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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Love and gift giving – the codification of intimacy among middle class and lower middle class people in Kumasi, Ghana
| Panel |
64. Sexualities in Africa
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| Paper ID | 416 |
| Author(s) |
Bochow, Astrid
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The debate about sexuality in Africa became popular within the context of social science since the beginning of the millennium, when news about high HIV/AIDS rates had received much attention in the Western world. Under this perception many researchers had focussed on “transactional sex” of underprivileged young African women – such as sex workers, school girls or female migrants in African towns.
This debate ignores the fact that gift giving is in fact a crucial feature of practises of love in many social situations: Gift giving as a codification of intimacy (term: Niklas Luhmann) serves to negotiate and strengthen kinship ties. Economic transactions between spouses consolidate a marriage. Within the context of courtship the common goal of marriage is confirmed by the common financial project of saving over a period of two to five years towards the expenses of a wedding (which are not very lavish within the Akan context) and forming an own household.
I will focus in my paper on gift giving among young urban middle class and lower middle class in Kumasi, Ghana. Here, gift giving becomes sort of a gendered language in which sympathy and attraction as well as the desire for sex is expressed. Due to its multiple dimensions gift giving is a multiple signifier with ambiguous meaning which is reflected by a rising morality within a sexualised public created by media and pentecostal churches.
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