Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-8-2016
Abstract
Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. Accordingly, while my argument broadly distinguishes the more repressive regimes of colonialism and apartheid from the more expansive post-apartheid legal regime, it also partially undoes that periodisation by highlighting limits and evasions of repressive law and obstacles impeding access to post-apartheid law's expansive promises.
Included in
African History Commons, African Languages and Societies Commons, African Studies Commons, Comparative Politics Commons, Family Law Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, History of Gender Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal Commons, Legal History Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Political History Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social History Commons, Women's History Commons, Women's Studies Commons
Comments
This is the author's manuscript of an article originally published in South African Review of Sociology, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2015.1100095.
My other work is cataloged on my website at michaelyarbrough.net and at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2802-3365.