Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Brokering Marriages: War, Displacement, and the Production of Futures among Jaffna Tamils

研究生Sidharthan Maunaguru将在Veena Das博士的指导下，研究斯里兰卡贾夫纳半岛基督教和印度教泰米尔人中婚姻经纪人的成长，这是30年来长期国内冲突和暴力的影响。家庭聘请婚姻经纪人为那些为了躲避暴力而移民到斯里兰卡的儿子寻找贾夫纳的妻子。根据初步研究，毛纳古鲁假设，家庭雇用婚姻经纪人有两个主要原因：确保其子女的短期安全，以及在情况变得更安全、子女可以返回时提供继承权和社会地位的连续性。这种类型的婚姻已经变得如此普遍，以至于政府和外国大使馆都设立了新的婚姻。因此，当代的贾夫纳婚姻经纪人不仅要处理种姓、亲属关系和地位等传统问题，还必须了解官僚程序和文化的来龙去脉，有时还必须积极协助举行婚礼。研究计划要求：(1)两个月的档案工作，以跟踪斯里兰卡独立以来婚姻政策的变化，以及贾夫纳泰米尔人迁徙到的地方移民和婚姻政策的变化；(2)在贾夫纳进行的四个月的调查工作，收集关于家庭、家谱、婚姻模式和婚姻活动的信息；(3)两个月的调查，以绘制婚姻经纪人的位置；以及(4)在婚姻经纪人办公室进行参与者观察。这项研究对日益增长的关于政府在公民日常生活中的角色变化的社会科学文献有重要贡献；亲属关系和婚姻在当代世界中扮演的新角色；以及文化和社会中间人在等级关系(与国家)和横向关系(弥合空间距离)中的作用。它还将帮助社会科学家了解人们如何应对长期流离失所和内乱的微妙影响，这种情况在世界各地非常常见。

Graduate student Sidharthan Maunaguru, supervised by Dr. Veena Das, will undertake research on the growth of marriage brokers among Christian and Hindu Tamils on the Jaffna Peninsula of Sri Lanka, as an effect of thirty years of chronic civil conflict and violence. Families are employing marriage brokers to find Jaffna wives for sons who have migrated out of Sri Lanka to escape the violence. Based on preliminary research, Maunaguru hypothesizes that families are employing the marriage brokers for two primary reasons: to assure the short term safety of their children and to provide for the continuity of inheritance and social status when the situation becomes safer and children can return. Marriages of this type have become so common that the government and foreign embassies have set up new. Thus the contemporary Jaffna marriage broker not only has to contend with traditional concerns of caste, kinship, and status, but also must know the ins and outs of bureaucratic processes and cultures, and sometimes actively assists with marriage ceremonies. The research plan calls for: (1) two months of archival work to track changes in Sri Lanka's marriage policies since independence, as well as the changing immigration and marriage policies of the places to which Jaffna Tamils have migrated; (2) four months of survey work in Jaffna, collecting information on family, genealogies, marriage patterns, and marriage activities; (3) two months of survey to map marriage broker locations; and (4) four months doing participant observation in a marriage broker's office.The research is important as a contribution to the growing social science literature on the changing role of government in citizens' everyday lives; the new roles played by kinship and marriage in the contemporary world; and the role of cultural and social brokers in hierarchical relations (with the state) and horizontal relations (bridging spatial distances). It also will help social scientists understand how people cope with the subtle effects of long-term displacement and civil strife, a situation only too common throughout the world.