Search

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores Indian women's views on arranged marriages in the United Kingdom. It is based on research carried out with 32 Indian women studying at a university in the South East of England, UK. The article draws on Wenger's social theory of learning to explore how Indian women's participation in communities of practice in higher education contributes to their participation in arranged marriages. The concept of 'social capital' is used to discuss how women are able to negotiate their participation in arranged marriages, It is used to examine the knowledge and identity resources that women develop through their participation in higher education, which provides them with the means from which to develop the necessary 'bridging ties' leading to their active participation in the wider South Asian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common for parents/families in traditional settings, whether in Africa or China, to pair their children/members in marriage often without their consent. This specific mate selection practice, arrangement, is used to designate marriages in these settings: the so-called arranged marriages. Observations about this mate selection practice are then posited as conclusive evidence of change in these marriages. This paper attempts an exploratory clarification of marriages in traditional Africa in two ways. First, it uses the marriage system of the Okrikans to reveal that arranged and non-arranged marriages coexist, each administered by and organized around distinct institutions, with differing consequences for family membership, inheritance and other important issues. Second, it breaks down traditional marriage into it components, and using cases to illustrate each, shows that the purported change coexists with persistence. The resistance observed with our case also seems to point to a dynamic in the immigrant/homeland interchange that has not been adequately explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stories of early twentieth-century Japanese picture brides--women in arranged marriages coming to the United States to meet the immigrant men to whom they were married by "proxy" according to the popular press--are widely known in memory, scholarship, and popular culture. Less is known about their Southern European counterparts--primarily women from Greece, but also Italy and Armenia--coming to the country at the same time, and to much less public outcry and legislative restrictions. Yet as this article demonstrates, the title of "picture bride" was prominently and popularly applied to Southern European and Japanese women alike as a politically charged racial signifier that provides nuance to the complex yet fluid racial hierarchies of the early twentieth century. This article closely examines popular media depictions of "off-white" picture brides using Greek immigrants as a case study--the predominant European group practicing picture marriage from 1907 to 1924--to demonstrate the quotidian ways that audiences learned the politics of race and immigration through seemingly apolitical messages about family, marriage, and romantic love. This work argues that far from being a mere footnote in Greek American history, picture brides and their popular depictions in national newspapers were critical symbols of Greeks' transition from "in-between" white others to ethnic white Americans. By contextualizing picture marriage as occurring across a diverse racial hierarchy, this work illumines the ways that white supremacy acts in contradictory, often hypocritical ways, excluding some groups while excusing and including others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the literary works of Indian writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The author explores Divakaruni's fictional book "Arranged Marriage" particularly the political, social and literary issues within his work. The author adds that the book deals with the role of women in the American culture.

This article addresses some aspects of Muslim marriages in the U.S. in 2005. Marriage among Muslims in the country reflects varying degrees of movement beyond ethnic or national origin traditions. How strongly Muslims born or raised in the U.S. identify with the cultural heritage of their immigrant parents affects the choices they make with respect to marriage. One way of finding a spouse is through an arranged marriage. None of the couples with arranged marriages had ever met before parents or relatives brought them to each other's attention.

Forty-five individuals (22 couples and 1 widowed person) living in arranged marriages in India completed questionnaires measuring marital satisfaction and wellness. The data were compared with existing data on individuals in the United States living in marriages of choice. Differences were found in importance of marital characteristics, but no differences in satisfaction were found. Differences were also found in 9 of 19 wellness scales between the 2 groups. Implications for further research are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]