Fluidity and Hybridity of Customary Marriage Traditions in Contemporary Uganda
Alexander Paul Isiko 
and Joy Mukisa Isabirye
Issue: Vol.4 No.3 March 2023 Article 13 pp.357-378
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20234313 | Published online 24th March, 2023
© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
The ideology that customary marriages are celebrated according to ancestral traditions and customs is rife in Africa. There is however continuous invention and evolution of institutions associated with customary marriage rendering it burdensome to trace the visibility of ancient ‘traditions’ therein. This argument is anchored in the theoretical perspective of ‘invention of tradition’, to analyse the extent to which the celebration of customary marriages in Uganda has maintained the ancestral ‘traditional’ status quo owing to the influences of colonisation, westernisation globalisation and modernisation. Busoga, a predominantly Bantu ethnic society, is used as a representative case for this analysis. Using a historical and ethnographic approach, it was established that there is a lot of fluidity and hybridity of contemporary traditions upon which these marriages are celebrated. The notion that customary marriages are celebrated based on past traditions is a fallacy, although at best, efforts have been invested to dramatise past traditions in contemporary settings.
Key words: Marriage, Customary, Traditions, Culture, Traditional Marriage, Invention, Busoga, Uganda
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Alexander Paul Isiko (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Religious Studies & Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda. His research interests are in Contemporary Religious Experience; Religion, Health & Traditional Medicine; Religion and Gender.
Joy Mukisa Isabirye (PhD) is a Lecturer at the Department of Religious Studies & Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda. Her research interests are in Religious Ethics and Moral Education.
Isiko, A.P. & Isabirye, J.M. “Fluidity and Hybridity of Customary Marriage Traditions in Contemporary Uganda,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 4, no.3 (2023): 357-378. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20234313
© 2023 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
