I have to agree with this. In my understanding of arranged marriages, the parents make the arrangements between each other, with little or no input from the kids, and the kids are then under an obligation to follow through with it. The social pressure comes from the adults being shamed in front of the other family and their larger community. That’s a far, far cry from someone’s grandma trying to fix someone up with her neighbor’s nephew.
I’m saying that an “arranged marriage” has to at least meet the base definitions of those two words. It has to be “arranged” by somebody else, and the thing being arranged has to be a marriage, not a date.
People also seem to be ignoring my point about arranged marriage cultures placing parameters on candidates and prohibiting them from going outside the accepted pool.
You are assuming that the person in question would otherwise have the motive and chance to get married to someone not on the approved list, and are simply prevented from doing so - by coercion of some sort. The “Fiddler on the Roof” scenario.
In some cases at least, folks look more at an arrangement as an opportunity they would not otherwise have, rather than as a restriction or imposition. After all, people pay good money these days for restrictive ‘matchmaking’ services.
That’s not arranged marriage, that’s just seeking dating help.
See, that’s just the issue - how do you draw a convincing bright line between the two?
So far, it seems that the only way is through some sort of circular reasoning - an arranged marriage is coercive, because without coercion, it isn’t an arranged marriage.
To my mind, an “arranged marriage” is any situation in which the relations in effect “arrange” for the couple to get married, and vary from situations in which they are clearly being forced or shamed into doing it, to ones in which the impetus to get married comes from the individuals themselves and the arrangers merely facilitate that desire - finding a suitable partner for them, who likewise wishes to marry.
Let’s try these definitions on for size
So then, an actual marriage can be arranged by someone else from a pool of candidates restricted by race/ethinicity and still yet not be coercive if the parties for whom the marriage is being arranged consent to both the arranging and the restricitons on the pool of candidates.
ETA: this comports with both the criteria you’ve supplied and the definition provided by outliern. It also makes about half of eveything else you’ve argued wrong
Melllvar: He found a way!
Seems pretty similar to what I’ve been arguing …
No, as I said in some cultures going outside is made very difficult to do, and not by force. In any case, a marriage where the candidate is just perfect (hot, smart and horny) is just as arranged as when you are stuck with just okay choices. Nobody is saying that the marriage has to be an unhappy one, or that the partners have to be dissatisfied with it.
But cultures strongly discouraging going outside the pool don’t necessarily have arranged marriages (like my Mormon example) and it is possible to have a list of candidates not restricted to a given ethnic or cultural group. That’s the way it plays out, usually, but is not necessary.
This thread should be permanently stickied at the top of the Pit because there’s a new thread about how Diogenes is an assmunching moron every six weeks or so.
I am unsure as to what we are disagreeing about. My point, insofar as i have one, is that some sort of coersion to prevent folks from marrying outside the “list” provided by one’s relations is not always necessary - because these are people who for whatever reason do not desire to marry someone outside the “list”.
Put another way, can someone have an actual free choice between having an “arranged marriage” or not? To my mind, they can.
Okay, I’ll bite.
Yes. Yes, it is.
A majority of my Indian relatives would say that they entered into “arranged marriages,” and in every single one of those cases, the parents’ only role was to arrange meetings with potential mates, in essence, what you would call setting them up on dates. Whether to agree to marry was completely within the discretion of the two individuals who were being introduced. In all the cases, if the individuals had come up with “love matches” of their own, even ones outside of their ethnic groups or castes, they would have been free to do so.
Words mean what 1 billion people use them to mean, not just what you decide they mean in your own head.
That just means that arranged marriage has a Venn intersection with some other forms of cultural marriage restriction. It doesn’t mitigate arranged marriage.
Concede that coercion is not a necessary component of arranged marriage
I keep seeing “arraigned” marriage and it’s cracking me right up.
In theory, maybe, but not in practice.
Sure they can, but in a culture of arranged marriages many will act as if they do not have a choice. Even in Fiddler, remember, one daughter runs off with the revolutionary. The real question is the reaction of the culture to not marrying someone in the list. It’s been a long time since I read the Tevye stories, but my recollection is that that Tevye was a lot less liberal about this than the one in the play, since they were written a lot closer to the culture of the shtetl.
The Berlin Wall was still the Berlin Wall even though a few people managed to get over it.
Well, actually, Hodel marrying Perchik the revolutionary wasn’t so bad. It was Chava marrying (oy!) Fyedka the Christian that was a big deal.