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Seven - Imagining Conjugal Futures

The Personal and the Political

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2025

Janet Carsten
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

This chapter returns to the import of marriage as an institution at the interface between intimate, personal lives and wider political transformation. It highlights the experiences of those who have remained unmarried beyond the usual marrying age and draws on discussions of ethical imagination from earlier in the book to explore some submerged connections between non-marriage and social activism. The multiple temporalities in which reflecting on marriage occurs (here by those who remain unmarried) reveal how such judgements constitute imaginative and political work. Involvement in gender-related activism is a possible trajectory for those concerned about women’s or LGBTQ rights. The potential fractures between conservative Islam and the more liberal attitudes of urban, middle-class, youthful Malaysians constitute a zone of contention – but also, for some, a suggestive field for imaginative reflection about their own situation, about the marriage of their parents or those of siblings or friends. In these fissures, transformative standpoints and visions may carry the seeds of wider political change.

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  • Imagining Conjugal Futures
  • Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Marriage and the Moral Imagination
  • Online publication: 12 December 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009601030.008
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  • Imagining Conjugal Futures
  • Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Marriage and the Moral Imagination
  • Online publication: 12 December 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009601030.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Imagining Conjugal Futures
  • Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Marriage and the Moral Imagination
  • Online publication: 12 December 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009601030.008
Available formats
×