REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM'S CENTRE FOR ANTHROPOLOGY

The Intimate State: Love-Marriage and the Law in Delhi

Thursday 12th January 2012 at 10.00 am (tea & coffee served from 9.30am)

Centre for Anthropology, British Museum

THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The British Museum’s Centre for Anthropology, in collaboration with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present the second seminar in the 2011-12 series of ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’. Dr Perveez Mody will give a presentation on her book ‘The intimate state: love-marriage and the law in Delhi’ and Dr Kriti Kapila will elaborate on the questions raised by her review. Copies of the review will be available beforehand and on the day as a basis for discussion and questions.

The book provides an ethnography of love-marriages in the late 1990s in Delhi, identifying the ways in which marriage is ever more a pitch of intense political contestation. Presenting an account of the legislation and debates surrounding the law for civil marriage in India, its history and its practice, it explores new forms of intimacy that seek social legitimacy and legislation through the mechanisms of marriage afforded by the courts and religious institutions in Delhi. It bears upon anthropological understandings of marriageability, urban morality, gender, kinship and the study of the individual and the couple in contemporary India. By examining how the state sets up intimacies with love-marriage couples, the book addresses ways in which reportage of love and marriage function in the making of north Indian politics, the Indian individual and the nation. It registers how we may rethink the relationships between the state, communities and individuals, through a study of love-marriage especially as it manifests itself in public discourse in the Indian media.

Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe ( TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)