The ideation and instantiation of arranging marriage within an urban community in Pakistan, 1982–2000

Abstract

Using longitudinal data and marriage arrangements in urban Pakistan, this paper discusses the consequences of changes in ideational systems. Merging different theoretical approaches (or cultures) within cultural anthropology, it argues that, while symbol systems are not an analogue of an external world, nevertheless they are effective drivers for how people relate to, adapt to and modify the external relations within which they are embedded. This allows for the accommodation of analytic viewpoints that favour both the symbolic construction of reality and the behavioural relations of how this construction is enacted.

Acknowledgements

Different parts of the research presented in this paper have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Science and Engineering Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and the Nuffield Foundation, all from the United Kingdom.

Notes

1. See M.D. Fischer, Marriage and Power in Pakistan: Tradition and Transition (Austin, TX: University Microfilms, 1987), pp 187–197; and M.D. Fischer, ‘Marriage and power in Pakistan: tradition and transition’, in H. Donnan and P. Werbner (eds), Economy and Culture in Pakistan: Migrants and Cities in a Muslim Society (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp 97–118.

2. See M.D. Fischer, ‘Modelling complexity: social knowledge and social process’, in C. Hann (ed.), When History Accelerates: Essays on the Study of Rapid Social Change (London: Athlone, 1994), pp 75–94; and M.D. Fischer and W. Lyon, ‘Model marriage in Pakistan’, in A. Rao and M. Boeck (eds), Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice (New York: Berghahn, 2000), pp 267–322.

3. M.D. Fischer, ‘Modelling complexity: social knowledge and social process’, in C. Hann (ed.), When History Accelerates: Essays on the Study of Rapid Social Change (London: Athlone, 1994), pp 76–77; M.D. Fischer and W. Lyon, ‘Marriage strategies in Lahore: projections of a model marriage on social practice', in A. Rao and M. Boeck (eds), Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice (New York: Berghahn, 2000), pp 269–270.

4. See Fischer, 1987, op cit, Ref 1, pp 176–178; and Fischer, 1991, op cit, Ref 1, pp 104–106.

5. S.R. Sherani, Ritual and Symbol in Pakistani Politics (Canterbury: University of Kent, 1988), pp 221–224.

6. M.D. Fischer, ‘Expert systems and anthropological analysis’, Bulletin of Information on Computing in Anthropology, Vol 1, No 4, 1986, pp 6–14. See also Fischer, op cit, Ref 2, pp 75–94.

7. Fischer, 1987, op cit, Ref 1, pp 162–165.

8. Fischer, op cit, Ref 2, pp 75–94.

9. R. Hirschon, ‘Introduction: women and property, women as property’, in R. Hirschon (ed.), Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women (Oxford: Routledge, 1986), p 6.

10. See Fischer, 1991, op cit, Ref 1, p 116; and Fischer, op cit, Ref 2, pp 75–94.

11. R. Owens, ‘Industrialization and the Indian joint family’, Ethnology, Vol 10, No 2, 1971, pp 23–50; and S.J. Yanagisako, ‘Family and household: the analysis of domestic groups’, Annual Reviews of Anthropology, Vol 8, 1979, pp 161–206.

12. M.D. Fischer and W. Lyon, ‘Household size strategies in an urban community in Pakistan’, in F. Selier and H. Donnan (eds), Household and Family in Pakistan (London: Macmillan, 1996).

13. Ibid.

14. D.R. Bender, ‘A refinement of the concept of household: family, co-residence and domestic functions’, American Anthropologist, Vol 69, No 2, 1967, pp 493–504.

15. Fischer and Lyon, op cit, Ref 2.

16. Fischer, 1986, op cit, Ref 6, pp 5–7.

17. R.G. D'Andrade, The Development of Cognitive Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p 8.

18. G. Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (New York: Bantam, 1988[1979]), p 45.

19. M.D. Fischer, ‘Marriage and power in Pakistan: tradition and transition', in Hastings Donnan and Pnina Werbner (eds), Economy and Culture in Pakistan: Migrants and Cities in a Muslim Society (London: Macmillan, 1991), p 119.

20. Fischer and Lyon, op cit, Ref 2. For a more explicit account of this new theory, see M.D. Fischer and D. Read, Final Report to Economic and Social Research Council (UK) on ‘The Relationship between Ideational and Material Models’ (Canterbury: CSAC Publications, 2000), pp 1–10; and the related website, real.anthropology, 〈http://real.anthropology.ac.uk〉, accessed 20 August 2006.

21. Fischer and Read, ibid; real.anthropology, ibid.

22. M.D. Fischer, ‘Indigenous knowledge and expert knowledge in development’, in P. Sillitoe and A. Bicker (eds), The Contribution of Indigenous Knowledge to Economic Development (London: Harwood, 2002).

23. Z. Eglar, A Punjabi Village in Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p 68.

24. H. Donnan, ‘The rules and rhetoric of marriage negotiations among the Dhund Abbasi of Northeast Pakistan’, Ethnology, Vol 24, No 1, 1985, pp 183–196.

25. V. Das, ‘The structure of marriage preferences: an account from Pakistani fiction’, Man, Vol 8, No 1, 1973, pp 30–45.

26. See M.D. Fischer, ‘Cultural agents: a community of minds, engineering societies in the agents world VI', in O. Dikenelli, M. Gleizes and A. Ricci (eds), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol 3963/2006 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006), pp 259–274; and M.D. Fischer, ‘Cultural agents: changing the world in the community of minds', in R. Trappi (ed.), Proceedings of Cybernetics and Systems 2006 (Vienna: Austrian Cybernetics Society, 2006).