University of Sussex
Browse
The Economies of Love - final submission for copyediting (24-11-2014).pdf (286.44 kB)

The economies of love: love marriage, kin support and aspiration in a south Indian garment city

Download (286.44 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 00:54 authored by Geert De NeveGeert De Neve
The paper considers narratives and experiences of love marriage in the garment city of Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, south India. As a booming centre of garment production, Tiruppur attracts a diverse migrant workforce of young men and women who have plenty of opportunity to fall in love and enter marriages of their own making. Based on long-term ethnographic research, the paper explores what love marriages mean to those involved, how they are experienced and talked about, and how they shape post-marital lives. Case studies reveal that a discourse of loss of post-marital kin support is central to evaluations of love marriages by members of Tiruppur’s labouring classes. Such marriages not only flout parental authority and often cross caste and religious boundaries, but they also jeopardise the much needed kin support that youngsters need to fulfil aspirations of mobility, entrepreneurship and success in a post-liberalisation environment. It is argued that critical evaluations of love marriages not only disrupt modernist assumptions of linear transformations in marital practices, but they also constitute a broader critique of the neoliberal celebration of the ‘individual’ while reaffirming the continued importance of caste endogamy, parental involvement and kin support to success in India’s post-reform economy.

Funding

ESRC-DfID; RES-167-25-0296

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Modern Asian Studies

ISSN

0026749X, 14698099

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Issue

4

Volume

50

Page range

1220-1249

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-05-05

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-05-05

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-05-05

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC