Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Discursive contexts -- The subject of agency -- "Forced marriage" and a culture of consent -- Britain: the politics of belonging -- The United States and Canada: individual freedom and community -- Regenerating tradition through transnational popular culture -- Conclusion: a cultural studies approach.

Marian Aguiar's book on arranged marriage as a transnational cultural phenomenon provides a sustained analysis of the institution's representation in various forms of media, literature, and policy across the South Asian diaspora of Britain, the United States, and Canada. Aguiar argues that arranged marriage is a global fascination and a subject of curiosity, revulsion, outrage, and envy. She interprets depictions of arranged marriage to illustrate that we are currently in a moment of conjugal globalization, which reveals deep divisions in the processes of globalization constructed on a fault line between individualist and collectivist agency. Aguiar critiques neoliberal celebrations of "culture as choice" that attempt to bridge this separation and advocates for situating arranged marriage discourses within their social and material contexts to see past reductive notions of culture and understand the global forces mediating increasingly polarized visions of agency. Overall, Aguiar's book provides a comprehensive analysis of arranged marriage as a transnational cultural phenomenon and its impact on questions of consent, agency, state power, and national belonging.

English.