Moving for Marriage Inequalities, Intimacy, and Women's Lives in Rural North India - SUNY Series, Genders in the Global South

Shortlisted for the 2023 BASAS Book Prize presented by British Association for South Asian Studies

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Moving for Marriage compares the lived experiences of women in "regional" marriages (that conform to caste and community norms within a relatively short distance) with women in "cross-regional" marriages (that traverse caste, linguistic, and state boundaries and entail long-distance migration within India). By demonstrating how geographic distance and regional origins make a difference in these women's experiences, Shruti Chaudhry challenges stereotypes and moral panics about cross-regional brides who are brought from far away. Indeed, Moving for Marriage highlights the ways in which the post-marital experiences of both categories of wives in this study-their work and social relationships, their sexual lives and childbearing decisions, and their ability to access support in everyday contexts and in the event of marital distress-are shaped by factors such as caste, class/poverty, religion, and stage in the life-course. In focusing on this Global South context, Chaudhry makes novel arguments about the development of intimacy within marriages that are inherently unequal and even violent, thereby offering an alternative to Euro-American understandings of intimacy and women's agency.