Raksha Pande

Becoming modern: British-Indian discourses of arranged marriages

Abstract This article looks at the various ways in which arranged marriage is practised among members of the British-Indian population. It argues against a singular definition of this practice by highlighting the diversity of routes that lead to an arranged marriage. It also makes a case for understanding arranged marriage as a discursive practice which represents the British-Indian views on matchmaking and kinship. Drawing upon original empirical research conducted in the north-east of England, the article presents a ‘spectrum of arranged marriage’ practices that was prevalent among its practitioners. It highlights that the attraction of this institution lies in the elastic nature of the traditions associated with it. Finally, it proposes that the various discourses of arranged marriage are employed by British-Indians to interpret and tailor-make this traditional practice to carve out hyphenated identities such as British-Indian and other transnational forms of belonging. They achieve this by incorporating the demands of modernity such as the notion of romantic love and a certain level of individual choice within arranged marriage practices.

Connecting lectures to current affairs: the “letters to newspapers” assignment

This paper presents the experiences of teaching political geography, in a level 2 BA course, with the use of an innovative assignment – the letters to newspapers assignment. We provide here the aims, rationale and a detailed outline of the assignment. We also discuss student feedback from 67 questionnaires and 2 focus groups. Our findings suggest that the assignment was instrumental in (a) enabling the students to see concepts in action, that is to link abstract ideas with real-world issues and (b) initiating a move away from passive learning towards supporting students to actively and critically reflect upon their relationship with the world.

‘Sexual misery’ or ‘happy British Muslims’?: Contemporary depictions of Muslim sexuality

We begin this article with a close look at some contemporary pictures of sexual life in the Muslim world that have been painted in certain sections of the Western media, asking how and why these pictures matter. Across a range of mainstream print media from the New York Times to the Daily Mail, and across reported events from several countries, can be found pictures of ‘sexual misery’. These ‘frame’ Muslim men as tyrannical, Muslim women as downtrodden or exploited, and the wider world of Islam as culpable. Crucially, this is not the whole story. We then consider how these negative representations are being challenged and how they can be challenged further. In doing so, we will not simply set pictures of sexual misery against their binary opposites, namely pictures abounding in the promise of sexual happiness. Instead, we search for a more complex picture, one that unsettles stereotypes about the sexual lives of Muslims without simply idealising its subjects. This takes us to the journalism, life writing and creative non-fiction of Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and the fiction of Ayisha Malik and Amjeed Kabil. We read this long-form work critically, attending to manifest advances in depictions of the relationships of Muslim-identified individuals over the last decade or so, while also remaining alert to lacunae and limitations in the individual representations. More broadly, we hope to signal our intention to avoid both Islamophobia and Islamophilia in scrutinising literary texts.

Marriage migration in Asia: emerging minorities at the frontiers of nation states by SK Ishii [Book review]

the conceived into the murky depths of the unseen: the emotive, the spiritual or psychic, the rhythmic’ (156) so that laid bare are some of the deeply affective and embodied ways in which the commodification and individualization of academic work have led to alienation. In the final chapter of the book Middleton uses her case studies to summarize what they suggest for a ‘lefebvrian perspective’ on educational studies (173). It is, by her own reckoning, a ‘brief conclusion’ and thus disappointingly, cross-analysis of the case study chapters is not as extensive as it could perhaps have been. However, the author is to be greatly commended for indeed preparing ‘the ground on which others may lay foundations for a literature of critical educational engagements with lefebvre’ (182). In fact, as previously noted, I would suggest that the book does more than this in offering an illustration of how feminist geographers may work with lefebvre. this is consequently a text that achieves the rare goal of contributing to a readership not simply within but across disciplinary boundaries.

Marriage migration in Asia: emerging minorities at the frontiers of nation-states

the conceived into the murky depths of the unseen: the emotive, the spiritual or psychic, the rhythmic’ (156) so that laid bare are some of the deeply affective and embodied ways in which the commodification and individualization of academic work have led to alienation. In the final chapter of the book Middleton uses her case studies to summarize what they suggest for a ‘lefebvrian perspective’ on educational studies (173). It is, by her own reckoning, a ‘brief conclusion’ and thus disappointingly, cross-analysis of the case study chapters is not as extensive as it could perhaps have been. However, the author is to be greatly commended for indeed preparing ‘the ground on which others may lay foundations for a literature of critical educational engagements with lefebvre’ (182). In fact, as previously noted, I would suggest that the book does more than this in offering an illustration of how feminist geographers may work with lefebvre. this is consequently a text that achieves the rare goal of contributing to a readership not simply within but across disciplinary boundaries.

Book review of Ishii, S.K (2016)Marriage migration in Asia: emerging minorities at the frontiers of nation states

the conceived into the murky depths of the unseen: the emotive, the spiritual or psychic, the rhythmic’ (156) so that laid bare are some of the deeply affective and embodied ways in which the commodification and individualization of academic work have led to alienation. In the final chapter of the book Middleton uses her case studies to summarize what they suggest for a ‘lefebvrian perspective’ on educational studies (173). It is, by her own reckoning, a ‘brief conclusion’ and thus disappointingly, cross-analysis of the case study chapters is not as extensive as it could perhaps have been. However, the author is to be greatly commended for indeed preparing ‘the ground on which others may lay foundations for a literature of critical educational engagements with lefebvre’ (182). In fact, as previously noted, I would suggest that the book does more than this in offering an illustration of how feminist geographers may work with lefebvre. this is consequently a text that achieves the rare goal of contributing to a readership not simply within but across disciplinary boundaries.