Marriage Reform in Interwar Iran

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-204
Keyword(s):  
Marriage Reform

Reform Proposals and Alternatives to Marriage

Just Married ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Macedo
Keyword(s):  
Marital Commitment ◽  
Comparative Advantages ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Marriage Reform

This chapter examines a range of proposals for the reform or replacement of marriage. These marriage reform proposals range from increasing the contractual aspects of marriage, to further distinguishing and separating the civil and religious dimensions of marriage, and introducing greater choice, personalization, and deliberate design, along with the idea of curtailing no-fault divorce and strengthening marital commitment. The chapter considers the virtues of these alternatives to marriage compared with marriage as a status relation defined in advance by law. It explains and defends the comparative advantages of an open-ended marital commitment and concludes by discussing the conditions of just marriage, which include extending greater support for caring and caregiving relationships, but argues that this should be done by building on the success of marriage rather than by eliminating it.

scholarly journals Why the Gender of Traditional Authorities Matters: Intersectionality and Women’s Rights Advocacy in Malawi

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (12) ◽  
pp. 1881-1924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ragnhild L. Muriaas ◽  
Vibeke Wang ◽  
Lindsay Benstead ◽  
Boniface Dulani ◽  
Lise Rakner
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Treatment Groups ◽  
Heterogeneous Effects ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Traditional Authorities ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Marriage Reform

Traditional leadership often coexists with modern political institutions; yet, we know little about how traditional and state authority cues—or those from male or female sources—affect public opinion. Using an original survey experiment of 1,381 Malawians embedded in the 2016 Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI), we randomly assign respondents into one of four treatment groups or a control group to hear messages about a child marriage reform from a female or male traditional authority (TA) or parliamentarian. In the sample as a whole, the female TA is as effective as the control (i.e., no endorsement), while other messengers elicit lower support (i.e., backfire effects). Endorsements produce heterogeneous effects across respondent sex and patrilineal/matrilineal customs, suggesting the need for tailored programs. Our paper adds an intersectional approach to the governance literature and offers a theoretical framework capable of explaining the impact of state and traditional endorsements across policy domains.

scholarly journals “Forming Partnerships”: Extramarital Songs and the Promotion of China's 1950 Marriage Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 211-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levi S. Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Northern China ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
Arranged Marriage ◽  
Free Love ◽  
Chinese Music ◽  
The People ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
Marriage Reform

AbstractShortly after a push to promote China's 1950 Marriage Law in 1953, scholars from the Chinese Music Research Institute on a collection trip to a small locality in northern China encountered a large number of folksongs about extramarital affairs. They interpreted this as evidence of the need for marriage reform. The folksong lyrics highlighted controversial aspects of the Marriage Law by espousing one of the law's central tenets – free love – while also expressing women's desires to leave their husbands. In this article, I explore how the researchers placed the song lyrics in a liminal moral-temporal category between “feudal” arranged marriage and the new marriage system before declaring the songs to be relics of the victimization of women in a “feudal” past. I argue that additional light-hearted elements complicate the researchers’ conclusion and suggest that when the promotion of social agendas in the 1940s and 1950s cast songs about illicit affairs as morally ambiguous, Chinese scholars chose to ascribe the songs’ “roots” to other groups or to the “feudal” past of the people they sought to praise and/or transform.

Courting Legitimacy or Delegitimizing Custom? Sexuality, Sambandham, and Marriage Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Malabar

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
PRAVEENA KODOTH
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Marriage Reform

At an interview which Della Vella [seventeenth century] had with the Zamorin, [the Samudiri or the ruler of Calicut] there were present two little princesses of the Royal house aged 12 years each; and of them he says, ‘they were all naked (as I said above the women generally go) saving that they had a very small blue cloth wrapped about their immodesties. One of them being more forward could not contain, but approaching gently towards me, almost touched the sleeve of my coat with her hand, made a sign of wonder to her sister, how could we go so wrapped up and entangled in clothes. Such is the power of custom that their going naked seemed no more strange to us, than our being clothed appeared extravagant to them.’K. P. Padmanabha Menon

Just Married

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Macedo
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Critical Juncture ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The Right ◽  
Marriage Reform

The institution of marriage stands at a critical juncture. As gay marriage equality gains acceptance in law and public opinion, questions abound regarding marriage's future. Will same-sex marriage lead to more radical marriage reform? Should it? Antonin Scalia and many others on the right warn of a slippery slope from same-sex marriage toward polygamy, adult incest, and the dissolution of marriage as we know it. Equally, many academics, activists, and intellectuals on the left contend that there is no place for monogamous marriage as a special status defined by law. This book demonstrates that both sides are wrong: the same principles of democratic justice that demand marriage equality for same-sex couples also lend support to monogamous marriage. The book displays the groundlessness of arguments against same-sex marriage and defends marriage as a public institution against those who would eliminate its special status or supplant it with private arrangements. Arguing that monogamy reflects and cultivates our most basic democratic values, the book opposes the legal recognition of polygamy, but agrees with progressives that public policies should do more to support nontraditional caring and caregiving relationships. Throughout, the book explores the meaning of contemporary marriage and the reasons for its fragility and its enduring significance. Casting new light on today's debates over the future of marriage, the book lays the groundwork for a stronger institution.

A Question of Personal Status

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelia Hyndman-Rizk
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Civil Marriage ◽  
Personal Status ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
Marriage Reform

AbstractAmid an enduring political deadlock in Parliament, the first civil marriage contracted in Lebanon in 2013 received significant media coverage in a country where the personal status law of eighteen recognized religious sects governs marriage. This case study examines the debate on civil marriage reform and the implications for women’s rights in Lebanon. For advocates, the recognition of civil marriage legalizes interreligious marriages, strengthens secular citizenship, shifts the jurisdiction of marriage from religious to civil law, and ensures women’s rights. Opponents, meanwhile, fear the loss of religious autonomy, the transformation of self-identification in Lebanon from sect to nation, and the destabilization of the confessional system. To date, civil marriage reform has been incremental, given clerical and social opposition, but the winds of change are blowing as couples increasingly take matters into their own hands to reform Lebanon’s system of personal status from the ground up.

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