High bridewealth,migrant labour and the position of women in Lesotho

An attempt is made to explain the persistence of high bridewealth in Lesotho. It is argued that the structural conditions of its persistence have changed over time, and a macroeconomic perspective is developed in which to comprehend its contemporary significance. Bridewealth (Bohali) transfers in Lesotho at this time, at least in the Lowlands, are derived largely from the cash earnings of migrants and are no longer provided in livestock by a variety of agnatic and matrilateral kin on the side of the husband and distributed among a similar variety of kin on the wife's side. They are drawn from and contribute to a general subsistence fund concentrated largely within the household. To the extent that bohali transfers constitute items of expenditures for migrants and items of income for the heads of women's natal households, they effect a redistribution of income in favor of the senior generation, which thus has a clear interest incontinuing to demand high bohali. In addition migrants have an interest in substantially fulfilling their bohali obligations. Their own longterm security is best assured by establishing access to legitimate dependents within a rural household. Given a high rate of conjugal dissociation, a consequence of oscillating migration, the migrant must balance 2 considerations: the rationality of investment in the next generation, of the sort that bohali transfers represent, is qualified by an initially tenuous attachment to the rural household where his dependents reside; and so long as bohali remains the idiom in which interhousehold competition for the earning capacity of the next generation is rationalized and resolved, such investments continues to be the only way in which he can legitimately assert his own interests against those of his affines. The household viability in Lesotho depends on control over the earning capacity of migrants and over the productive and reproductive capacities of relict women. These are the structural conditions for the persistence of high bridewealth. Bohali is sustained by the realities of housekeeping, not merely by the ideology of keeping house. 3 detailed household profiles presented in an appendix give ethnographic sustenance to propositions concerning high bridewealth, migrant labor, and the position of women.     

鼓励和吸引社会资本参与社会主义新农村建设

建设社会主义新农村,需要大量的资金,政府是资金的主导内源,但是,单靠政府的投入还远远不够,必须采取有效的措施,引入大量的社会资本,鼓励这些社会资本投入农村,加快社会主义新农村的建设.