Holly Wardlow - Böcker

How are love, marriage, and desire changing? This collection confronts that question, examining how global cultural flows, changing gender relations, specific economic structures, and state policies are reshaping intimate life around the world. Grounded in cutting edge feminist anthropological theory, these essays discuss how women and men craft courtship, intimacy, and marriage around the world, situating intimate relations in their respective social and economic contexts and exposing the dynamics that are shared cross-culturally, as well as those characteristics that are specific to each site.In this first comparative ethnographic look at the global transformation toward marital ideals characterized by emotional intimacy, companionship, and mutual choice—discussed here as "companionate marriage"—Modern Loves asks how this shift is occurring and explores the factors that promote and hinder it, just who is pushing for these more companionate relationships, and what advantages men and women see in modern love. The contributors analyze the intricate negotiations surrounding love, marriage, and sex in Mexico, India, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Singapore, and Hong Kong and among Latino youth in East Los Angeles. Modern Loves presents the new global approach to kinship studies, examining both the microlevel practices that constitute and bind relationships and the macrolevel forces that shape the landscape of love.Contributors: Margaret E. Bentley, Selina Ching Chan, Pamela I. Erickson, Jessica Gregg, Jennifer Higgins, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Wynne Maggi, Constance A. Nathanson, Gayatri Reddy, Daniel Jordan Smith, and Holly WardlowJennifer S. Hirsch is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Holly Wardlow is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. "What‘s love got to do with it? Hirsch and Wardlow answer this question by demonstrating the relevance—indeed, centrality—of the ideologies and practices surrounding romantic love and companionate marriage to the study of social transformation more broadly. The essays compiled in this volume explore the material, structural, and demographic underpinnings of the global shift in marital ideals while also tracing some of the sources of this marital shift in mass media, missionization, and the spread of individualism. The contributors of the chapters provide ethnographically rich examples of the ways in which people living in different societies interpret and act upon these global forces and images in sometimes overlapping and sometimes varying ways. This volume is an important and thoughtful contribution to the study of emotion, gender, kinship, and social change." —Laura M. Ahearn, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University"With its rich descriptions of the nuances in romantic love and its lucid analysis of the political economy of conjugal relations, this book will be widely read and loved by anthropologists as well as the concerned public."—Yunxiang Yan, Department of Anthropology, UCLA "Modern Loves offers an overview of current scholarship on love in the context of sexual relationships cross-culturally, and provides a view of the complexity of varied aspects of emotion, social structure, and social change in contemporary sexual relationships. It clearly makes the case for a political economic understanding of the emergence of ideologies of love, marriage, and courtship as part of expanding global economies."—Linda-Anne Rebhun, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

Written with uncommon grace and clarity, this extremely engaging ethnography analyzes female agency, gendered violence, and transactional sex in contemporary Papua New Guinea. Focusing on Huli 'passenger women', (women who accept money for sex), Wayward Women explores the socio-economic factors that push women into the practice of transactional sex, and asks how these transactions might be an expression of resistance, or even revenge. Challenging conventional understandings of 'prostitution' and 'sex work', Holly Wardlow contextualizes the actions and intentions of passenger women in a rich analysis of kinship, bridewealth, marriage, and exchange, revealing the ways in which these robust social institutions are transformed by an encompassing capitalist economy. Many passenger women assert that they have been treated 'olsem maket' (like market goods) by their husbands and natal kin, and they respond by fleeing home and defiantly appropriating their sexuality for their own purposes. Experiences of rape, violence, and the failure of kin to redress such wrongs figure prominently in their own stories about becoming 'wayward'.Drawing on village court cases, hospital records, and women's own raw, caustic, and darkly funny narratives, "Wayward Women" provides a riveting portrait of the way modernity engages with gender to produce new and contested subjectivities.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.In this vitally important book, medical anthropologist Holly Wardlow takes readers through a ten-year history of the AIDS epidemic in Tari, Papua New Guinea, focusing on the political and economic factors that make women vulnerable to HIV and on their experiences with antiretroviral therapy. Alive with the women’s stories about being trafficked to gold mines, resisting polygynous marriages, and struggling to be perceived as morally upright, Fencing in AIDS demonstrates that being female shapes every aspect of the AIDS epidemic. Offering crucial insights into the anthropologies of mining, ethics, and gender, this is essential reading for scholars and professionals addressing the global AIDS crisis today.

Authored by well-established and respected scholars, this work examines the kinds of efforts that have been made to adopt Western modernity in Melanesia and explores the reasons for their varied outcomes. The contributors take the work of Professor Marshall Sahlins as a starting point, assessing his theories of cultural change and of the relationship between cultural intensification and globalizing forces. They acknowledge the importance of Sahlins' ideas, while refining, extending, modifying and critiquing them in light of their own first hand knowledge of Pacific island societies. Also presenting one of Sahlins' less widely available original essays for reference, this book is an exciting contribution to serious anthropological engagement with Papua New Guinea.

Authored by well-established and respected scholars, this work examines the kinds of efforts that have been made to adopt Western modernity in Melanesia and explores the reasons for their varied outcomes. The contributors take the work of Professor Marshall Sahlins as a starting point, assessing his theories of cultural change and of the relationship between cultural intensification and globalizing forces. They acknowledge the importance of Sahlins' ideas, while refining, extending, modifying and critiquing them in light of their own first hand knowledge of Pacific island societies. Also presenting one of Sahlins' less widely available original essays for reference, this book is an exciting contribution to serious anthropological engagement with Papua New Guinea.

For many women around the world, their greatest risk of HIV infection comes from having sex with the very person with whom they are supposed to have sex: their spouse. ""The Secret"" situates marital HIV risk within a broader exploration of marital and extramarital sexuality in five diverse settings: Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea. In these settings, the authors write, extramarital sex is an officially secret but actually widespread (and widely acknowledged) social practice, rather than something men do because their bodies demand it and women can't stop them. Drawing on research conducted as part of an innovative comparative ethnographic study, and modeling a novel approach to collaborative anthropological scholarship, the authors show extramarital sex to be a fundamental aspect of gendered social organization. Through theoretically sophisticated yet lucid writing and vivid ethnographic description, drawing on rich data from the marital case studies conducted by research teams in each country, they trace how extramarital opportunity structures, sexual geographies, and concerns about social risk facilitate men's participation in extramarital sex. Also documented throughout is the collision between traditional ways and the new practices of romantic companionate marriage.