Consent and coercion: Changing marriage practices among Magars in Nepal.

Abstract

The central argument of this dissertation is that an analysis of changing marriage practices in a kinship-based Magar village in western Nepal serves as a window onto a broader social transformations currently underway in the community. Villagers are less and less likely to attribute events to fate, or karma, instead attributing them to the actions of individuals. Furthermore, they are increasingly emphasizing the importance of obtaining the consent of both parties to a marriage. What is so striking about this trend is the way in which consent, particularly women's consent, is thought to be obtainable only as a result of coercion. In my analysis of the shift away from arranged marriage and capture marriage toward elopement I explore various intersections of agency, resistance, accommodation, complicity, and domination. Drawing on practice theory and cultural Marxism, this dissertation situates village marriage practices within a broader historical, political, and structural context while paying special attention to gender relations and the Magar practice of preferential matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. I argue that as villagers increasingly choose their own spouses, sometimes marrying the wrong kind of cross-cousin, they shake the foundations of this kinship-based society, thereby rupturing the social fabric. For each of the three types of marriage I provide case studies and a sociocultural and linguistic discussion of villagers' narratives of marriage. I explore villagers' conceptions of their own agency as they describe arranged marriage (the hegemonic form of marriage in the village, comprising two-thirds of all first marriages), capture marriage (a rare but still extant form of marriage), and elopement (an increasingly popular alternative to other types of marriage). The new discourse of love letters receives attention in the dissertation as it illustrates the changing meanings and values villagers associate with marriage. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative data and focusing on the intersecting elements of consent and coercion, this dissertation examines the implications of a shift in marriage practices for gender dynamics and relations of power in the village as a whole.