In this seminar,
Professor Janet Carsten discussed findings from an ongoing collaborative
project funded by the European Research Council, 'A Global Anthropology of
Transforming Marriage' (AGATM).
The
co-authored paper, drawing on a collaborative ERC-funded project, argues that
marriage not only reflects socio-political changes, but is also an agent of
transformation, connecting personal lives and kinship with larger-scale
historical processes. As a key site where politics, intimacy, the family,
religion, and economy converge and are distinguished, marriage encompasses and
relies on ethical and imaginative comparisons made by individuals, families and
communities. The paper argues that, paradoxically, it is through its very
conservatism, which masks and enables innovation in intimate relations and on
wider political scales, that marriage is central to transformation and
agency.