Why Would I Be Married Here?

Why Would I Be Married Here? examines marriage migration undertaken by rural bachelors in North India, unable to marry locally, who travel across the breadth of India seeking brides who do not share the same caste, ethnicity, language, or customs as themselves. Combining rich ethnographic evidence with Dalit feminist and political economy frameworks, Reena Kukreja connects the macro-political violent process of neoliberalism to the micro-personal level of marriage and intimate gender relations to analyze the lived reality of this set of migrant brides in cross-region marriages among dominant-peasant caste Hindus and Meo Muslims in rural North India.

Why Would I Be Married Here? reveals how predatory capitalism links with patriarchy to dispossess many poor women from India's marginalized Dalit and Muslim communities of marriage choices in their local communities. It reveals how, within the context of the increasing spread of capitalist relations, these women's pragmatic cross-region migration for marriage needs to be reframed as an exercise of their agency that simultaneously exposes them to new forms of gender subordination and internal othering of caste discrimination and ethnocentrism in conjugal communities. Why Would I Be Married Here? offers powerful examples of how contemporary forces of neoliberalism reshape the structural oppressions compelling poor women from marginalized communities worldwide into making compromised choices about their bodies, their labor, and their lives.

Reena Kukreja is Assistant Professor at Queen's University.

Kukreja has written a theoretically rich book that combines Dalit feminist and political economy frameworks.

Why Would I Be Married Here? offers powerful examples of how contemporary forces of neoliberalism reshape the structural oppressions compelling poor women from marginalized communities worldwide into making compromised choices about their bodies, their labor, and their lives.

Reena Kukreja's exceptional book reviews the multiple markers of oppression and victimhood that women face in rural north India.

Anupama Roy, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University:

Rigorously researched and persuasively argued, this book is invaluable for understanding the complex phenomenon of cross-region marriage migration in rural North India. Reena Kukreja's book presents lucidly crafted ethnographic narratives of marriage across regions under conditions of 'bride-deficit' to make the dense interlacing between caste, class, religion, region and gender, intelligible. This book is indispensable for those students and scholars, who wish to venture into the 'field' in search of answers to difficult questions pertaining to social change in contemporary India.

Sundari Anitha, University of Lincoln, author of Striking Women:

Why Would I Be Married Here? is a cuttingly perceptive analysis of contemporary gender relations and dispossession in India. Reena Kukreja illustrates how structural processes shape new forms of exploitation and subordination of women's labor and bodies—as well as their constrained agency—within intimate relationships.

Prem Chowdry, author of Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples:

This intensely researched, field-work-based, and acutely analytical book is a major contribution to the studies on kinship and marriage. It will be invaluable to all scholars of gender, culture studies, and sociology.

Maunaguru Sidharthan, National University of Singapore, author of Marrying for a Future:

This is an important and brilliant book that brings forth a new set of ideas on South Asian marriages through political economy and feminist ethnography. Reena Kukreja sheds new light on Indian marriages that cut across caste, class, labor, and gender.