Opting Out
Women Messing with Marriage Around the World
Published on 11. November 2022
Book
Hardback
260 pages
978-1-9788-3011-0 (ISBN)
Description
Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the ways that women are moving the needle on marital norms and practices, Opting Out reveals the conditions that make this widespread phenomenon possible in places where marriage has long been obligatory. Each chapter invites readers into the lives of particular women and the changing circumstances in which these lives unfold - sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always unexpectedly. Taken together, the essays in this volume prompt the following questions: Why is marriage so consistently disappointing for women? When the rewards of economic stability and the social status that marriage confers are troubled, does marriage offer women anything compelling at all? Across diverse geographic contexts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this book offers sensitive and powerful portrayals of women as they escape or reshape marriage into a more rewarding arrangement.
Reviews / Votes
"Provocatively and engagingly, this volume provides compelling ethnographic evidence of the changes marriage is undergoing around the world. The impact of these changes raises profound questions, not only about the future of marriage itself, but which, as these essays show, go to the heart of gender relations and their intersection with politics, economics and religion." - Janet Carsten (co-editor of Marriage in Past, Present, and Future Tense) "Grounded in superb ethnographic chapters drawn from all over the world, Opting Out explores the diverse ways in which women exert agency in and against marriage. With fresh insight into practices that occur in every society, this collection delivers a rich and rewarding comparative examination of an astonishingly overlooked aspect of everyday life." - Daniel Jordan Smith (author of A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New Brunswick NJ
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
3 b&w images
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
467 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-9788-3011-0 (9781978830110)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
JOANNA DAVIDSON is an associate professor of anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa.
DINAH HANNAFORD is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Houston. She is the author of Marriage Without Borders: Transnational Spouses in Neoliberal Senegal.
DINAH HANNAFORD is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Houston. She is the author of Marriage Without Borders: Transnational Spouses in Neoliberal Senegal.
Content
Series Foreword by PEter Berta
Introduction: Messing with Marriage by Joanna Davidson and Dinah Hannaford
Part I. Never Married
1. Almost Married: Two Generations of Single Mothers in Namibia by Julia Pauli
2. Single in Botswana by Jacqueline Solway
3. Freedom to Choose? Singlehood, Gender, and Sexuality in India by Sarah Lamb
4. Single Women's Invisibility in South Korea's First Decades by Laura C. Nelson
Part II. Outside of Marriage
5. Pathivratha Precarity: Sex Work on the Other Side of Marriage in South India by Kimberly Walters
6. Respectability & Black Brazilian Women's Decisions to 'Opt Out' of Remarriage by Melanie Medeiros
7. The Upward Mobility of Matrifocality and the Enigma of Bajan Marriage by Carla Freeman
8. Messing with Remarriage: The Problem of Widows in Guinea-Bissau by Joanna Davidson
Part III. Within Marriage
9. Extramarital Intimacy: Juggling Femininity, Marriage, and Commercial Sex in Contemporary Japan by Akiko Takeyama
10. "What's Wrong with These Mens?": Reworking relationships and finding foreign love in the new South Africa by Brady G'Sell
11. The Appeal of Absent Husbands in Contemporary Senegal by Dinah Hannaford
12. "Not a normal wife": Marrying Activism and Aberrance in Indonesia by Carla Jones
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Introduction: Messing with Marriage by Joanna Davidson and Dinah Hannaford
Part I. Never Married
1. Almost Married: Two Generations of Single Mothers in Namibia by Julia Pauli
2. Single in Botswana by Jacqueline Solway
3. Freedom to Choose? Singlehood, Gender, and Sexuality in India by Sarah Lamb
4. Single Women's Invisibility in South Korea's First Decades by Laura C. Nelson
Part II. Outside of Marriage
5. Pathivratha Precarity: Sex Work on the Other Side of Marriage in South India by Kimberly Walters
6. Respectability & Black Brazilian Women's Decisions to 'Opt Out' of Remarriage by Melanie Medeiros
7. The Upward Mobility of Matrifocality and the Enigma of Bajan Marriage by Carla Freeman
8. Messing with Remarriage: The Problem of Widows in Guinea-Bissau by Joanna Davidson
Part III. Within Marriage
9. Extramarital Intimacy: Juggling Femininity, Marriage, and Commercial Sex in Contemporary Japan by Akiko Takeyama
10. "What's Wrong with These Mens?": Reworking relationships and finding foreign love in the new South Africa by Brady G'Sell
11. The Appeal of Absent Husbands in Contemporary Senegal by Dinah Hannaford
12. "Not a normal wife": Marrying Activism and Aberrance in Indonesia by Carla Jones
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Contributors
Index