This chapter takes as its starting point a comparison of the trajectories of two women from different generations and different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Both were to a considerable degree ‘self-made’ women, and one question raised by their narratives is how is marriage relevant to their success? The stories that these women tell are replete with ethical judgements and reflections on their own and their parents’ marriages as well as those about others. The apparently tangential significance of marriage in these stories is suggestive. Seemingly, a necessary part of a normative life course even in an unconventional scenario, marriage here takes forms that are at once accepted and also ‘transgressive’. Both women had married foreign husbands; in one case, this ended in divorce; in the other, what seemed a successful partnership endured. We see how marriage allows the expansion of convention but, paradoxically, also reinforces social norms. Indeed, at the boundaries of difference and what is acceptable, marriage has the capacity to be re-enfolded into what is normative through its conventionality. In this way, it holds a promise of transformation for individuals and families, and for wider communities and nations.

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.

The conclusion draws together the themes of the chapters, returning to the analogy between marriage and anthropology as encounters with difference. Weaving together the stories of two protagonists encountered in the Introduction with the themes of ethical imagination and temporality, it draws out the broader significance of the everyday labour of moral imagination in kinship relations, and of marriage as a crucible of long-term social transformation. The discussion reflects on the importance of attending anthropologically to seemingly insignificant, everyday, domestic encounters and judgements, and to their cumulative effects.

This chapter takes forward the exploration of marriage as difference through an examination of what are locally perceived as ‘mixed’ marriages in Penang. Difference can be calibrated in many registers – including age, wealth, class, familial background, religion, language, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The cultural and ethnic diversity of Penang offers unusual scope for marrying outside familiar boundaries. But which sorts of difference are most salient, and which boundaries are more permeable and more easy to bridge? ‘Malayness’ and Islam have a historically privileged legal status in Malaysia, and marrying a Muslim legally requires a non-Muslim spouse to convert. The bodily, culinary, religious and legal concomitants of this conversion are likely to impact close family members of a non-Muslim partner. At the extreme end of a range of possibilities, ‘mixed’ couples encountering or expecting opposition from their families sometimes elope to marry. But, after marriage, a long process of accommodation and absorption is likely to occur. Experiences of ‘mixed’ marriage and the negotiation of difference, which is part of marriage everywhere, offer a perspective on other changes in Malaysia over several decades. But more broadly, it provides a way to understand how intimate worlds may generate wider social transformation.

This chapter examines the intimate world of the family through an intergenerational lens. Education and work outside the home are understood by many women in Malaysia, as elsewhere, to have fundamentally altered the dynamics of conjugality. Variations in individual life courses, availability of resources, education and ethnic or religious backgrounds partly shape trajectories of life and marriage. Exploring continuity and change between generations, we see how marriage encapsulates both possibilities, enabling radical departures from conventional norms under the guise of conformity as well as the replication of past patterns. The binary of ‘arrangement’ versus ‘choice’ constitutes, simultaneously, a reference point and a misleading way to calibrate transformation – as anthropologists have shown for South Asia. Beyond this, marriages mark time, and are a means to tell and reflect upon family histories. Efforts to change the course of events or escape cycles of misfortune may be rare and difficult to achieve. Reflecting on differences and change across generations engages qualities of moral imagination, and is part of making history.

The arguments of the book are laid out, beginning with questions that probe the apparent obviousness of marriage as an institution. What does marriage do? How can we account for both its historical persistence and its cultural and historical variability as an institution? Rather than see it as an essentially conservative and normative institution, this book argues that marriage is, on the contrary, a crucible of transformation – of personal, familial and wider political relations. This is partly a result of the unique position it holds as an intimate relation but also a political, legal and religious one. The conventionality of marriage provides a deceptive cloak of conformity masking the elasticity of what may be acceptable to spouses, families and communities. The argument is grounded in an ethnography of marriage in contemporary Penang but draws on a range of comparative materials from anthropology, literature, films and other sources. The main themes of the book are introduced: marriage as continuity of patterns in earlier generations and, simultaneously, as divergence from these; an overview of the anthropology of marriage and its lacunae; marriage as ethical labour in and on time; and marriage as an everyday work of moral imagination. The chapters are outlined.

The Coda explores contexts of speculative fictional responses to environmental crises as a way of bringing together the varied dialogues between literature, self-help, and agency at the heart of this study. It begins by surveying narratives of climate apocalypse and speculative possibility by Alexandra Kleeman, Margaret Atwood, Lidia Yuknavitch, and others before turning to consider in more depth Ben Lerner’s autofiction trilogy (Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and The Topeka School) and his dialogic textual interactions with the work of his mother, bestselling feminist self-help author Harriet Lerner. These final reflections illuminate the submerged utopian and dystopian fantasies around personal and political change evident throughout the book and consider how self-help both enables and forecloses potentials for individual and collective authorship and agency in contemporary writing. The Coda argues that by pushing self-help to its limits – sometimes beyond the bounds of the human self – contemporary authors offer nuanced perspectives on what it means to ‘be better’, ethically, personally, ecologically, and socially, in a world of ongoing crisis.

The concluding chapter of the book pulls together key strands of analysis and insights from the preceding chapters and suggests future potential for moving from a transition state (one that effectively manages key transitions in critical sectors of the economy without questioning dominant rationales and modes of statehood) to a state of transformation where sustainability is at the centre of state practice.

We define the category of polynomial functors by introducing its morphisms, called dependent lenses or lenses for short, and we show how they model interaction protocols. We introduce several methods for working with these lenses, including visual tools such as corolla forests and polybox pictures. We explain how these lenses represent bidirectional communication between polynomials and describe how they compose. By the end of the chapter, readers will have a comprehensive understanding of how polynomial functors and their morphisms can be used to model complex interactive behaviors.

Marianne Moyaert tackles the timely issue of the encounter between Christian liturgy and the world’s religions. She puts forward the idea that there is no way back to a time before the dialogical turn. Even more so, the dialogue should not refrain from ritual and liturgical aspects. In that respect, comparative theologians are inevitable and evident partners for liturgical scholars.

The growth and impact of urban environmental problems can manifest as significant stress and eventual crises for cities and their residents. The focus of this chapter is on how and why these stressors and crises are addressed in cities and the conditions under which the crises can eventually result in significant environmental policy transitions and follow-on transformations. Several different types of documented urban crises (including ecological-resource, urban spatial development, socio-economic, and extreme events) are discussed and analyzed in the chapter. Social, environmental/ecological, and infrastructural/technological drivers influence the connection between urban environmental stress, crisis, transition, and transformation. The actual mechanisms that set up and orchestrate the transition process reflect the resilience of the existing environmental and policy management regime and the magnitude of the stress and crisis. The chapter focuses on describing each of the steps in the transition and the mechanisms that connect each step, as well as the key terms and concepts associated with the process. The importance of policy system tipping points or regime shifts is illustrated.

Development is complex. Individual meaning systems are dynamic, and change can happen at any age. But even change is lawful and is conditioned by one’s history of meaning making. Self-fulfilling processes are part of the nature of adaptation. Those that bring positive expectations to social encounters often have new positive social experiences. As argued in the beginning, meaning lies at the center of a rich life. Those who have a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a coherent, integrated life story have what can be described as meaningful lives.