Making the Right Choice
Making the Right Choice
Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka
Making the Right Choice unravels the entangled relationship between marriage, morality, and the desire for modernity as it plays out in the context of middle-class status concerns and aspirations for upward social mobility within the Sinhala-Buddhist community in urban Sri Lanka. By focusing on individual life-histories spanning three generations, the book illuminates how narratives about a gendered self and narratives about modernity are mutually constituted and intrinsically tied to notions of agency. The book uncovers how "becoming modern" in urban Sri Lanka, rather than causing inter-generational conflict, is a collective aspiration realized through the efforts of bringing up educated and independent women capable of making "right" choices. The consequence of this collective investment is a feminist conundrum: agency does not denote the right to choose, but the duty to make the "right" choice; hence agency is experienced not as a sense of "freedom," but rather as a burden of responsibility.
Asha Abeyasekera gives us exquisitely wrought portraits of three generations of women in modernizing Sri Lanka as they navigate decisions of who, when, how, and why to marry. Attending to their stories about their marriages, Abeyasekera reveals the repertoires of meaning that enable the women to produce selves that honor traditional kin obligations while embodying modern values of personal choice and self-determination.
With delicate prose and thoughtfulness, Abeyasekera draws us into the heart of middle-class Colombo, where personal choices on who to love reflect back on family narratives of progress and social mobility. Offering fresh perspectives on agency and responsibility, she moves between life stories across generations to unravel how, in South Asia, marriage is inexorably tied to crafting a self that is both modern and moral.
In Making the Right Choice, Abeyasekera navigates the micro-politics of class and gender in contemporary Sri Lanka with skill and grace, providing the reader with a compelling picture of the fraught territory of marriage in twenty-first century Sri Lanka. Throughout, the argument is highly original and incisive, yet written with a novelist’s eye for the telling detail.
Asha Abeyasekera gives us exquisitely wrought portraits of three generations of women in modernizing Sri Lanka as they navigate decisions of who, when, how, and why to marry. Attending to their stories about their marriages, Abeyasekera reveals the repertoires of meaning that enable the women to produce selves that honor traditional kin obligations while embodying modern values of personal choice and self-determination.
With delicate prose and thoughtfulness, Abeyasekera draws us into the heart of middle-class Colombo, where personal choices on who to love reflect back on family narratives of progress and social mobility. Offering fresh perspectives on agency and responsibility, she moves between life stories across generations to unravel how, in South Asia, marriage is inexorably tied to crafting a self that is both modern and moral.
In Making the Right Choice, Abeyasekera navigates the micro-politics of class and gender in contemporary Sri Lanka with skill and grace, providing the reader with a compelling picture of the fraught territory of marriage in twenty-first century Sri Lanka. Throughout, the argument is highly original and incisive, yet written with a novelist’s eye for the telling detail.
Introduction
1 – Sinhala Marriage Practices: Then and Now
2 – Making the ‘Right’ Choice
3 – Structuring the ‘Right’ Choice
4 – The Virtuous Self: Failed Marriages
5 – The Valued Self: Singleness
6 – The Vindicated Self: Divorce
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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