Women's land rights and social change in rural South Africa: the case of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal

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dc.contributor.authorCousins, Ben
dc.date.accessioned2015-02-24T12:31:23Z
dc.date.available2015-02-24T12:31:23Z
dc.date.issued2013
dc.description.abstractChanging marriage practices and a continuing decline in marriage rates are generating tensions in rural South Africa and prompting innovations in the character of women's rights to land. Empirical evidence of changing practices in relation to land access and marriage in Msinga, a conservative area in KwaZulu-Natal, is presented. Such processes have been characterised in recent scholarship in terms of 'living customary law', or 'living law' but this concept can obscure the underlying social dynamics that produce discrepancies between rules, practices and emergent social realities. An alternative model with greater explanatory power is Moore's analytical framework for understanding 'law as process', suggesting attention to processes of regularisation and situational adjustment, within a fundamental condition of indeterminacy. This framework is utilised to help make sense of data from Msinga on marriage practices and women's access to land, and to draw some lessons for policy.en_US
dc.description.accreditationDepartment of HE and Training approved listen_US
dc.identifier.citationCousins, B. (2013). Women's land rights and social change in rural South Africa: the case of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal. Acta Juridica, 13: 73-99en_US
dc.identifier.issn0065-1346
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/1355
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterfalse
dc.publisherJuta Lawen_US
dc.rightsCopyright Juta Law. Publisher permits deposit of published pdf version after a 6 month embargo period.
dc.status.ispeerreviewedtrue
dc.subjectLand rightsen_US
dc.subjectCustomary lawen_US
dc.subjectLiving lawen_US
dc.subjectMarriageen_US
dc.subjectSouth Africaen_US
dc.titleWomen's land rights and social change in rural South Africa: the case of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natalen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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