Editors' introduction : religious marriages in the Mediterranean

Abstract

This special issue brings together six articles focused on the broad topic of religious marriages in the Mediterranean. The idea of convening scholars to consider this topic emerged through conversations among the three of us several years back, and resulted in a two-day, interdisciplinary conference held in Malta in March 2018. The articles in this special issue were originally presented at the conference, where we came to appreciate the rich diversity of current scholarship on religious marriages in Mediterranean settings and took particular note of the wide range of disciplines from which it emerged — including history, anthropology, law, religious studies and cultural studies, among others. It was immediately evident that the papers resonated with one another, and strong themes emerged. In this editorial introduction we focus first on two themes that run through the papers. Next, we briefly introduce each paper and highlight its connection to the themes and its other specific contributions to burgeoning scholarship on religious marriages. Finally, we conclude by considering where the study of religious marriages in the Mediterranean may be headed in the future. Beginning with our initial interest in the topic of religious marriages in the Mediterranean, we have been relatively unconcerned with questions of definition. Specifically, the project of defining what is meant by ‘religious marriages’ is not one taken up directly by us or by our authors. Rather, we have preferred to endorse a plural sense of religious marriages that emerges through, and is illustrated by, the examples provided by our authors. Undeniably, at certain moments the category ‘religious marriage’ attains a discursive clarity, particularly through the lens of the state and/or religious institutions that recognise certain marriages as legitimate, as against other relationships. There can be significant consequences to this selective (non-) recognition; some of which were addressed by Prof. Annelies Moors, in delivering the conference’s keynote speech, titled ‘Problems with Regularising Religious Marriages’. While discussing the rise of public policy debates on unregistered, religious marriages, she observed how state institutions’ efforts to define, regularise, restrict or mandate official registration of ‘religious marriages’, often produce contradictory results (Moors 2018). As an analytic category to be wielded by scholars across different contexts, religious marriage has not proven to be especially useful. At the same time, as the articles published here demonstrate, exploring the diverse ways in which religious marriages are understood, constituted, defended, or delegitimised reveals both the normative role of multiple legal and religious institutions and also the complex politics surrounding marriage. Also consequential in shaping religious marriages are the agentive choices made by individuals and groups, which themselves respond tactically and dialogically to the normative spectrum called into being by the political strategies adopted by both state and religious institutions. The paragraphs below touch briefly on the themes of plural normative orders and of agency, as they relate to religious marriages.