Global Regulation and Local Political Struggles: Early Marriage in Northern Nigeria
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh and Ronald Kassimir (Eds.), Youth, Globalization, and the Law (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2007) 321-353
32 Pages Posted: 12 Mar 2013
Date Written: 2007
Abstract
The analysis in our chapter focuses on the competing discourses surrounding early marriage and the effects of these disjunctures on how the problem is understood and addressed. The contradictions between transnational views and the perspectives of local actors tend to evoke nationalist religious or cultural responses. The activists and academics with whom we talked are trying to negotiate these contradictions at various levels. They face the dilemmas of legitimating their activities and interventions locally while mobilizing the power of a global discourse — activists draw on human rights discourse, a “symbolic good” very much in global circulation.
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