1st Edition
Dissent with Love Ambiguity, Affect and Transformation in South Asia
This book presents a unique rendering of love in South Asia by reading love through the specific lens of dissent. It presents multiple articulations of dissenting love in contemporary South Asia including negotiations with parents to assert choice of partner, migration, elopement, live-in relationships, singlehood, ‘new’ ideas of masculinities, and embracing diverse sexual identities. It studies these forms of dissent in the context of changing legal discourses, impact of media in everyday life, and transforming social attitudes.
As such, this book is the first of its kind to analyse the myriad ways in which love and dissent constitute each other shaping the social, political, and cultural mores and movements of South Asia. The contributions are based on ethnographic research cutting across diverse religious, ethnic, and gender and sexual identities of South Asia.
Part of the Social Movements and Transformative Dissent series, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of sociology, anthropology, history, geography, political science, gender studies, and media studies. It will also appeal to academics who study South Asia with a special focus on love, intimacy, sexuality, marriage, migration, history, politics and media.
1. Introduction Part I: Familial Transgressions 2. “The Transit Generation”: Love, Obligation, and Partnership among Himalayan New Yorkers Sienna Craig and Nawang Gurung 3. Disagree, not Disrupt: Navigating Differences with Parents for Love Mihirini Sirisena Part II: Cultures of Love and Consumption 4. Happily Single in Delhi: Self-love, ‘Space’, and Leisure Practices Parul Bhandari 5. ‘Modern’ Men that Love and Hurt Shannon Philip Part III: Normative Love? 6. Between Desire and Domesticity: Live-in Relationships in India. Anuja Agrawal 7. Exiled and Separated: Aspects of Migration for Same-Sex Couples. Ruth Vanita 8. Hāmi Ayaunik (‘We are asexuals’): Asexuality on Instagram. Dikshya Karki Part IV: Structures of Love 9. Gated: Non-Criminal Incarceration, Caste, and Elopement in Urban India Sneha Krishnan 10. For the love of the Taj Mahal Sarthak Malhotra
Biography
Parul Bhandari is the Director of Studies (Human, Social and Politial Sciences), Bye-fellow, and Associate Tutor at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge. She was an Associate Professor of Sociology at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), India. A sociologist and social anthropologist, Bhandari’s research interests lie in the study of love, marriage, intimacy, gender, family and class (elites and the middle class) in contemporary South Asia. She is the author of Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage (Springer, 2020), and Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London 2019).
"A wonderfully nuanced exploration of practices and understandings of love in contemporary India between transgression and conformity, beyond tired binaries of arranged vs love marriages, indeed beyond marriage writ large – a delightful read!"
Raphael Susewind, Associate Professor, London School of Economics, UK.
"This book is a timely contribution to the treatment of love in non-Western societies as a complex and possibly paradoxical concept. A must-read for cultural scholars, sociologists and anyone interested in studies of affect, society, and culture in South Asia."
Fritzi-Marie Titzmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
