BANGLADESHI FAMILY LIFE IN BETHNAL GREEN ROSEANNA POLLEN MSC DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 2002 1 UMI Number: U61522B All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615223 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 . 3 O F POLITICAL <v ^ND 'WMCjdf < h £ %.£ s F 7 ^ 0 < t e 8 2 Bangladeshi Family Life in Bethnal Green Roseanna Pollen ABSTRACT This thesis is about Bengali1 family life in Bethnal Green. This part of the East End of London is a place of paradoxical darkness and light where Victorian gloom, economic polarisation, Cockney traditions, racism and heart­ warming kinship all coincide. Bengali families form the largest non-white ethnic group in the borough. They evince marked heterogeneity of biography, language, religious practice, occupation and household composition, yet certain themes such as chain networks of masculine support, the institution of arranged marriage and patrilineal joint households endure. Despite demographic density, the overall social atmosphere (batash ) in Bethnal Green is experienced as attenuated and thin for many Bengali people, and for some, distorted and disfigured. Social knowledge is thick and pervasive through village connections with Bangladesh, but practical knowledge can be obstructed by living in a mixed- ethnicity area. The destabilising effects of this social atmosphere are shown to be compounded for those who also feel that they are vulnerable to gossip and spiritual modes of harm. Racism, in violent, institutionalised, banal and culturalised manifestations is a pervasive social practice in Bethnal Green which affects the lives of all its residents. I use the notion of the distribution of social predicaments as a heuristic device to present the ways in which cultural effects work in synergy with, or independently of other social facts. Whilst economic resources, gender and racism predictably have the most leverage in determining outcomes, the likely social trajectory for any individual cannot be extrapolated from these three factors alone. The interactions of cultural effects and social facts are exemplified maximally in the predicaments of young British women who marry husbands from Bangladesh. They take on burdensome engagement with enduring traditions of patriliny, novel reconfigurations of kin relationships, feminist discourse, relations of difference and changing expressions of Islam. 1 For simplicity, I use Bengali in the text of this thesis to denote British citizens of Bangladeshi-Sylheti origin. I am aware that Bengali only describes the regional and not the political origins of this transnational population. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction 7 1.2 Motivations 7 1.3 Methods 8 1.4 Outline of the chapters 13 CHAPTER 2: THE FIELD 2.1 Introduction 17 2.2 History 18 2.3 Current social geography 21 2.4 Migration history of the Bengali population in East London 24 2.5 A walk in the street 29 2.6 Urban anthropology and methodology 31 CHAPTER 3 SOCIAL PREDICAMENTS 3.1 Plight and Predicament 38 3.2 Dynastic success 44 3.3 Irregular marriage 47 3.4 Marital difficulty 51 3.5 Troubled young men 52 3.6 Boundaries 3.6.1 FAZLUL AHMED 55 3.6.2 RAHMAT KHAN 57 3.6.3 MAMUN 58 3.7 Sequestered women 60 3.8 Discussion 61 CHAPTER 4 HOUSEHOLDS 4.1 Introduction 63 4.2 Preliminary ethnographic description 4.2.1 CONTRASTING FAMILY BIOGRAPHIES 6 6 4.2.2 WEDDING PARTIES 7 4 4.3 77ze Developmental Cycle of the Bengali Domestic Group 4.3.1 INTRODUCTION 81 4.3.2 DATA 83 4.3.3 DEMOGRAPHY 85 4.3.4 HOUSING RESOURCES 8 7 4.3.5 TRANSNATIONAL AND INTRA-NATIONAL EXTENDED HOUSEHOLDS 89 4.3.6 COROLLARIES OF THE DEVELOPMENT CYCLE OF THE BENGALI DOMESTIC GROUP 92 4.4 Household economics and changing roles for women 95 4.5 Roles within households 4.5.1 INTRODUCTION 100 4.5.2 OLDER MIGRANTS’ GENERATION 4.5.2.1 A woman's view 101 4.5.2.2 The husband's view 105 4.5.2.3 Discussion 107 4.5.3 MARRIAGEABLE CHILDREN 108 4.5.4 THE INSTITUTION OF THE JOINT HOUSEHOLD 113 4.5.5 THE PARTICULAR PROBLEMS OF LONDON WIVES AND BANGLADESHI HUSBANDS 1 1 5 4.6 Conclusions 119 4.6.1 CONTINUITY 120 4.6.2 CHANGE 121 3 YCHAPTER 5: NETWORKS OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND KINSHIP 5.1 Introduction 123 5.2 Learning about kinship 125 5.3 Thick and Thin 129 5.4 Making friends and knowing who people - the are village network 133 5.5 Migration distorts kinship 139 5.6 Batash 147 5.7 Summary 149 CHAPTER 6: NEGATIVITY 6.1 Introduction 151 6.2 Fieldwork discovery 151 6.3 Gossip 6.3.1 INTRODUCTION 153 6.3.2 GOSSIPS 155 6.3.3 BODNAMI 157 6.3.4 DISCUSSION 163 6.4 Nozzor 6.4.1 DESCRIPTION 165 6.4.2 DISCUSSION 168 6.5 Jinn 6.5.1 DESCRIPTION 170 6.5.2 REDRESS 175 6.6 Discussion 182 V CHAPTER 7: RELATIONS OF DIFFERENCE 7.1 Introduction 186 7.2 Multicultural Bethnal Green and Dual Discursive Competence 188 7.3 Three Practices of Relations of Difference 7.3.1 UNSETTLED STRATEGISING (AND THE DISCOURSE OF CULTURE) 193 7.3.1.1 Episodes 195 7.3.1.2 Young men 196 7.3.1.3 Young women 197 7.3.1.4 Young mothers 199 7.3.1.5 Culture 201 7.3.2 COMMON-SENSE MULTICULTURALISM (AND THE DISCOURSE OF ETHNICITY) 7.3.2.1 Ethnicity 203 7.3.2.2 Class effects 204 7.32.3 Different Languages 208 7.3.3 CULTURAL AGONISM (AND THE DISCOURSE OF RACE) 7.3.3.1 Racist violence 213 7.3.3.2 Banal Racism 216 7.3.3.3 Traditionalism 217 7.3.3.4 Asian gangs' 220 7.4 Summary 221 V CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS 8.1 Introduction 223 8.2 Static and dynamic I: position and trajectory 224 8.3 Static and dynamic II: predicament and strategy 8.3.1 INTRODUCTION 225 8.3.2 VIOLENCE AND RACISM 224 8.3.3 FAMILIES WITH OLDER CHILDREN 226 8.3.4 YOUNG MARRIED COUPLES 227 8.4 Discussion 228 4 BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1 Household types 84 TABLE 2 Bengali adults of working age 95 TABLE 3 Long term sickness among Bengali adults of working age 9 6 TABLE 4 Economic activity, working age, not sick 96 TABLE 5 Occupations 96 TABLE 6 Sources of household incomes 97 TABLE 7 Future trajectories of Bengali households in Bethnal Green 99 5 Bangladeshi Family Life in Bethnal Green Roseanna Pollen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Mature, part-time students are less in need of encouragement and support than the chance to have time alone. I gratefully acknowledge the benign neglect afforded by my family, friends and work colleagues in this respect. My contemporaries at the LSE thesis-writing seminar were similarly indulgent of my irregular attendance over the years. During three months unpaid leave during 2001, Richard Chenhall, Manuela Ciotti, David Crawford, Stephan Eggs, Luke Freeman, Peggy Froerer, Sigrun Hardardottir, Annu Jalais, Kriti Kapila, Eva Keller, Isabella Lepri, Lucia Michelutti, Massimiliano Mollona, Benedetta Rossi, Ed Simpson, Patti Taber, Barbara Verardo and David Yang were generously inclusive. I thank Chris Fuller and Johnny Parry for their sustained and positive critical attention throughout. 6 Bangladeshi Family Life in Bethnal Green Roseanna Pollen CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction When a local doctor presents an anthropological thesis which appears to be 'about' Bengali people in Bethnal Green, a number of important questions are raised as to motivations and methods. This is particularly necessary since the presentation resembles a 'village monograph' where domains of Bengali kinship, households and spiritual beliefs form the bulk of the ethnographic chapters. Moreover the descriptions are provided by someone who is outside that 'community', although I am placed in Bethnal Green by virtue of my work. The thesis is not abouttheir culture, nor is it simply an account of urban-village life. The project in its most condensed form can be stated thus: I have set out to use a form of participant-observation to discover the contours of, and the reasons for, the distribution of salient social predicaments that are particular to the Bengali population in Bethnal Green. 1.2 Motivations Research was undertaken while I continued to work full-time as a family doctor (GP) in a four-handed practice in Bethnal Green. I have been a doctor in the practice since 1984. In 1994/5 I took a sabbatical year and studied for the MSc in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). My interest in anthropology at that time had two aspects: first, the obvious and immediately applicable project of enhancing the quality of my medical practice through an anthropological understanding of multicultural societies; secondly I was interested in using the methodology of social anthropology for research from the position of a working doctor. It was not possible for family reasons to change two careers and two school placements as well as four persons' social lives in order to pursue research anywhere else apart from the East End of London.