While we might naturally think that artworks possess sensible and physical properties in the same way that other finite, natural objects do, there is reason to think that on Hegel’s account artworks “work” only insofar as they quite literally suspend their otherwise finite, natural properties, thereby realizing a decidedly infinite and autonomous way of being. This chapter appeals to some of the distinctive insights of Hegel’s idealist metaphysics to develop what is in effect an original, Hegelian-inspired ontology of the artwork. It argues that artworks make an express show of their own suspension of the natural, affirming the birth of their distinctive, autonomous reality in and through a movement that involves the transcending of the otherwise natural terms of their own existence. To experience the beauty of an artwork is to experience this transformative movement, and the chapter argues that what is at issue here is akin to the nature of transformative historical events that on Hegel’s account set the terms of world history.

The end of the Mycenaean palatial system around 1200 BC marked a turning point in the history of the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age, which brought about a fundamental transformation of the economic and social structures. The twelfth and the first half of the eleventh centuries BCE, i.e., the postpalatial period of LH IIIC and the Submycenaean period, were characterized by continuity and change. Life during this epoch was determined by rivalry and interaction between small-scale social groups, sometimes across long distances. The specialized arts and crafts controlled by the palaces had died out, while other sectors of the craft industry such as bronze-working and shipbuilding survived at a remarkably high level. Burial rites and ritual practices also continued in the tradition of the palatial era for three to four generations, while new trends emerged in other areas. The developments on the Greek mainland are illustrated by a regional survey. It shows that this transformative era also marks the transition to the Early Iron Age when Greek identities began to emerge.

Taking the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) and the “penitential Psalms” as sites for late antique and early medieval investigations of the effect of sin on the self, this chapter proposes that exegetes saw the self as malleable and permeable.  Commentaries and sermons framed the self as sinful but salvageable.  Changing views of agency, responsibility, and remedies produced shifts in representations of communal interests and penitential interpretations of well-known scriptural texts.  Protections against the penetrations and deformations of sin were erected in liturgical rituals and communal prayer.  The universal stain of sin fostered a porous relation between the individual and the community, each bound to the other in a metaphysical, corporate entity encasing all selves.  Christian views of individual autonomy created as well a spatial expanse of the individual interior in which the soul could wander, even become lost.  Emerging from that grim void to salvation was to grasp a lifeline of the penitential words of others, sung in concert, in an activation of universal memory, to transform the self into a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem.

India’s states or regions – heterogeneous by population size, language, geography, creed and culture – have broadly followed the national economic performance and structural transformation. However, inter-regional inequality (among its other dimensions) has risen unabated, with stability in their ranks and shares of output and employment. There are few signs of unconditional convergence. Yet interstate labour migration has remained modest, though rising. Mandatory tax-sharing methods and policy goals have failed to dent rising inequalities. Though following national policy templates, states have charted varied development paths, with contrasting outcomes. A rising ‘north–south’ divide is discernible, with Kerala in pole position in social progress, while Gujarat prioritizes output growth. Large north Indian ‘BIMARU’ states remain bimaru, with persistent gaps in health and social development outcomes relative to the national average. Beneath the seeming state-level stability, discernible churn among districts, crops, clusters and urban enclaves is evident, without significantly transcending the states’ pecking order.

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.