it would not be a case of necessarily having to sever one connection in order to pursue another.

However, in a western country like Australia, with a hegemonic Christian Judeo monogamous marriage system thoroughly imbued with assumptions of white/western superiority, it would be a brave African man who would raise with his white Australian girlfriend the possibility of a polygamous marriage system. Despite the fact that non-nuclear family forms are rapidly increasing in western societies, and the nuclear family structure is under threat in a multitude of ways, as Kilbride says; “The assumption is that the nuclear family is the primary, if not exclusive, proper form with which to structure our family ideology and morality”(1994:19). In reality strict monogamy is rare, and multiple forms of both heterosexual and homosexual relationship and family structures are common in the West, but contemporary Anglo Saxon culture continues to devalue, and make illegitimate, forms of marriage, family or kinship which appear to strongly deviate from the ideal(ised) heterosexual, monogamous nuclear family (Skolnick and Skolnick, 1989). Homosexual marriages, and polygynous, or plural, heterosexual marriages are (usually) outlawed. The former are viewed as deviant, while the latter are often regarded as more primitive forms that oppress women and deny children some fundamental needs.

While the (ideal of the) monogamous nuclear family is increasingly the norm around the globe, even in cultures which permit polygyny, and polygyny as it is practiced within hetero-patriarchal structures is frequently oppressive to women, the conflicts and dilemmas faced by African migrants and their Australian partners invite a reappraisal of the place of plural marriage, or polygyny, in certain situations, and for some people. Contemporary western societies like Australia can learn important lessons from the variety of monogamous, polygynous, polyandrous, nuclear and extended relationship and family structures which co-exist in Africa today. As Hay and Stichter (1995) point out, although there is an acceleration of family nuclearisation, the predictions of earlier modernization theorists that African families would inevitably become nuclear and monogamous were incorrect. Instead, “a variety of new and old arrangements exist side by side, many of which represent adaptation in the use of kinship to fit new environments” (1995:91).

As Kwasi’s narrative will show, African marriage is in a process of transformation, but not necessarily in a straightforward line from polygyny to monogamy. Rather, in popular, academic and religious discourse there is constant negotiation and debate over the relative strengths and limitations of the different forms of family and kinship, particularly for women (see for example Sudarkasa, 2003; Nzegwu, 1996, 2003). Despite the increasing popularity of monogamous marriage, polygyny is still widespread, women still sometimes prefer polygynous marriage to monogamous nuclear family for a variety of reasons (Klomegah, 1997; Kanazawa & Still, 1999; Sudarkasa, 1996; Ware, 1979), and “even when monogamy is morally valued or even legally enjoined…functional alternatives to polygamy are frequent, such as concubines or ‘outside wives” (Parkin and Nyamwaya, 1987: 46).

This is a challenging theoretical field. As Njambi and O’Brien state in their study of woman-to-woman marriage in Kenya, the “normative presumption of nuclearity . . . makes it very difficult for particular non-western family forms . . . to be evaluated as anything but bizarre novelties” (2000:3). Deviations from the nuclear family are usually defined in the same kind of terms as homosexuality; that is, “sick, or perverse, or immoral”(Skolnick and Skolnick, 1989:7). Small wonder then that none of my participants, African or non-African, directly raised the issue of polygnous/non monogamous marriage in some form as a possible solution to some of the dilemmas they themselves had experienced or witnessed in African migrant/Australian partner couples and families.

Western pathologizing of polygyny is not the only issue here of course, as I intimated earlier when I used the term “hetero-patriarchal structures.” One of my African respondents, Grace, (a Kikuyu woman from Kenya), is fiercely opposed to polygyny after seeing the unhappiness and powerlessness of her sister and other women in polygamous marriages, and one of her primary motivations in seeking a white husband was to avoid this fate. Thus, gender, culture, sexual practice and power are interwining threads in this discussion, and while it is beyond the scope of this article to do justice to the complexity of this subject (that is, the differences between African and western family systems, the contemporary debate in Africa over the relative merits of the different forms, and the implications of suppression of African paradigms in western feminist discussions of marriage and maternity), I will try to explore some of these issues through analysis of extracts from my interviews with Josephine and Kwasi, and through some discussion of my own experience.

Josephine, Kwame and Adwoa

Josephine is a white Australian woman of Anglo ethnicity who married a Ghanaian man, “Kwame”, and had a son, “Kofi,” with him. It was a difficult marriage, which eventually broke down. Soon after, Kwame visited Ghana and returned with his new wife, “Adwoa,” and their baby son. In our interview Josephine revealed that she has unanswered questions as to whether Kwame married her primarily to gain Australian residency, and whether his relationship with Adwoa began well before she and Kwame ended their sexual relationship. Despite these painful questions, an extended family structure has successfully formed around the three adults and four children. In fact, although there are many ongoing challenges and conflicts, the more complex family system is in many ways rewarding for all participants. Living in two households a short distance from each other, Josephine and Kwame have been able to retain some of the affectionate friendly aspects of their relationship, Kofi has not lost daily access to his father and has gained three siblings, and Josephine and Adwoa have managed to develop a mutually supportive relationship taking care of each other’s children and occasionally Kwame, whose physical health is poor. Josephine, however, has been unable to establish a satisfactory ongoing sexual relationship or partnership with another man, and in some ways Kwame remains the dominant male presence in her life.

If it were not for the termination of the sexual contact between Josephine and Kwame, the family structure which Kwame, Adwoa, Josephine and their collective children have formed could be described as polygynous. It is probable that for a number of personal and social reasons, including avoidance of social stigma, it is the best arrangement (with the least discord) for Kwame and Adwoa to have a sexually monogamous relationship, and for Josephine to be the cooperative “ex” wife. Certainly it is a very positive outcome compared to the more common (typical serial monogamy) scenario where the arrival of an African wife marks the end of one marriage and the official beginning of another, with frequently negative consequences for children of the African Australian marriage. However, it is worth considering whether this arrangement is necessarily inherently superior to a polygynous or plural marriage arrangement where Kwame and Josephine maintained sexual contact if and when Josephine so desired.

One can only wonder whether Kwame might have been happy to have two equally important sexual partners, and Josephine and Adwoa might have been willing to consider such an arrangement (whether on a temporary or permanent basis), if they had felt that such an option were possible. In her interview Josephine said that Adwoa arrived with presents for her, and apparently expected that they all would live together in the same house. Perhaps Adwoa would have accepted a polygynous situation and maybe even embraced it (temporarily at least), given that she was potentially replacing an existing wife and child who might suffer emotionally, sexually and economically as a result, and that she might benefit from Josephine’s friendship and support. For Josephine, however, this was literally unthinkable, at least at a conscious level.

Western equation of monogamy with a superior morality made it impossible for Josephine to consider a number of possible options. However, her narrative indicates that she was partially aware of the way her positioning as a white western woman shaped and limited her perspective:

Indirectly, Josephine seems to say here that she realizes that she herself has been unable to understand some things, and that she’s grappling with a “totally different way of seeing it”. The next sentence, where she “jokes” about Adwoa being her “co-wife” reinforces the feeling that it is only on a fairly unconscious level that she can process these realities. When I asked Josephine in post-interview discussion whether she now thinks that a plural, non-monogamous arrangement where she and Adwoa were co-wives in the fullest sense might have been preferable for her, given that she has not been able to establish an ongoing sexual relationship or partnership with another man (this difficulty is probably partially related to the fact that many men might find her complex African Australian family and community quite threatening), she seemed unable to formulate a clear response. However, she did comment that Kwame and Adwoa’s church affiliations might prohibit such an arrangement, at least publicly. As I am interested in this issue and have had my own struggles in this arena, I raised the possibility that another factor might be her wariness about being denied the same kind of sexual choice Kwame would have, but we did not have time to pursue this topic.

Polygyny “In the Blood”

I assumed that when Josephine talked in the above quotation about her friend’s boyfriend “oversimplifying” the situation that she was referring to the fact that when African men have a more favourable position on polygyny, it rarely seems to be inclusive of women’s perspectives. As an institution, polygyny has often served the interests of men more than women, and increasingly African women are either choosing monogamous marriage and/or demanding the same rights as men to a non monogamous sexual life. Nonetheless, as Josephine implies, African women are familiar with multiple models of marriage, while most western women who marry African men automatically assume (unless they are familiar with African cultures and customs) that they are embarking on a monogamous marriage, and are often devastated when and if they have to confront the reality of their husband’s non-monogamous sexual practice. According to Kwasi, a Ghanaian (Asante) respondent, the inability of white women to cope with their husbands’ polygynous/non monogamous practices is the main cause of the high breakdown of African European marriages.

There are many complex dynamics in this interaction, which in some ways are typical of this contact zone. In the course of our conversation there are overt or implicit references to the clash between normative African and western ideas of marriage and fidelity, the high occurrence of Ghanaian male extra marital affairs, the difference in attitudes toward sexual practice between older and younger generations of Ghanaians, the question of adjustment of non-African women to African cultural mores, the inevitability of termination of African/white marriages and replacement of the white wife with an African woman, and the issue of whether non monogamous sexual practice is “cancerous.” Kwasi and I are grappling individually and interpersonally with inter and intra cultural complexity and conflict.

In the first part of his response when Kwasi describes polygamy as “traditional,” “in the blood,” “normal practice,” he’s speaking from a subject position with which he is apparently fairly strongly identified. The fact that Kwasi first presents the “traditional” position, and repeatedly uses words which normalize polygyny in Africa, seem to indicate that his affiliation with this ‘traditional thing’ is strong, despite the impact of western and Christian influences which condemn polygynous and non monogamous relationships and structures. His subjectivity, his sexuality and masculinity, have been shaped within Asante family and cultural structures in which men have expected to have (and been expected by others to have) multiple wives, as long as they could afford to support them. On the other hand, he has also been shaped by the legacy of colonial Christian discourse which mandated monogamous marriage as the foundational stone of a good Christian home and the hallmark of civilization (Harrell Bond, 1975). Added to this is the present day influence of Pentecostal churches in Ghanaian communities and contemporary African discussion about women’s rights, well being, and sexual health, particularly prevention of HIV-AIDS. Inevitably he is conflicted, as the ongoing conversation makes clear, especially when he says, ‘so it’s something like cancer in the society’.

Kwasi’s choice of the word “cancer”, with its associations with malignancy, incurability, and evil (as in, “an evil influence that spreads dangerously”, Collins English Dictionary) has enormous impact. My immediate response during the actual interview was one of some confusion, as Kwasi had seemed only a few seconds before to be aligning himself fairly unapologetically with his polygynous relatives. I immediately internally questioned whether he “really” meant that it was like cancer, or whether he said that because he thought that that was how non-Africans like myself might view the practice. I decided to externalize the question, “do you really see it as a cancer?” to try and bring unspoken dynamics to the surface, but instead of waiting for him to respond, I attempted to allay my own anxiety about what I imagined was going on (that is, that he was anxious) by offering an explanation which normalizes African polygyny and/or non monogamy. I try to let him know that even though I have had difficult and challenging emotions and experiences in relation to this issue, I am not necessarily one of those “western people” who might “harshly judge”.

Eventually Kwasi clarified that when he uses the word “cancer” he means that the desire for men to have multiple wives/partners is like cancer, in that it cannot be cured. Clearly Kwasi is deeply affected by anti polygyny discourse, but he is also insistent that he and other African men who have grown up in and around polygamous families can not simply comply with the imposition of a monogamous nuclear family structure. His solution, which he talked about later in the interview, is to have secret affairs, and to be a “husband when he is in the home.” Kwasi’s reference to “cancer,” a predominantly western disease, to refer to African traditional practices, is multi dimensional. It suggests that it is not only African patriarchal practices which can be the cause of harm or pain and begs the question as to the kind of (unnamed) ineradicable damage that hegemonic western and Christian Judeo forms of marriage and relationship may have inflicted on both African and non-African people, and especially African/western couples.

It is of course not enough to discuss Kwasi’s conflict and confusion. My initial (mostly internal) insistence that Kwasi’s use of the word ‘cancer’ indicated simply that he was conflicted was reflective of course of my conflict. As a white middle-class western woman I grew up in social structures which assumed the superiority of Anglo Saxon culture, and implicitly or explicitly devalued all other forms. Although I have been exposed to other cultural forms of marriage, relationship and family, have lived all my adult life in “unconventional” extended family structures of various kinds, and have intellectually subscribed to western non normative theorizations of relationship and sexuality, I realized in the course of this research just how much my subjectivity is still dominated by normative ideas of relationship and family. Like many white women who marry African men (it seems), I entered my relationships with African partners with numerous unconscious assumptions about superior forms of intimacy and relationship. In regards to non monogamous sexual practices, I have come to see that indeed I was one of “the white ladies (who) see this as some sort of destruction and some sort of unfaithfulness, and only sort of bad things can come of it.” Gradually, painfully and often belatedly I have come to realize how little I actually have known about the culture and traditions of my African partners, and how many acculturated assumptions—for example, that monogamy is the only basis of a viable long term relationship, and that polygyny is invariably bad for women - have driven my understanding of what is appropriate, ethical and predictable.

Dangerous Women

However, as Josephine’s use of the word “oversimplification” signified, this process of gaining cross-cultural perspective is by no means a straightforward process whereby my increased knowledge has automatically led to easier communication and less conflict with African partners. The non African woman’s realization that her African partner does not view sexual encounters or affairs with other women as being contrary to the responsibilities of marriage or committed relationship doesn’t necessarily signify some neat resolution. Returning to the interview, the above excerpt finished with Kwasi’s sentence, “But the African person sees it as a different thing altogether, you see”. The next section of our conversation brings to the fore even more of the complexities of this zone, as Kwasi and I continue our dialogue about gender and culture.

A: Mmm, but ok, just say a non-African woman did know, was aware that polygamous relationships were common in Africa and didn’t judge it harshly and decided to marry her African partner knowing that it was on the cards that at some point he might have affairs or whatever you want to call it, other lovers or even other wives, I think from my own experience that the woman would therefore think that she would also need to have that kind of freedom too. Well, I don’t know if freedom is the word, but she would also want to have her own needs met sexually and emotionally by more than one man if he was going to have more than one lover. How would the man respond to that, do you think?

My conflict—on the one hand, wanting to be culturally sensitive and non racist, and on the other, wanting to uphold certain (western) feminist and humanist notions of women’s rights—is apparent in the ways I struggle to find the right words. When I say, “at some point he might have affairs or whatever you want to call it, other lovers or even other wives” I am trying to span both western and African positions, trying to “call it” from multiple positions. Again, when I say “well, I don’t know if freedom is the word,” I am conscious that notions of individual freedom and personal happiness are western constructs which may be of minimal importance in some African schemas of marriage and family. They are important to me, and I do not want to deny this, but nor do I want to deny that from other perspectives such foundational western tenets are questionable.

But it is not of course only western women in conflict with African men over rights and freedoms. Although Kwasi states at another point in the interview that the longevity of marriages between Ghanaian men and women (compared to Ghanaian male/white female marriages) is due to the fact that African women see polygamy as “normal”, because they “are used to this sort of system,” at another point he says:

If African marriage is, as many commentators say, in a state of flux, it is surely African women who are major catalysts for change. Changing ideas of marriage, sexuality and motherhood are persistent themes in African women’s writing (see for example Aidoo, 1991; Ba, 1987; Emecheta, 1980; Nfah-Abbenyi, 1997). The question of women’s sexual self determination is a particularly pressing issue, both because women are questioning male control, which is apparently Kwasi’s concern, and because of the interlinked issue of the threat of HIV. In Africa, as Maria Olaussen says (2002), dependent wives are at high risk of contracting HIV from their husbands, regardless of their class position, because their sexuality is viewed as commodity to be controlled by their husbands. However, Olaussen also points out that “there is nothing specifically or exclusively African about the notion that men are somehow naturally entitled to sexual relations with several women, whereas a similar sense of entitlement in women is severely punished and curtailed. These notions exist everywhere and they are also being challenged in different forms in different societies” (2002: 63).

While sex is only one dynamic in a marriage, and there are other very important issues such as motherhood to be considered, questions about the possible benefits and drawbacks of polygamous or monogamous marriage can not be separated from this issue of women’s sexual self determination. Patriarchal African (or any other) polygamous structures which provide men the opportunity and/or right to have multiple sexual partners and deny women the same rights and freedoms are clearly oppressive to women. By the same token, European monogamous marriage (which is based on patrilinear property rights) has also regarded women as part of their husbands’ property, and has until very recently enforced a legal prohibition on extramarital sex for women. In my view, any ethical relationship or marriage, whether monogamous or otherwise, must incorporate female sexual and economic empowerment. Neither monogamous or polygynous marriage is inherently superior for women (or other participants); the desirability or otherwise of a nuclear or plural family structure is dependent on a variety of cultural, emotional, ethical and economic factors, including the welfare of children. As already suggested, and as the next section will further explore, these interlocking needs and dynamics require specific responses in specific locations at certain times (that is, depending on time, place and person), including the formation sometimes of a (temporary or permanent) “polyandrous” extended family system where a woman may have two “husbands.”

Husbandly Wives and Wifely Husbands: African Conceptual Systems

African women writers not only challenge male dominance, but also the privileging of the nuclear family in western feminist discourse about family and gender. In Oyeronke Oyewumi’s words, “feminist discourse is rooted in the nuclear family . . . this social organization constitutes the very grounds of feminist theory and a vehicle for the articulation of vales such as the necessity of coupling and the primacy of conjugality in family life” (2000). Oyewumi argues (1997, 2000) that while in much feminist discourse “woman” is used “as a synonym for wife both conceptually and linguistically, and husband for “man” ”(2000), in African conceptual systems the categories of wife and husband are not inextricably linked to gender. Both women and men can be wives or husbands, depending on their role in the relationship. As Oyewumi says; “Across Africa, the category generally translated as wife is not gender specific but symbolizes relations of subordination between any two people” (2000). Husband is dominant, wife subordinate, and although women are far more often wives than men, conceptually male or female can be in either position.

In my own life I have found African conceptual systems of community, family, marriage and gender invaluable both as a way of thinking through my multiple subject positions as a woman, mother, wife, westerner and so on, and as ethical frameworks for reflecting on appropriate action in very complex cross-cultural relational contexts. As Benezet Bujo says, African ethics challenge the universal claims of western morality and offer a different understanding of the ethical foundations of family and sexual life. In his words:

As we have already seen, African understandings of marriage and sexuality are at play in African/non African Australian marriages whether or not non-African participants realize this fact, and whether or not there is ever any open discussion about the differences between African and western approaches. For non-Africans in close relationships with Africans, knowledge of African conceptual and ethical systems may provide much needed frameworks for thinking through one’s responsibility to others (as well as to oneself) in situations where there is a conflict of needs, interests and motivations.

In my own case, a difficult and prolonged immigration process resulted in a situation where for ethical, emotional and economic reasons I have been involved in the formation of an extended family system in which I have ongoing commitments to two “husbands,” one of whom is African, involving mutual responsibilities. Perhaps one could also say that I am a “husband” with two “wives”, but as none of us is in a consistently dominant or subordinate position (despite significant differences in structural power and privilege) and as I am disinclined anyway to equate “wife” with “subordinate,” the terms husbandly wives and wifely husbands much more effectively convey the fluidity, complexity, mutual respect and occasional conflict/anxieties which characterize these relationships.

As well as more satisfactorily responding to the various needs of the adult members, this complex family structure also serves the needs of my African Australian son better than a nuclear family comprised of his white mother, her white partner, and himself. When African-western marriages break down and the children live with the white/non African parent, if there is no other African member of the household, there are obviously significant implications in terms of the identity and affiliations of the child/ren. My ongoing responsibilities toward my Ghanaian husband and my active support of his bringing a second wife from Ghana are part of a system of reciprocity in which he continues to provide an African paternal function and a positive African male role model for my son, who is not his biological offspring.

When my African husband brings his second wife to Australia, the extended family configuration will very likely shift again into a more conventional western notion of an extended family organized around two or more connected nuclear families. The adult relationship arrangements may be temporary, but the extended family system consisting of African, Anglo, Anglo-African and Jewish members, is permanent. What is most important about this process is that it is African perspectives which have facilitated a more humane and communal response to cross cultural/global complexity than conventional western ways of viewing relationship and family. While the growing popularity of the nuclear family in Africa suggests that many Africans, and perhaps especially women, want an alternative to traditional African polygynous family structures, the West can learn much from African traditions and ways of being.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that African ethical and conceptual systems of plural marriage and family arrangements may offer humane, ethical and practical responses to some of the dilemmas and conflicts associated with complex trans global African-western marriage and family structures. The article began with a brief discussion of the necessity of expanding “post kinship” studies to include cross cultural, non nuclear, heterosexual family and kinship systems. This was followed by analysis of two research interviews which explored the way hegemonic Judaic-Christian family and kinship structures and patriarchal attitudes toward female sexuality may affect both African and non African participants in African-western marriages, and prevent the formation of cross-cultural family systems which might more effectively and humanely meet the needs of African and non-African members. A discussion of the way the author’s own process of transculturation was profoundly shaped by African conceptual and ethical frameworks was included.

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Notes

1. “Monogamy is the marriage of one man to one woman. Polygyny is the marriage of one man to more than one woman, while polyandry is the marriage of one woman to more than one man. Polygamy (although it is often used synonymously with polygyny) comprises polygyny and polyandry.” Kanazawa & Still, 1999:47

Annie Stopford. “Trans Global Families: The Application Of African Ethical And Conceptual Systems To African-Western Relationships And Families” JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 8, 2006.

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