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Divorce in Abutia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Michel Verdon
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Extract

Like most southern Ghanian populations, the Abutia Ewe – one of the numerous ‘village leagues’ which compose the northern part of Eweland (Volta region)– have experienced far-reaching transformations in the last century, and nowhere more radically than in their matrimonial practices. In this article, I wish to concentrate on two aspects of these practices, namely the definition of marriage and the incidence of divorce.

Indeed, an adequate analysis of divorce requires some heuristic tools which enable us to decide whether particular couples are ‘married’ or not, a procedure made extremely difficult in the case of Abutia because of the changes in their definition of marriage. In the first part of the article, I shall briefly survey these changes and discuss the definitional problems they raise and, in the second, present the main findings of a quantitative survey which helps to measure the impact of the changes discussed. It also reveals that divorce was in fact common before 1890, when German colonial rule was imposed. In the third and last part I seek to explain this marital instability in ‘pre-colonial’ Abutia.

Résumé

Le divorce chez les Abutias

Beaucoup de sociétés africaines ont subi des transformations profondes dans leurs pratiques matrimoniales, mais peu semblent avoir connu des transformations aussi dramatiques que celles que l'on observe chez les Abutias. Le mariage traditionnel n'existe plus, et toutes les alliances commencent comme de simples liaisons amoureuses secrètes. Cet état de chose pose de sérieuses questions à propos d'une definition anthropologique du mariage: à un niveau plus empirique, il s'ensuit que les couples se séparent aussi facilement qu'ils se créent. Les taux de divorce actuels parlent d'eux-mêmes, et une analyse diachronique révèle une hausse très importante de ces taux dans les cent dernières années. Cette même analyse révèle aussi que le divorce se pratiquait avec une certaine fréquence avant même l'intervention colonisatrice. L'alphabétisation, les migrations vers les villes et la résidence duolocale n'ont fait qu'aggraver des traits déjà présents il y a cent ans. Comment done expliquer cet état de chose? On trouve une réponse, non dans le type d'unifiliation ou de transactions matrimoniales, mais dans le pouvoir de marchandage dont jouissaient les femmes abutias d'autrefois, et dont elles jouissent encore.

Type
Sex, marriage, children and divorce
Information
Africa , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 48 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1982

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