Marriage and Self-making in Penang, Malaysia

Marriage and Self-making in Penang, Malaysia: Transformations of the Intimate and the Political

What possibilities does marriage offer for transformation of the self, of intimate worlds, and of the wider public sphere? This paper draws on the life stories of two seemingly exceptional women in Penang, Malaysia. These protagonists have apparently ‘made themselves’ in sharp distinction to the expectations that might be associated with their backgrounds. I examine the place of marriage in these projects of self-making.

Constrained by the past, but also offering openings to innovation, marriage here is not simply - as we might expect - a means to social or economic mobility. Rather than seeing marriage as the route to the successful making of unusual life projects, we see how it is instead enfolded within a larger ethical project of self-transformation. The capacities of material objects that are associated with marriage to create, express, and reproduce emotional engagement and economic mobility are highlighted to reveal their generative role within individual and marital self-making. Marriage in these life trajectories is both subject to wider transformative movement and, I suggest, itself engenders ethical judgements that are at once intimate and political, and which have the capacity to effect personal and political transformation.

USEFUL LINKS

• Autumn 2019 Programme for the Social Anthropology Seminar Series