Tell your friends about this item:
Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance - Globalization in Everyday Life Melanie Heath New edition
Ordered from remote warehouse
Our customers say:
Also available as:
Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance - Globalization in Everyday Life
Melanie Heath
In the past thirty years, polygyny has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious practices that challenge seemingly central principles of family and justice. In Forbidden Intimacies, Melanie Heath comparatively investigates the regulation of polygamy in the United States, Canada, France, and Mayotte. Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic and archival sources, Heath uncovers the ways in which intimacies framed as "other" and "offensive" serve to define the very limits of Western tolerance.
These regulation efforts, counterintuitively, allow the flourishing of polygamies on the ground. The case studies illustrate a continuum of justice, in which some groups, like white fundamentalist Mormons in the U. S., organize to fight against the prohibition of their families' existence, whereas African migrants in France face racialized discrimination in addition to rigid migration policies. The matrix of legal and social contexts, informed by gender, race, sexuality, and class, shapes the everyday experiences of these relationships. Heath uses the term "labyrinthine love" to conceptualize the complex ways individuals negotiate different kinds of relationships, ranging from romantic to coercive.
What unites these families is the clandestinity in which they must operate. As government intervention erodes their abilities to secure housing, welfare, work, and even protection from abuse, Heath exposes the huge variety of intimacies, and the power they hold to challenge heteronormative, Western ideals of love.
256 pages
| Media | Books Paperback Book (Book with soft cover and glued back) |
| Released | February 21, 2023 |
| ISBN13 | 9781503634251 |
| Publishers | Stanford University Press |
| Pages | 292 |
| Dimensions | 230 × 152 × 21 mm · 460 g |
| Language | English |
More by Melanie Heath
Show all
Mere med samme udgiver
See all of Melanie Heath ( e.g. Hardcover Book and Paperback Book )