Published: 2025-12-03

So different, yet so similar: theoretical reflections about intimate relationships in urban middle class India

Anna Romanowicz
Journal of Urban Ethnology
Section: Miscellanea
DOI https://doi.org/10.23858/JUE23.2025.010

Abstract

Most scholars determine the extent of individual choice to delineate love and arranged marriages, as well as other types of intimate relationships, in India. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork among urban middle class in Delhi, I challenge this approach. I argue that as no choice is ever taken in a social vacuum, the love and arranged marriage dichotomy, theoretically embedded in the individualisation thesis, is ill understood. Its inadvertent consequence is reproduction of neoliberal myth of an individual “freed” of social influences and constraints.

Keywords:

intimate relationships, individual choice, middle class, India

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Romanowicz, A. (2025). So different, yet so similar: theoretical reflections about intimate relationships in urban middle class India. Journal of Urban Ethnology, 23(-), 175–188. https://doi.org/10.23858/JUE23.2025.010

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