The Right Spouse: Preferential Marriages in Tamil Nadu
Isabelle Clark-Decès
The Right Spouse is an engaging investigation into Tamil (South Indian) preferential close kin marriages, so-called Dravidian Kinship. This book offers a description and an interpretation of preferential marriages with close kin in South India, as they used to be arranged and experienced in the recent past and as they are increasingly discontinued in the present.
Clark-Decès presents readers with a focused anthropology of this waning marriage system: its past, present, and dwindling future. The book takes on the main pillars of Tamil social organization, considers the ways in which Tamil intermarriage establishes kinship and social rank, and argues ... Read more
The book includes a fascinating narration of the complex terrain that Tamil youth currently navigate as they experience the complexities and changing nature of marriage practices and seek to reconcile their established kinship networks to more individually driven marriages and careers.
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About Isabelle Clark-Decès
Reviews for The Right Spouse: Preferential Marriages in Tamil Nadu
Haripriya Narasimhan
Pacific Affairs
"The decline of preferential marriage ... Read more