Grit Hartung and Dr Raksha Pande



Wedded to Traditions? Arranged Marriages and South Asians in Britain.

The design stems from my PhD research which examined the motivations, performances and discourses of arranged marriage among the South Asian population of Britain. This research destabilises the image of arranged marriage as a practice in need of change and updating to a western form of kinship. The discourse of arranged marriage is employed by British Asians to not only further their ties of kinship but also to reflect and construct their identity narratives of being Asian and British. The subversion, translation and reworking of the ways in which arranged marriage is performed points not to a new, better, western or modern form of the practice but to a discourse that is uniquely British Asian.

My research concludes that the enunciation of discourses of arranged marriage occupy a space that is neither inside nor outside the minority and majority cultures but is at a tangential and ambivalent relation to them. An acknowledgment of the fluid, hybrid and dynamic nature of identities sets up the possibility of imagining a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy. Finally, I propose that instead of using the yardstick of hegemonic norms to reify and judge minority cultural practices one needs to regard them as part of Britain, as another thread, among many, that is woven in the tapestry of British culture. The associations of identity with nationality, ethnicity, religion or culture are all imagined and as such can be reimagined in the context of a globalising world.



Crossing Boundaries: Barriers Danced
In order to visualise the interstitial passage between fixed identifications and their dynamic negotiation we have employed the metaphor of dance. The dance supports the active nature of migrant identities. The footprints create a dance pattern which invites the audience to experience and reflect on the tensions and negotiations (risk, effort, struggle, courage and guilt) that are involved in the evolution of migrant identities. The individual patterns on the footprints borrow British and Indian symbols. They are interwoven to form a new design which highlights the processes of hybridity – a Fish ‘n’ Chips rangoli and a Lion spiral. These are colour coded with reference to the national flag colours of the UK and India. The patterns are presented in a zoom in and zoom out configuration in order to stress the importance of distance, both cultural and geographical, in our perception of the meaning and value attached to cultural artefacts.

The dance steps follow the style of a traditional North East Indian dance called Cheraw from the state of Mizoram. It employs bamboo poles to create patterns which dancers jump and hop over. The dancers follow the rhythm produced by the tapping of bamboo poles. We have replaced the bamboo with barrier and hazard tape in order to invite the audience to reflect on the psychological barriers that hinder cultural interaction. Their incorporation in a dance which invites participation is in aid of highlighting the fact that all forms of cultural negotiation involve crossing and jumping barrier but they do not necessarily presuppose the eradication of a cultural practice or artefact altogether. The possibility of improvisation that mediums such as dance and music offer also emphasizes the invented nature of traditions.