CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Dikey, Aditi |
|---|---|
| Title | Situating marriage in contemporary India: Expectations of young, urban, educated women and men from heterosexual marriage |
| Summary | This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of the relatively under-researched area of marriage among middle-class, urban, educated, young men and women in the age group of 25-35 in India today. The study focuses on expectations that young people have from marriage as an institution, which get articulated in terms of expectations from current and potential partners, aspirations for conjugal relations; current or potential, and the wedding ceremony itself. In exploring these expectations I have situated marriage in India within dominant discourses of tradition and modernity in Indian society, using the dimensions of caste, class, religion and gender as units of analysis. The premise of the thesis is that examining marriage as located within a web of social relationships will provide for insights into the operation of larger social structures. My research relies on data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 20 men and women belonging to the demographic cross-section mentioned above and participant observation conducted at three wedding sites in the Indian cities of Delhi and Pune. My study documents the experiences of young men and women as they try to realize their hopes and aspirations while at the same time negotiating aspects of caste, class and religion that dominate the Indian social landscape. In doing so I demonstrate that young men and women reformulate notions of love and romance to align with and accommodate communal and familial interests as well as social realities in order to reproduce and reinforce notions of traditional Indian marriage, while also participating in a modernist discourse. |
| Supervisor | Helms, Elissa |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/dikey_aditi.pdf |
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