ABOUT THIS BOOK

A wide-ranging survey of how marriage relates to social change.

A series of global case studies, Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense unravels the ever-changing intimate and institutional questions united by marriage. Traversing politics, economics, and religion, the authors explore how marital practices both react to and produce broader social transformation. In particular, the authors contend that contexts marked by violent sociopolitical ruptures such as civil war or colonization illuminate the links between the personal and political. What emerges is a complex portrait of marriage as a site of cultural memory, embodied experience, and active imagination.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Janet Carsten is professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Siobhan Magee is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Hsiao-Chiao Chiu, Eirini Papadaki, and Koreen M. Reece are ERC postdoctoral research fellows with the Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage project at the University of Edinburgh.

REVIEWS

“Can marriage, under the banner of conformity and ‘tradition,’ become the vehicle for innovative, even radical, social change? The authors in this volume explore this provocative question through exquisitely rich ethnographic accounts of the transformational potential of marriage in diverse cultures across the globe. They beautifully illuminate the subtle work of ‘ordinary ethics’ through which people reimagine and reshape the contours of the normative expectations that ricochet through the worlds of individuals, families and nations.”

— Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: marriage in past, present and future tense Janet Carsten, Hsiao-Chiao Chiu, Siobhan Magee, Eirini Papadaki and Koreen M. Reece 1. Go fiwa molao/giving the law: marriage, law, and social change in Botswana Koreen M. Reece 2. ‘You can learn to do it right, or you can learn to do it wrong’: marriage counselling, togetherness, and creative conservatism in Lynchburg, Virginia Siobhan Magee 3. Marriage, time, affect and the politics of compromise in Athens Eirini Papadaki 4. Getting married as a trial: deferring marriage in Jinmen, Taiwan Hsiao-Chiao Chiu 5. (Un)certain futures: rhythms and assemblages of transnational Sri Lankan Tamil marriages Sidharthan Maunaguru 6. Marriage and self-fashioning in Penang, Malaysia: transformations of the intimate and the political Janet Carsten Index