This book offers nothing less than a new vision for Christian marriage at a time of unprecedented social and theological change. It breaks new ground in drawing on earlier traditions of betrothal and informal marriage in welcoming some forms of pre-marital cohabitation, and provides a new defence of the link between marriage and procreation by sketching a theology of liberation for children. Christian principles for the use of contraception by married and not-yet-married couples are restated, and a comprehensive theology of marriage is worked out, based on re-worked biblical models. Marriage as a Christian sacrament, mutually administered in a lifelong partnership of equals is affirmed. A chapter on divorce brings new light to bear on legitimate theological grounds for 'the parting of the ways'. The question of whether marriage is a heterosexual institution is addressed, and particular attention is paid throughout the book to overcoming the distorting effect of the overwhelming androcentric bias of much Christian thought on marriage, to the experience of wives, and to all those women and men for whom marriage is not their vocation.

Marriage, Law and Modernity offers a global perspective on the modern history of marriage. Widespread recent debate has focused on the changing nature of families, characterized by both the rise of unmarried cohabitation and the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, historical understanding of these developments remains limited. How has marriage come to be the target of national legislation? Are recent policies on same-sex marriage part of a broader transformation? And, has marriage come to be similar across the globe despite claims about national, cultural and religious difference? This collection brings together scholars from across the world in order to offer a global perspective on the history of marriage. It unites legal, political and social history, and seeks to draw out commonalities and differences by exploring connections through empire, international law and international migration.

An innovative cultural history of the evolution of modern marriage practices in Bengal, Marriage and Modernity challenges the assumption that arranged marriage is an antiquated practice. Rochona Majumdar demonstrates that in the late colonial period Bengali marriage practices underwent changes that led to a valorization of the larger, intergenerational family as a revered, “ancient” social institution, with arranged marriage as the apotheosis of an “Indian” tradition. She meticulously documents the ways that these newly embraced “traditions”—the extended family and arranged marriage—entered into competition and conversation with other emerging forms of kinship such as the modern unit of the couple, with both models participating promiscuously in the new “marketplace” for marriages, where matrimonial advertisements in the print media and the payment of dowry played central roles. Majumdar argues that together the kinship structures newly asserted as distinctively Indian and the emergence of the marriage market constituted what was and still is modern about marriages in India. Majumdar examines three broad developments related to the modernity of arranged marriage: the growth of a marriage market, concomitant debates about consumption and vulgarity in the conduct of weddings, and the legal regulation of family property and marriages. Drawing on matrimonial advertisements, wedding invitations, poems, photographs, legal debates, and a vast periodical literature, she shows that the modernization of families does not necessarily imply a transition from extended kinship to nuclear family structures, or from matrimonial agreements negotiated between families to marriage contracts between individuals. Colonial Bengal tells a very different story.

In Africa, the emphasis on family, marriage, and offspring suggest that there is a kind of an unwritten ancestral law that imposes on every male the duty of begetting a son. The reason is because the core of African soteriology is centered on offspring. The predicament of the childless couples, therefore, stems from the desire for immortality and salvation that culminates in the admission of the dead into the ancestral world. This quest for salvation and immortality constitute social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual problems for Christian as well as non-Christian childless couples.

Moving beyond the individualisation paradigm in sociological theory, this book develops an approach to the analysis of human activities and the social phenomena produced by them that centres on the processes that generate coordinated behaviours among individuals. Emphasising the relational and processual character of social phenomena, as well as the importance of a broader cultural and historical context for analysing them, the author questions the view of contemporary society that sees individuals acting in a context in which social bonds are dissolving, and unveils the rationale hidden behind the chaos of everyday activities. Through an analysis of the continued importance of cooperation and the consequent emergence in society of various kinds of communities, this volume examines the changing character of social ties. An overview of transformation of social bonds and the intensification of mutual influences among individuals as they seek to address social dilemmas in new contexts, The Individual after Modernity will appeal to social scientists with interests in social theory.

Argues that films help Indian men handle their ambivalences about modernity by rooting their sense of "Indianness" in women's acceptance of traditional food habits, clothing, and gender subordination.

Study of Cuttack, former capital of Orissa.

How do we make sense of who and what we are in this secular, 21st century context of incredible - and often disorienting - change in so many areas of life? That is the central question which this text sets out to answer.