Moving for Marriage: Inequalities, Intimacy, and Women's Lives in Rural North India

Author/Contributor(s):	Chaudhry, Shruti
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Date:	07/02/2022
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Moving for Marriage compares the lived experiences of women in regional marriages (that conform to caste and community norms within a relatively short distance) with women in cross-regional marriages (that traverse caste, linguistic, and state boundaries and entail long-distance migration within India). By demonstrating how geographic distance and regional origins make a difference in these women's experiences, Shruti Chaudhry challenges stereotypes and moral panics about cross-regional brides who are brought from far away. Indeed, Moving for Marriage highlights the ways in which the post-marital experiences of both categories of wives in this study--their work and social relationships, their sexual lives and childbearing decisions, and their ability to access support in everyday contexts and in the event of marital distress--are shaped by factors such as caste, class/poverty, religion, and stage in the life-course. In focusing on this Global South context, Chaudhry makes novel arguments about the development of intimacy within marriages that are inherently unequal and even violent, thereby offering an alternative to Euro-American understandings of intimacy and women's agency.