A Sociology of Family Life by Deborah Chambers Pablo Gracia

Author:Deborah Chambers, Pablo Gracia [Deborah Chambers, Pablo Gracia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Marriage & Family, General
ISBN: 9781509541379
Google: oo1SEAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 58153919
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2021-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Commercially negotiated marriage

This section offers a range of examples from China, South Asia, Taiwan and Indonesia to illustrate the complexities of and differences between regional customs and practices. ‘Arranged marriage’, already referred to above, is a convention facilitated by parents and guardians, and usually relies on contacts with wider kin and neighbours or local established matchmakers for recommended matches. By contrast, romantic marriage, now common in the West, relies on fluid opportunities for personal interaction and emotional bonding between two partners before the marriage and involves choice by the couple themselves. Not surprisingly, the idea of introducing commercial imperatives in spouse selection is abhorrent to western thinking since it seems to undermine the authenticity of a marital relationship.

In many Muslim societies, China, and among certain caste groups in India, the marriage transaction can be interpreted as the ‘sale’ of the daughter or purchase of a wife, especially if it involves long-distance and transnational, commercially mediated marriages. Previous studies focusing on these commercial marriage arrangements have reported that a wife bought in this way may well be sold on by her husband to another man, into sex work or other forms of slavery. As Palriwala and Uberoi (2008:35) state, ‘indeed, there is only a thin line separating mediated, commercial marriage arrangements, the abduction and “trafficking” of women, and bonded labour’. The distinctions are addressed below.

Long-distance marriage migration sometimes involves international kinship networks among diasporic populations, but is usually organized by commercial intermediaries, which could include newspaper advertisements, introduction agencies and matchmaking services, purpose-specific tour companies and internet dating sites (Palriwala and Uberoi 2008). Several motives compel women, men and their families to turn to these commercial facilities. For instance, women-adverse sex ratios in China oblige many women to enter into transnational arranged marriages. Commercially arranged marriages could be prompted by economic or other disadvantages that cannot be concealed in the local context, or may result from a family’s inability to meet the local demands for dowry or bride price, as in Taiwan (Chia-wen Lu 2008) and in China (Davin 2008).

According to received wisdom, dowry in South Asia is a form of enticement or compensation paid in a tight marriage market to the husband and his family for taking on an ‘unproductive’ woman. Conversely, bride price is interpreted as a positive valuation of women’s productive capacity and a form of compensation to the woman’s family for the loss of her productive labour. Marriage payment is directly related to women’s subordinate status in society. Research has documented gender differences in the extent to which young people follow parental control and advice in the search for spouses. Chinese men are more likely to choose freely the spouse or opt for partners without parental approval, while Chinese women tend to be more subordinated to the family in the process of marriage (Blair and Madigan 2019).

While the rapid urbanization of Chinese society is accompanied by neoliberal values, patrilocal traditions dictate that the married couple resides with or near the husband’s parents (Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2013). These customs coincide not only with a high rate of female employment in China.

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