Socio–cultural Security, Emotions and Exchange Marriages in an Agrarian Community

Abstract

Examining patterns of mate selection and the core issue of agency, this brief article reports on fi eldwork in a remote community in Pakistan, where the family continues to have supervening infl uence over individual choices in mate selection through exchange marriages. It explores the role of the family as a security provider and demonstrates the limited scope for individual agency. The behaviour of the family in mate selection, where strong security concerns are observed, indicates a culture-centered approach to tackle the issue in a clan context, where members try to maximise various aspects of security in the exchange of mate relations. Intensive fi eldwork indicates signifi cant feelings of insecurity among individuals over spouse selection and adoption of family-centered choices. Often the families of this agrarian community give priority to exchange marriages of their offspring, leaving limited options for the evasion of family control, since social security concerns normally prevail. The article also considers briefl y the wider implications of such research.

Islam, Forced Marriages and Pakistani Culture : An Analytical Overview

“…Plato believed and taught that if there is a bad man in the world, he would come back as the women in his second life. (1) Aristotle says that women are maimed men. (2) The woman's condition was very pathetic and she was treated in an extremely painful way.…”

“…The man would not refuse all that". (1) Although the atmosphere was on the whole not favorable for women in the pre Islamic era, but even then we can see many cases where the girl had been consulted in choosing the groom even in that period. The history tells that when Hā rith bin 'Awf solicited a father for his consent to get married one of his three daughters, the two senior ones rejected to wed him, but the "Buhaytha" the youngest daughter agreed to accept 'Awf as a husband.…”

“…It can refer to someone who has "Wilayah" (authority or guardianship) over somebody else. (1) Traditional Muslim jurisprudence requires a guardian for an unmarried female who has not reached at the age of maturity (2) as a protecting measure of her who may be swept by their sentiments. They presented some Ahā dī th in which Holy Prophet said that no marriage is valid without the Walī .…”

“…"O you who have believed, it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion". Prophet Mohammad (S.W.A) said, "The widow and the divorced woman shall not be married until her order is obtained, and the virgin girl shall not be married until her permission is obtained" (1) . Similarly, "the Holy Prophet (S.W.A), forbids to force a virgin lady into matrimony without her consent, whether it be her father or someone else.…”

Obstructed individualization and social anomie

“…In the following, we will concentrate on the field of kinship relations and marriage patterns, with reference to an empirical study that one of the authors conducted in a village near the city of Kabirwala in Punjab, Pakistan (Zaman 2008(Zaman , 2009). 2 Unlike anthropological studies (see Meek 1936, Mauss 1954, Lévi-Strauss 1969, Strathern 1984, Molloy 1986, Tapper 1991, Schweizer and White 1998, Zhang 2000, and Kapila 2004 which often follow a structuralist approach, empirical sociological studies on Pakistan are rare.…”