Open AccessMAKING KIN FROM GOLD: Dowry, Gender, and Indian Labor Migration to the Gulf
Author(s) -
WRIGHT ANDREA
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
cultural anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.669
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1548-1360
pISSN - 0886-7356
DOI - 10.14506/ca35.3.04
Subject(s) - kinship , dowry , ethnography , masculinity , gender studies , transnationalism , sociology , political science , anthropology , politics , law
Drawing on ethnographic research in the United Arab Emirates and India, this article explores relationships among Indian kinship, gender, and transnational migration through a focus on gold that migrant men buy for their sisters’ or daughters’ weddings. Gold, used as a key component of dowry, is often considered “traditional” in an Indian setting, but is actually shaped by liberalization, contemporary statecraft, and transnational migration. As migrants purchase gold for their sisters and daughters with money they earn in the Gulf, they express adult masculinity by being dutiful brothers and sons. This examination of Indian labor migration reveals how workers and their families understand migration as a way to build and maintain kinship ties, and how gold bought in the Gulf becomes a kinship substance that informs understandings of gender and family.