Making the Right Choice: Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka - Couverture souple

Abeyasekera, Asha L.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 197881030X ISBN 13 : 9781978810303

Editeur : Rutgers University Press, 2021

Synopsis

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.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

ASHA L. ABEYASEKERA is a senior lecturer in the faculty of graduate studies at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Rutgers University Press
• Date d'édition: 2021
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 197881030X
• ISBN 13: 9781978810303
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 228
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible