Sheldon, Ruth and Frosh, Stephen and Vyrgioti, Maria (2024) Redeeming marriage? Bittersweet intimacy and the dialectics of liberation among Haredi Jews in London. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. (In Press)
Sheldon, Ruth and Frosh, Stephen and Vyrgioti, Maria (2024) Redeeming marriage? Bittersweet intimacy and the dialectics of liberation among Haredi Jews in London. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. (In Press)
Sheldon, Ruth and Frosh, Stephen and Vyrgioti, Maria (2024) Redeeming marriage? Bittersweet intimacy and the dialectics of liberation among Haredi Jews in London. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. (In Press)
Abstract
This article intervenes in feminist anthropological debates about marriage within Western cosmopolitan, ‘post-traditional’ contexts through a close ethnographic examination of food and ritualised meals among Haredi Jews in London. We focus on this diasporic religious Jewish minority, whose marital practices have been the object of debates over marriage, gender, and cultural difference in cosmopolitan London. Learning from ethnographic and conjugal instances of hunger around Haredi dining tables, we explore the broader question of how heterosexual marriages endure in the face of struggles for intimacy and freedom between different genders. By focusing on what can be learnt about marriage through mealtime rituals with religious significance, we develop a response rooted in a form of Jewish relational ethics that has been repressed within ‘Western’ liberal culture. This approach addresses some tenacious dualisms at play in the anthropology and politics of marriage and articulates a vernacular dialectical grammar of desire, tradition, freedom, and love.
Item Type: | Article |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 05 Feb 2024 17:01 |
Last Modified: | 29 Feb 2024 13:54 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/37721 |
Available files
Filename: Redeeming marriage_accepted.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0