Invitations to Love by Laura M Ahearn

Invitations to Love by Laura M Ahearn

Invitations to Love provides a close examination of the dramatic shift away from arranged marriage and capture marriage toward elopement in the village of Junigau, Nepal. Laura M. Ahearn shows that young Nepalese people are applying their newly acquired literacy skills to love-letter writing, fostering a transition that involves not only a shift in marriage rituals, but also a change in how villagers conceive of their own ability to act and attribute responsibility for events. These developments have potential ramifications that extend far beyond the realm of marriage and well past the Himalayas.
The love-letter correspondences examined by Ahearn also provide a deeper understanding of the social effects of literacy. While the acquisition of literary skills may open up new opportunities for some individuals, such skills can also impose new constraints, expectations, and disappointments. The increase in female literacy rates in Junigau in the 1990s made possible the emergence of new courtship practices and facilitated self-initiated marriages, but it also reinforced certain gender ideologies and undercut some avenues to social power, especially for women.
Scholars, and students in such fields as anthropology, women's studies, linguistics, development studies, and South Asian studies will find this book ethnographically rich and theoretically insightful.Laura M. Ahearn is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University.

Laura M. Ahearn is an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow serving as a Senior Learning Advisor in the U.S. Agency for International Development's Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance. She is the author of Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal (2001) and is the Series Editor Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Language.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780472067848
ISBN 10	0472067842
Title	Invitations to Love
Author	Laura M Ahearn
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Michigan Press
Year published	2001-11-30
Number of pages	312
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.