In the shadows of respectability Gendered trajectories of marital dissidence amongst Dakarois professionals

This anthropological study explores the social obligation of marriage, in Dakar, Senegal, through focusing on how relative socio-economic status can enable people to have more scope to diverge from normative marital paths. Popular narratives imply that those who do not engage with marriage in a normative fashion are considered as unrespectable social outcasts, who are critiqued for: challenging patriarchal gender norms; lacking cultural authenticity; and disrupting normative processes of social reproduction.
However, this study examines the lives of educated urban professionals who are dissident towards marriage, yet who, due to their considerable efforts, are not viewed as unrespectable social outcasts. Through an ethnographic exploration of the gendered trajectories of men and women who: have never married; are deferring marriage; are divorced and resisting remarriage; or are planning to engage with marriage in novel ways due to their same-sex desires; the social obligation of marriage comes to be queeried. Their stories thereby cast a critical light upon marriage’s supposed structural power, revealing flexibility and instability, whilst also illuminating the fragile nature of patriarchy. Much like marriage, patriarchy emerges as a fragile social institution that needs constant support and reinforcement to continue exerting its structural power.
Through examining the social obligation of marriage from its dissident margins, their stories enabled me to queery – to curiously and critically question and deconstruct – marriage’s structural power. This thesis serves as an example of the power that queer theory, grounded in ethnography, can hold in illuminating the dissident affordances that exist within normative structures.