Using Margaret Archer’s sociological concepts of structure, culture, and agency to investigate the dissemination of customary marriage literature in South African Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Before colonialism, apartheid, and democracy, customary marriages were regulated by customs and practices under living customary law. The advent of these systems introduced official customary law. This introduction brought about changes to customary marriages, which are known and understood by the people of South Africa who subscribe to living customary law. The existence of official customary law as a result of actions from colonialism, apartheid, and democracy impacted the literature of customary marriages that is disseminated by South African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). These institutions disseminate customary marriage literature that often fails to capture the lived realities of African South African people. This led to the subjugation and marginalisation of the literature of customary marriages as practised by most South African people under living customary law. Unavoidably, the status quo concerns epistemological access to customary marriage literature based on living customary law. Against this backdrop, this paper adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate what led to the status quo and how the status quo could be changed. This will be done using Margaret Archer’s sociological concepts of structure, culture, and agency, typically known as Margaret Archer’s Morphogenesis Theory. In this contribution, this theory mainly denotes the relationship between the systems and interactions through systemic conditioning.