Narratives of Incorporation: An Anthropological Analysis of Same-Sex Civil Unions in New Zealand

<p>In this thesis I examine civil unions from the perspective of New Zealand-based same-sex couples who have chosen to formalise their relationship. My approach is qualitative and in-depth and focuses on interpreting participants' own meanings and beliefs while also recognising the need for broader contextual knowledge. Through participants’ narratives, I explore why it was important for couples to have a civil union, how they chose to mark or enact the occasion, and the meanings they attribute to their choices and actions. Rather than treating the civil union as an isolated event, my analysis situates the civil union within four longer processual trajectories: individual biographical narratives, partner interactions, close social relationships, and trajectories of a socio-political nature. I then explore the contours of participants’ civil union ceremonies in terms of scale, style, and symbolic content. Throughout the thesis, I argue that civil unions facilitate incorporation for same-sex couples on a number of levels: incorporation in terms of inclusion in an important ‘meaning-constitutive’ practice; familial incorporation; and incorporation into mainstream society more generally. The incorporating effects of civil unions owe much to the symbolic capacities of law, the meaning inscribed in the socially dominant cultural model of marriage, and the characteristics of ritual. The importance of ritual to the anthropological enterprise is reaffirmed through this study; not only do rituals provide an important lens through which to examine the normative values of society but also the origins of social revitalization.</p>

Narratives of Incorporation: An Anthropological Analysis of Same-Sex Civil Unions in New Zealand

<p>In this thesis I examine civil unions from the perspective of New Zealand-based same-sex couples who have chosen to formalise their relationship. My approach is qualitative and in-depth and focuses on interpreting participants' own meanings and beliefs while also recognising the need for broader contextual knowledge. Through participants’ narratives, I explore why it was important for couples to have a civil union, how they chose to mark or enact the occasion, and the meanings they attribute to their choices and actions. Rather than treating the civil union as an isolated event, my analysis situates the civil union within four longer processual trajectories: individual biographical narratives, partner interactions, close social relationships, and trajectories of a socio-political nature. I then explore the contours of participants’ civil union ceremonies in terms of scale, style, and symbolic content. Throughout the thesis, I argue that civil unions facilitate incorporation for same-sex couples on a number of levels: incorporation in terms of inclusion in an important ‘meaning-constitutive’ practice; familial incorporation; and incorporation into mainstream society more generally. The incorporating effects of civil unions owe much to the symbolic capacities of law, the meaning inscribed in the socially dominant cultural model of marriage, and the characteristics of ritual. The importance of ritual to the anthropological enterprise is reaffirmed through this study; not only do rituals provide an important lens through which to examine the normative values of society but also the origins of social revitalization.</p>

Religious Barriers to the Diffusion of Same-sex Civil Unions in Italy

The legal recognition of civil unions between same-sex partners, in May 2016, could be defined as a revolution for the system of legal norms regarding the “heterosexual family-centric-system” in Italy. Using official data on the 17,341 people resulting in a same-sex civil union collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics in the years 2016–2018, this paper analysed the relationship between religious secularization and the diffusion of same-sex civil unions at the regional level in Italy. In particular, an indicator of the incidence of civilly united individuals over total population has been regressed on the rate of heterosexual marriages celebrated according to the civil rite. According to abundant literature, the latter variable could be interpreted as a proxy of secularization. The results indicate that less secularized regions are also those where less civil unions have been celebrated. The results are confirmed also when an instrumental variable approach is implemented. Studying this topic in Italy is particularly interesting since the country has been defined as the least secularized among economically developed nations.

Équivalence et reconnaissance du statut civil des personnes faisant ménage à deux = Equivalence and recognition abroad of registered unions between two persons

Resumé: IL’équivalence de l’institution du mariage, en dépit des différences entre les règlementa­tions nationales, rend très rares les cas de non-reconnaissance du statut de personne mariée. A cette ho­mogénéité s’oppose l’hétérogénéité des partenariats enregistrés. Dans certains pays, leur incompatibilité avec les principes de base de la politique sociale et de la famille peut atteindre voire dépasser le seuil de l’ordre public. Pour éviter une amputation excessive des droits individuels acquis à l’étranger, des solutions de compromis, parfois proches du paradoxe, s’imposent. Cette harmonie partielle est réalisée par la reconnaissance de certains des effets rattachés au statut acquis à l’étranger. Le statut boiteux qui en résulte, loin de générer un “effet de surprise” susceptible de décevoir les expectatives des individus concernés, est devenu un “effet recherché”, dans le but de réaliser une pression croissante sur la poli­tique législative, en vue de réaliser une uniformisation plus ample du droit de la famille de l’époque néolibérale. En attendant l’évolution future, les systèmes de droit international privé nationaux évaluent l’équivalence des institutions étrangères à leurs propres institutions, afin de les faire vivre à l’intérieur de leurs frontières.Mots clés: unions civiles, partenariats enregistrés, régimes matrimoniaux, droit international privé, reconnaissance, equivalence.Abstract: This paper analyses the current existing models of “civil unions” in comparative pers­pective with a view to identify the conditions for their exportability. Their exportability is also a ground for identifying the most suitable model for a pos-sible future harmonisation of civil unions and, in this respect, to verify whether, following a Scandinavian trend, the traditional marriage, transmuted into a marriage between two neutral beings, could represent such model. Four main governmental attitudes towards homosexual couples offer at present a fertile ground for conflicts of laws, whose content is explored with special reference to Switzerland, Italy and to the European Area of Freedom, Justice and Security. Ensuring full international harmony of solutions implies renouncing to basic social policy principles on family law, when these are incompatible with the model whose import is demanded by the individuals concerned. Hence, compromise solutions are found to ensure at least a partial harmony through the recognition of some of the effects attached to the foreign status, if the latter cannot be con­sidered equivalent to a correspondent domestic one. The limping unions that result are often far from unpredictable, and rather enshrine a political vision aimed at influencing legislative policies.Keywords: homosexual couples, matrimonial property, civil unions, recognition of foreign acts, and equivalence.

La désignation des unions civiles dans la langue juridique française et polonaise

This article concerns the designation of civil unions expressed in French and Polish legal language, serving a dual purpose: epistemological and analytical. On the one hand, the relationship between conceptualization and the definition of real entities in the terminological perspective will be examined, as, indeed, terminological investigations, including jurilinguistics, allows for examining the relationship between real entities, concepts as mental constructions, and terms which designate them in languages for specific purposes. On the other hand, the designations of civil unions in the French and Polish law will be compared, demonstrating that sometimes they result from the same legal tradition and, in other cases, reflect cultural changes that inform the coinage of new terminological units.

After Obergefell: On Marriage and Belonging in Carson McCullers’s Member of the Wedding

The 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges was a historic day for gay rights as well as for the institution of marriage. The Court's decision led many of the states that introduced marriage equality prior to Obergefell to eliminate civil unions on the grounds that same-sex couples could now get married. A reading of Carson McCullers's novel The Member of the Wedding in the context of Obergefell reveals the shadow marriage casts over nonmarital affinities and relationships. McCuller's protagonist, Frankie, desires not to join the wedding as a member but to disrupt it. Through Frankie's wedding fantasies, McCullers illuminates forms of belonging that are ostensibly outside the law and that move across temporal and spatial boundaries, unseating marriage as the measure of all relationships.

A More Perfect Union? Christian Nationalism and Support for Same-Sex Unions

How do overlapping social identities shape Americans’ views toward contemporary social and moral issues? Drawing upon national-level data and employing the theoretical construct of social identity complexity, we examine the link between Christian nationalism–representing a convergence of national and religious identities–and Americans’ views toward same-sex marriage and civil unions. Multivariate analyses reveal that greater adherence to Christian nationalism is strongly and negatively related to support for both same-sex marriage and civil unions, even after controlling for political ideology, religious controls, attribution of homosexuality, and other relevant correlates. We argue that Christian nationalists, who by definition internalize a high degree of overlap between political and religious identities, are more likely to see gays and lesbians as out-groups and same-sex unions as a threat to their sense of self and community. We conclude by discussing the implications of this study for future research on political and religious identities and intolerance toward socially marginalized populations.