Intimate Others Marriage \u0026 Sexualities in India by Samita Sen

The last two decades have witnessed pervasive transformations in intimate relations, whether within or outside marriage, in same-sex or heterosexual contexts, in terms of coupled cohabitation or other unconventional living practices. Indeed, these have also impacted marriage. This book considers the interplay of gender, class and community with regard to marriage, on the constructions of masculinity and femininity within the family, as well as larger societal gender constructions that impact upon the family. Marriage, an all-pervasive institution remains grounded in caste, kinship, economic insecurities, sexual anxieties and faces globalizing desires or new conjugalities. In brief, the book challenges the notions of marriage: ‘its orders as well as its borders’, seeking to examine the different dynamics of marriage, within itself as well as in inter-relationship to hierarchies of caste, class, community, and above all, gender.