Matchmaking in Middle Class India (eBook)

Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage

Parul Bhandari (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2020 | 1st ed. 2020
XIII, 188 Seiten
Springer Singapore (Verlag)
978-981-15-1599-6 (ISBN)

Infos

This book is an extensive and thorough exploration of the ways in which the middle class in India select their spouse. Using the prism of matchmaking, this book critically unpacks the concept of the 'modern' and traces the importance of moralities and values in the making of middle class identities, by bringing to the fore intersections and dynamics of caste, class, gender, and neoliberalism. The author discusses a range of issues: romantic relationships among youth, use of online technology and of professional services like matrimonial agencies and detective agencies, encounters of love and heartbreak, impact of experiences of pain and humiliation on spouse-selection, and the involvement of family in matchmaking. Based on this comprehensive account, she elucidates how the categories of 'love' and 'arranged' marriages fall short of explaining, in its entirety and essence, the contemporary process of spouse-selection in urban India. Though the ethnographic research has been conducted in India, this book is of relevance to social scientists studying matchmaking practices, youth cultures, modernity and the middle class in other societies, particularly in parts of Asia. While being based on thorough scholarship, the book is written in accessible language to appeal to a larger audience.

Parul Bhandari is a sociologist, who until recently was a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund's College and the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK. Prior to this, she was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Delhi. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, under the Cambridge Commonwealth Scholarship. She has also been Guest Faculty at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Human and Social Sciences division of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. Her research interests include the study of social class (middle class and elites), modernity, social change, marriage, family, gender, and money. She is the author of 'Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects' (Routledge, London, 2019) and 'Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices' (co-edited with Leïla Choukroune) (Springer 2018). 

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.2.2020
• Zusatzinfo: XIII, 188 p.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
• Schlagworte: experiences of love • family involvement in spouse selection • gender asymmetries in matchmaking • individualisation of the Indian middle classes • marriage and modernity • marriage market in urban India • matchmaking and class structure • matrimonial agencies • matromonial websites • neoliberal’ middle class • new middlemen in marriage industry • professional matchmaking services • strategies of matchmaking
• ISBN-10: 981-15-1599-9 / 9811515999
• ISBN-13: 978-981-15-1599-6 / 9789811515996