No Arranged Marriages Here: Migration and the Shift from Relations of Descent to Consent in the Lebanese Diaspora

Abstract

Although frequently debated in the media, few ethnographic studies have examined the dynamics between arranged and love marriages in immigrant communities in Australia. Drawing on Sollors’ theory of Consent over Descent and Bourdieu’s theory of Masculine Domination, this paper examines the cultural transformation brought about by second-generation daughters in Maronite, Lebanese immigrant families from Hadchit who increasingly choose their own spouse based on love and gender equality. This paper theorises women as subjects, not objects of marriage and asks: how does cultural identity change when women have greater agency in the negotiation of marriage? The study finds three dialectical processes of social change. First, the relation of male domination between the sexes has been destabilised. Second, although marriage contracts based upon female consent have led to a growing preference for exogamous love marriages over endogamous arranged marriages within the village, religious endogamy has remained significant. Last, the study finds an overall decline in village identification; ‘Lebanese-Australian’ has become the most common form of cultural identification.

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