Jimmy Otim is a Research Fellow with the IMAGENU project at the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies - Gulu University.
This thesis explores the changing landscape of marriage practices in Acholi society, northern Uganda through the last decades. As elsewhere in the world, marriage practices in Uganda and in particular Acholi society are undergoing profound change, evoking new aspirations and anxieties. While marriage has been universal for both men and women in Acholi society and remains a rite of passage signifying a transition from childhood to adulthood and is, therefore, critical to achieving social status, today, marriage is rare and most people are unmarried. Those who marry or aspire to marry often struggle to formalize their partnerships and are not only confronted with antagonistic expectations from friends and kin but as well as with frustrations, anxieties and uncertainties. Thus, marriage has changed from an almost universal practice and collectively experienced rite of passage into the exclusivity of a few who can afford it. Lim nyom - bridewealth’s significance persists despite transformations in its meaning and practice. Yet, despite these developments in the changing meaning and terms of marriage, the institution nevertheless continues to be an important frame of reference for most people.
Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban Gulu, northern Uganda in 2019-202I, I explore the transformations which have affected the generative mechanisms of marriage in the region. To do this, the study explores the struggles, anxieties, dilemmas, moral imaginations, and difficulties encountered by various generations in the changing terrain upon which social adulthood or getting married is attained and imagined in contemporary Acholi society. I attempt to answer the following questions: In what ways do Acholi people see changes in marriage practices as a problem? How do changes in marriage practices shape marriage arrangements and belonging across generations? what are the exchanges taking place in everyday life between partners and in-laws and across generations, whether a union is formalized or not? What are the implications of these changes to Acholi society? what is the role of friendship in the mobilization of the exchange of resources over time and what happens to partnerships as social media and mobile money create new forms and possibilities of exchange? I suggest that the decline of marriage in Acholi society - as fewer and fewer people marry, must be understood in light of wider shifts in political, socioeconomic, and demographic change.
