Abstract
This chapter further explores the links between de-traditionalisation and re-traditionalisation. It does so by examining the survival of marriage in Britain and the desire of many young women to ‘choose’ tradition in marrying and becoming a wife. In so doing, the chapter, using insights from critical institutionalism, mounts a critique of contemporary attempts to update individualisation theory and details how tradition is reworked and reproduced in dealing with social change.
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Notes
- 1.
Expressed as persons marrying per 1000 unmarried persons over 16.
- 2.
2011 estimate assuming 2010 divorce and mortality rates throughout the duration of marriage.
- 3.
Although this construction of the self is also ‘the unreflexive product of a particular cultural tradition, namely Western modernity’ (Adams 2003: 234).
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Carter, J., Duncan, S. (2018). Choosing Tradition: Getting Married. In: Reinventing Couples. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58961-3_3
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