 |
Organizing Fellows:
Lois Dubin (Religion) & Alice Hearst (Government)
In all societies, marriage is
a serious business. How intimate relationships are defined
and regulated by political and religious authorities has
powerful effects on both private lives and on public order.
Both the practice of intimate relationships and the terms
of their dissolution are highly regulated because societies
apportion resources, private and public, for the costs of
dependency and socialization, and seek to ensure a measure
of continuity for dependents when unions are dissolved. These
days we are more acutely aware than ever of the dynamic relations
between love, marriage, society, and state as new forms of
intimate unions, domestic partnerships, and families are
recognized—and contested. This year-long Kahn project
sought to explore the changing meanings and practices of
marriage and divorce in different societies and cultures,
both past
and present.
This project raised myriad questions about the complex
realities and constructs of intimate relationships, and about
the intersection of politics, religion, culture, and economics
in changing practices and norms of marriage and divorce.
For example, how have family relationships been reflected
in various forms of artistic and philosophic expression?
How have religious and civil authorities cooperated—and
clashed—over definitions of marriage in different cultures
and societies? How have states exercised authority over marriage
and divorce to reinforce state building and foster the emergence
of particular forms of citizenship? How have different forms
of marriage affected shifting gender roles? To what extent
might state regulation create new opportunities for personal
emancipation or strengthen existing forms of social and cultural
constraint? How are minorities of various kinds affected
by state entry into this domain, and how do they make claims
that allow them to enact their own traditions of marriage,
divorce, and family in the face of state and religious authorities
that uphold the practices of a dominant culture? How do states
and supra-national bodies juggle different, and often competing,
norms of marital and family law?
The project benefited enormously from the shared
efforts of scholars working in a wide range of fields
in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, while emerging
research on the biological bases of intimate behavior gave
those in the natural sciences the opportunity to make significant
contributions to the project as
well.
|
|
Fellows
Final
Project Report
|
|
