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Through analysis of qualitative research interviews with African and nonAfrican Australian men and women who are, or have been, in intimate relationships, this article explores some fundamental differences between African and nonAfrican ways of living and understanding relatedness and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the psychological and emotional challenges involved when living with radical cultural differences, and the psychoanalytic implications of these challenges. It analyzes empirical data based from the experiences of individuals who were involved in intercultural marriages and relationships. It notes that the experiences of these people show the need for a process-oriented psychoanalysis, and evaluates the capability of people to live together despite the differences.

This article argues that African ethical and conceptual systems have an important contribution to make to theorization of complex African-western families which are forming in some locations around the globe as the result of migration and cross cultural marriages/relationships. Drawing on my research into transculturation in heterosexual African and (non African) Australian relationships, I argue that despite formidable obstacles both in terms of the hegemony of the monogamous nuclear family model, and patriarchal attitudes toward female sexuality, "Africanization" of relationship and family structures can occur in western locations in ways which are not antithetical to women's rights, responsibilities and desires. The nuclearization of the family may be taking root in Africa, but this is not a one way migration. As Niara Sudarkasa says, when nuclear and extended family structures which evolved in Europe and Africa (respectively) are transported to other cultural contexts, "transformations in ... familial roles and relationships have occurred and will occur" (2004: 2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through analysis of a local configuration of race and gender in the global migration picture, this essay picks up on one of the important themes discussed in Global Woman: the challenges, complexities, struggles, and dilemmas of the "micro" West/non--West contact zone. Using data from my research into relationships between (black) African migrants and non-African Australian women, I explore the way my interlocutors (and I) are often, as Susan Cheever writes in her chapter in Global Woman, "strung out between the old ways and the new, between the demands of money and the demands of love." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]