Abstract
Ideologies about minorities as traditional, non-modern, subordinated, or simply irrelevant to modern societies continue to survive in the mainstream discourses on South Asians. Such ideologies are most starkly evident in the framing of discussions about arranged marriages, wherein South Asian families are portrayed as oppressive, authoritarian, and tradition-bound. Rifat Anjum Salam, in her book Negotiating Tradition, Becoming American, focuses on the theme of arranged marriages to question this overgeneralized construction of the oppressed South Asian. Using data from 60 interviews with predominantly upper- and middle-class second-generation South Asians, Salam employs a life-course approach to demonstrate how their dating and marriage choices and experiences are far more complex and nuanced than the stereotypical cultural imagery of arranged marriages. Through these interviews, she describes how this second generation navigates the influence of multiple social locations of family, community, culture, class, gender, and ideas about individualism and autonomy associated with mainstream American society.
The book is organized around three different trajectories, or pathways, taken by the second-generation South Asians. The individuals who take the neotraditional pathway exercise bounded autonomy, which Salam explains is characterized by a strong need to fulfill parental and community expectations. If individualism is about making choices, these individuals consciously choose to marry within their ethnic community, as they believe that a shared cultural background is the key to a successful relationship. Those on the independent pathway exercise instrumental autonomy, which, according the author, reflects mainstream individualism; their decisions are based on what they believe is right for themselves and not on parental expectations. Finally, the individuals on the ethnic rebellion pathway represent what the author describes as divergent autonomy, in which decisions are grounded in political and social activism. These individuals refuse to fall into the one-dimensional tradition–modernity dichotomy; they tread the middle path between racialized and orientalist discourses of South Asians and the equally constricting fundamentalist interpretations of traditions. In fact, Salam also argues that individuals on the ethnic rebellion pathway often rely on their “traditional” values to embark on various forms of mobilization and change. This is well illustrated in the narrative of Vivek, whose personal decisions and politics have been significantly influenced by the spiritual, anti-material, and humanist traditions of Hinduism.
By demonstrating the relationship between marriage choices and adaptation of post-1965 immigrants, Salam challenges the segmented assimilation model that has focused primarily on the economic and structural experiences of immigrants. The subjective experiences of South Asians with regard to dating and marriage choices remain underrepresented in the literature, and the author hereby provides a welcome contribution to the existing research on South Asians. In this book, the dynamics of life choices are traced not only to personal forces but also to structural factors. Salam uses a far more nuanced approach that includes an intersectional analysis of social class, gender expectations, model-minority status, childhood socialization, and ethnic networks in understanding the diverse trajectories that these individuals take. However, given the centrality of gender in the analysis, missing in this book is a critical discussion of the gender scholarship that examines the role of traditions in ethnic communities. This gap notwithstanding, this book makes an important contribution in its attempt to break from the oft-portrayed victimhood of South Asians in the dominant discourse, especially in regard to South Asian women and migration, and seeks to explore the space for agency in the personal life choices of these individuals.
From the perspective of data and methodology, the study moves beyond the focus on Indian immigrants by including the experiences of Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants as well. The life-course approach facilitates Salam’s analytical connection between family, society, and individual agency. The rich data provides glimpses of the many ways in which these families socialize their children, at the same time showing the influence of other institutions and structural forces that shape the ways in which they live. Overall, the author combines stories, and interviews with careful analysis to provide a nuanced understanding of the lives of these individuals.
In conclusion, the author provides important sociological insights on the complexity of the dating and marriage choices of second-generation South Asian Americans. This book will appeal to a wide variety of liberal arts and social science audiences. More specifically, it will certainly appeal to those in Women’s studies, Asian American Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Family Studies, and those in related fields.