(1) Based on a long-term analysis of the sexual and conjugal histories of interracial couples formed by European women and African men, the project offers an innovative approach to the socializing effects of intimacy. Drawing on the work on transactional sex and economic-sexual exchange, I define intimacy as a particular social configuration within which a set of goods circulates and is exchanged, which may be of an economic and material nature. I have shown that these intimate transactions also concern symbolic goods (beliefs, tastes, knowledge and know-how, political, religious and moral values, etc.) that can be transmitted and sometimes appropriated by the partners. Therefore, the intimate relationship is potentially a socializing relationship, likely to profoundly change the way one or the other partner thinks and acts.
(2) Through the case of interracial intimacy in Zanzibar, I also questioned the transformation of practices and representations of sexuality in the globalizing era. While work on sex tourism, transnational prostitution, or migration through marriage has focused on how the sexual market has become globalized, and how sexuality has become a key resource in strategies of international migration and social mobility, it has overlooked how these transnational intimate relationships also affect individuals themselves, and in particular their bodies and sexuality. To this regard, I have shown that, at the turn of the 21st century, Zanzibar experienced major social changes, partly due to the intensity of international mobility generated by tourism and expatriation in the archipelago. In a context where the norms of modesty usually require a certain restraint in the uses of the body and the expression of affects in interactions, the irruption of white women in tourist areas has put local spatial and moral orders under tension. The beach and the street have in fact become privileged places for flirting, and places of sociability for couples, leading to the irruption of sexuality within the public space.
(3) The case of interracial couples also shades light on the articulation of gender, class and race in the realm of conjugality. While some studies of couples formed by Western women and African men conclude that gender power relations have been reversed, the detailed ethnography of the conjugal life of these couples shows much more subtle power dynamics. I have shown, on the one hand, that despite the dominant position of women from an economic, cultural, and symbolic point of view (they are white, educated women from the upper middle class), their assets are in fact largely shared with men and appropriated by them in strategies of social ascent. On the other hand, I insisted on the ability of Zanzibari men to recompose the balance between the two traditional axes in the construction of male identity, namely economic power and sexual performance. While the economic power of Zanzibari men has suffered from capitalist globalization, sexual potency has become a key aspect of affirming masculinity. In this regard, intimate relations with white women constitute an opportunity for young men to perform a masculinity based chiefly on sexual potency, which is to say competition between men for access to women’s bodies on the one hand, and sexual expertise on the other hand.
