Passing on the Rites of Passage

Girls' initiation rites are dominant kinship rites concerned with socialisation and gender identity. They mark the transition from childhood to womanhood. For nearly a century, girls' initiation rites in Zambia have been banned by Roman Catholic missionaries, who considered the rites pagan and immoral. Initiation rites persisted, however, secretly and in curtailed form. Today the church has changed its point of view and tries to revitalise and re-evaluate initiation rites. This book aims to contribute to current debates over initiation rites in the context of the Catholic church. The amalgamation of traditional initiation rites are presently performed by women's church groups, which are lay groups centred around a church. The specific ideas and practices related to these rites are the main subject ot this book. An initiation rite is performed by members of a women's church group, located in an urban Roman Catholic community in Zambia, is described here in detail. Initiation rites in towns, and in the context of a church, remain an important factor in a woman's life.
The rites continue to be performed by women, operating to confirm the power of women and to introduce girls into the women's world. This book about Catholic women's groups and initiation rites on the Zambian Copperbelt is based on field work conducted in 1992, and is a revised version of an MA thesis in Anthropology.