Bridewealth : an ethnographic study on the narratives and descriptions of the practice of bridewealth establishing its purposes, effects and consequences among the Luo, Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Meru, Kamba, Maasai, Kisii and Luhya ethnic groups in Kenya / Diana Diaz Delgado Raitala.

• "This research analyses the practice of bridewealth in Kenya among the Kalenjin, Kisii, Kikuyu, Luhya, Meru, Kamba and Maasai ethnic groups. This analysis is based mainly on my ethnographic work conducted from February to June 2012, during which I gathered data using open-ended interviews in which I shared the routines of my participants’ daily lives. The topic of bridewealth emerged after a deep analysis of the transcripts of all the data gathered during my fieldwork. The interviews took the form of dialogues in which my interviewees also questioned me. The total number of participants was 29, and our dialogues were about their different customs such as widow inheritance, polygyny, female circumcision and bridewealth, which was the topic on which they were most focused from the beginning of our encounters, and on which I therefore have the most data. This research is aimed at analysing the practice of bridewealth from the participants’ perspectives. For this purpose I present some of the narrations and descriptions given by my participants regarding the different stages of bridewealth from its beginning to its dissolution. The methodology of this study is based on narrative analysis and hermeneutical methods of approaching and understanding the topic such as dialectical hermeneutics and lived-experience. The theoretical framework is based mainly on patriarchal theories postulated by Christine Delphy, Deniz Kandiyoti, Laura Stark, and Sylvia Walby. In addition to these theories, I use legal and functionalist approaches to obtain and present a holistic understanding of this practice. The main findings of this study are that the practice of bridewealth: i) symbolises marriage; ii) legalises marriage; iii) is aimed at obtaining a wife to conceive children and perform work for her husband and his kin; iv) generates rights for husbands in terms of custody over children and ownership over wives; v) places an obligation on wives to procreate biologically and produce financially; vi) exists within a patriarchal system which reinforces and perpetuates it; vii) bestows honour on the parties, with married women enjoying a respectable and honourable status, and men being considered honourable for paying bridewealth." 

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