Social Mobility and Family-Based Reciprocity

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Cover of Volume: Anthropos Volume 118 (2023), Edition 2
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Internationale Zeitschrift für Völker- und Sprachenkunde

Volume 118 (2023), Edition 2

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Nomos, Baden-Baden
Publication year
2023
ISSN-Online
2942-3139
ISSN-Print
0257-9774

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Volume 118 (2023), Edition 2

Social Mobility and Family-Based Reciprocity

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Authors:
ISSN-Print
0257-9774
ISSN-Online
2942-3139
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The article discusses the practices of urban households to accept children from rural relatives in two cities participating in striving national economies in Kumasi, Ghana, and Gaborone, Botswana. With reference to gender studies the article takes households as platforms of transmission of national and global flows of money, (imported) goods, and services and identifies two different models of family-based reciprocity: one, to be found in Kumasi, is inclusive and cooperative and the other, to be found in Gaborone, is cooperative but exclusive. Discussing two cases of prototypical households of the aspiring middle classes in Kumasi and Gaborone I argue that the analyzed forms of family-based reciprocity are historically contingent but not arbitrary. These culturally and socially informed daily struggles and negotiations of family belonging and participation in prosperous futures are crucial for an understanding of the dynamics of urban prosperity.

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