Traditional Inequalities and Inequalities of Tradition: Gender, Weddings, and Whiteness

Abstract

The (British) white wedding offers a unique lens for studying a number of social and cultural phenomena from practices of intimacy, consumption, and romance to macro level studies of economics, value, and exchange. The wedding also represents an ideal focus for studying the intersection of intimacies and inequalities as it acts as a location for the practice and performance of intimacy which simultaneously encapsulates historical and contemporary gender, race, and class inequalities. These inequalities are often upheld, celebrated even, in the name of ‘tradition’ in relationships, marriage, and weddings. This article aims to interrogate this notion of tradition to understand how, rather than being a neutral concept, it is used to reproduce and reinforce existing gender inequalities, middle-class values, and privileging of Whiteness. The argument in this article draws on 3 years of research on weddings including interviews and ethnographic observations. I conclude that while wedding traditions may have become increasingly reflective of democratic choices, they retain traditional inequalities in their representation and conceptualisation.

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