Exploring the Concept of Globalization and its Effects on Women’s Lives at Kulamba Traditional Ceremony for the Chewa Speaking People of Zambia.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore globalisation
tenets such as technology-values, space and popular
culture on women’s lives at the Kulamba traditional
ceremony. At issue at the ceremony are gender
inequalities influenced by globalization and Chewa
culture exclusively developed by men. To excavate
gender relations, social cultural anthropology was
applied to understand Chewa people cultural patterns,
in terms of how they govern and create meaning from
the ceremony. Further, physical anthropology was also
applied to help excavate women’s lives in terms of how
they adopt to the environment during the ceremony
for purposes of navigating their lives and accessing
proceeds of the Kulamba rituals.
The methodology adopted in the study was
ethnographic which includes techniques of participantobservation and interviews. The feminist theory was
used in order to excavate the challenges of gender,
cultural values and globalization in Zambia, by
drawing specific reference to women’s stories at the
Kulamba. Particular concerns by most studies on
women’s lives at the Kulamba ceremony are the socio-
cultural effects, since a feminist orientation offers
an understanding of how the world is organised and
determined by social relations. My argument in this
paper is that not only socio-cultural factors perpetuate
gender inequalities at the ceremony, but globalization
too.