Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense
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Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense Marriage in Past, ‘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 Marriage through the worlds of individuals, families and nations.’ – Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking widespread public in Past, Present comment and concern. Through the close ethnographic examination of case studies drawn from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense places new and changing forms of marriage in comparative perspective and Future as a transforming and also transformative social institution. Exploring the ways that marriage draws together and distinguishes history and biography, ritual and law, economy and politics in intimate family life, this volume Tense examines how familial and personal relations, and the ethical judgements they enfold, inform and configure social transformation. Contexts that have been partly shaped through civil wars, cold war and colonialism – as well as other forms of violent socio- political rupture – offer especially apt opportunities for tracing the interplay between marriage and politics. But rather than taking intimate family life and gendered practice EDITED BY JANET CARSTEN, as simply responsive to wider socio-political forces, this work explores how marriage may also create social change. Contributors consider the ways in which marital HSIAO-CHIAO CHIU, SIOBHAN MAGEE, practice traverses the domains of politics, economics and religion, while marking a key site where the work of linking and distinguishing those domains is undertaken. EIRINI PAPADAKI AND KOREEN M. REECE Janet Carsten is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Hsiao-Chiao Chiu is ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Siobhan Magee, Eirini Papadaki and Koreen M. Reece and Koreen Siobhan Magee, Eirini Papadaki Siobhan Magee is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Edited by Janet Carsten, Hsiao-Chiao Chiu, Eirini Papadaki is ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Koreen M. Reece is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. Free open access Cover image: version available from Photograph by Yanlin Chen. www.uclpress.co.uk Image shows bride and groom in Jinmen, Taiwan posing in front of Cold War-era sea defences against mainland China. Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense Edited by Janet Carsten, Hsiao-Chiao Chiu, Siobhan Magee, Eirini Papadaki and Koreen M. Reece First published in 2021 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Collection © Editors, 2021 Text © Contributors, 2021 Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2021 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/ 4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Carsten, J., Chiu, H-C., Magee, S., Papadaki, E. and Reece, K.M. (eds). 2021. Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/ 111.9781800080386 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creative commons.org/licenses/ ISBN: 978-1-80008-040-9 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-80008-039-3 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-80008-038-6 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-80008-041-6 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-80008-042-3 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800080386 Contents List of figures vii List of contributors ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction: marriage in past, present and future tense 1 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 34 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 54 Siobhan Magee 3 Marriage, time, affect and the politics of compromise in Athens 76 Eirini Papadaki 4 Getting married as a trial: deferring marriage in Jinmen, Taiwan 95 Hsiao-Chiao Chiu 5 (Un)certain futures: rhythms and assemblages of transnational Sri Lankan Tamil marriages 118 Sidharthan Maunaguru 6 Marriage and self-fashioning in Penang, Malaysia: transformations of the intimate and the political 140 Janet Carsten Index 160 CONTENTS v List of figures 1.1 Go fiwa molao: Batswana women ‘give the law’ to the new bride, covered in blankets. © Koreen M. Reece. 35 4.1 Steady rise in the age at first marriage for both sexes. Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan (https://www.ris.gov.tw/app/portal/674). 97 4.2 Declining marriage rates in Jinmen and throughout Taiwan. Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan (https://www.ris.gov.tw/app/ portal/674). 98 6.1 Some of the antique objects collected and stored by Anna at her business premises. © Janet Carsten. 151 LIST OF FIGURES vii List of contributors Janet Carsten is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the anthropology of kinship and relatedness. She is the author of The Heat of the Hearth: Kinship and community in a Malay fishing village and After Kinship. Her edited volumes include Cultures of Relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship and Ghosts of Memory: Essays on remembrance and relatedness. Blood Work: Life and laboratories in Penang was published in 2019. Hsiao-Chiao Chiu is ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage project at the University of Edinburgh. She has conducted research on kinship and social change in post-Cold War Jinmen, Taiwan. Siobhan Magee is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. As a Research Fellow working on the Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage project, she has carried out ethnographic research on the political, legal and religious contestations surrounding marriage in Virginia, USA. Her monograph, Material Culture and Kinship in Poland: An ethnography of fur and society, was published in 2019. Sidharthan Maunaguru is Associate Professor in Comparative South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His work focuses on the anthropology of marriage, migration and political violence, the anthropology of politics, religion, ethics and conscience. His monograph, Marrying for a Future, was published in 2019. Eirini Papadaki is ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage project at the University of Edinburgh. She has published articles on kinship, marriage, adoption, gender and parenthood in contemporary Greece. LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ix Koreen M. Reece was ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage project at the University of Edinburgh and is currently Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. She conducts research on kinship and intervention in Botswana’s time of Aids and is the author of several articles. Her monograph, Pandemic Kinship: Families, intervention and social change in Botswana’s time of AIDS, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. x MARRIAGE IN PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSE Acknowledgements The research on which the introduction and chapters 1–4 and 6 in this volume are based and the editing of this work were funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, grant agreement no. 695285 AGATM ERC-2015-AdG, held at the University of Edinburgh, which we gratefully acknowledge here. The members of the advisory committee of the Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage (AGATM) project – Ammara Maqsood, Sidharthan Maunaguru, John McInnes, Susan McKinnon, Perveez Mody and David Sabean – generously gave their support and comments on our work at different stages. We thank them all. We are grateful to all the participants at a workshop on ‘Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense: Biography, Intimacy and Transformation’, held at the University