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- Convenors:
-
Rita Reis
(Institute of Social Sciences - Univeristy of Lisbon)
Raquel Mendes Pereira (CRIA, ISCTE-IUL, NOVA FCSH)
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- Discussant:
-
Inês Lourenço
(CRIA-Iscte)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Intersectionality
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel explores practices of negotiation, resistance, or transgression regarding marriage among youth in Global South contexts. We invite papers that, based on long-term fieldwork, reflect on how these practices led us to question grand schemes in everyday life.
Long Abstract:
In many contexts of the Global South, (ideal) marriage entails a great deal of constrains, involves all family members, and is connected to normative rules and obligations. This can pose problems for potential couples or grooms due to different reasons, and lead them to negotiate, resist, or transgress marriage practices.
Economic circumstances connected to poverty and dowries, based on large amounts of money and goods are a common constrain to youngsters, leaving them in long processes of waithood and causing affective tensions (Singerman 2007; Honwana 2012). These can be aggravated by the social stigma associated with being single (Pappu 2011) or tensions regarding the compliance with licit affective-sexual relations entailed to marriage, and some waithood circumstances are more difficult to comply with. As such, youth tends to find different ways to break love and sex rules, be it through hidden dating practices, where new technologies (i.e., internet and mobile phones) constitute an important asset (Harb and Deeb 2007; Mody 2008), or by imposing or negotiating love marriages in opposition to arranged unions (Chowdhry 2007; Grover 2011). Either way, always trying to receive consent from their families and set forward their own future perspectives and expectations (Bryant and Knight 2019).
We invite communications that, based on long-term fieldwork, reflect on practices of negotiation, resistance, or transgression regarding marriage and affective relations, and how these youth acts led us to question grand schemes (Schielke 2009) through a focus on everyday life practices.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Muslim barbers in South India follow schemes for marriages ranging from arranged within the endogamous group, to outside the group which may fail or succeed and love marriages. Attending to these nuances, I argue that these individuals make their choices within multifarious structural conditions.
Paper long abstract:
This article argues that individuals make choices within a range of structural conditions that constrict and enable their actions. I illustrate this with an ethnographic case study from Malabar, South India. Muslim barbers in Malabar are considered socially inferior by other Muslim groups. As a result, their marriages mostly get restricted to within the group. With secular education, employment and economic improvements due to migration to the countries in the Middle East, many have improved their standard of living and ownership of resources. Some, particularly those with secular education and employment have been able to marry outside the group either through arrangements or through love. Those who acquired religious education have failed in their attempts to arrange alliances outside the group. Those who are still following the tradition of barbering are mostly unsuccessful in marrying a non-barber. Detailing the nuances of these schemes, I argue against the assumption to equate economic improvements with egalitarian social relations. Many scholars in South Asia posit that class supersedes caste in contemporary India with lower classes acquiring education and employment. But such claims largely neglect the constraints within which everyday life plays out for an individual.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses destiny as an explanatory model mobilized by young women to make sense of the failure to adhere to the conjugal norm. This model becomes a site for negotiation and transformation of gendered subjectivties in Southern Mitrovica.
Paper long abstract:
Marriage in Southern Mitrovica remains the normative mode to acquire adult status. Because it enhances one’s social worth, conjugal futures are hoped for by young women, yet, their actualization is met with uneven success. Many find themselves excluded from this ideal, unable to live up to the locally held notions of female adulthood. Thus, failure to adhere to the conjugal norm becomes a pressing concern, especially for those who are approaching the end of the perceived marriageable age.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the postindustrial and ethnically divided town of Southern Mitrovica, this paper discusses an explanatory model utilized by young women to make sense of the unattained conjugal ideal. Failure to adhere to the conjugal norm in Southern Mitrovica is often considered less as a result of one’s earthly actions than of kismet (destiny), thereby allocating the responsibility outside oneself. By recasting failure to live up with the conjugal ideal in terms of kismet, young women not only rationalize it, but they also leave the possibilities for unexpected ‘twists’ open due to kismet’s precept quality. This allows for the present state to be perceived as temporary, rather than as the final ‘conjugal destiny’ (Elliot 2016). Moreover, this explanatory model feds into the debates about agency and female morality, becoming a site of negotiation and transformation of gendered subjectivities in Southern Mitrovica.
Paper short abstract:
This presenation will focus on transnational polygamous marriages of migrants from Central Asia in Russia and how transnational polygynous practices influence people’s understanding of marriage, love and family.
Paper long abstract:
This presenation will focus on transnational polygamous marriages of migrants from Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) in Russia and how transnational polygynous practices influence people’s understanding of marriage, love and family. It will show how polygamous migrant marriages are negotiated between families, by presenting the perspective of individuals involved in such relationships in Russia. I argue that contemporary forms of polygyny practiced by migrants include a wide range of family practices, some of which emerged only recently due to changing migration circumstances. Transborder marriages create different forms of relationships, which contribute to changing social interactions since people live and work in two, and sometimes even more countries. Migration further creates opportunities for parallel partnering, and a variety of other options, which impact on family networks in the countries of origin. Consequently, I perceive transborder polygyny as an opportunity for change in marriage patterns in the region, for example by giving migrants more freedom to select a spouse. In this context, polygyny is one of the available options, and perception of migrants involved in such relationships differ depending on their life situation.
The material was collected during field research conducted for two months in 2017, two and a half months in 2018, and one month in 2019, in Moscow. It includes various stories of polygamous marriages that I came across while conducting research on migration and religiosity. The presenation will also draw on some of my experiences from various research and stays in Central Asia between 2006 and 2015 .