“有的故事从终结开始讲起”
理想的亲密关系是人们永恒的讨论话题。如何保持亲密而不变得令人窒息？如何在传统模式不再可行之际，建立有爱、相互扶持的关系？怎样的亲密模式对于个体、婚姻和家庭，甚至社会最为有利？在无法忍受之时，人们又如何下定决心结束一段关系？
本研究聚焦于个人生活和家庭变迁中的一个阶段——离婚，它涉及如何建立并保持“好”的关系，也涉及分离带来的风险和机遇。而在这些讨论中，每个词都值得更严肃的思考。作为一部当代日本的情感民族志，本书收集了离婚过程中不同阶段的私人故事，探索个人、法律、社会及经济结构等多个方向在浪漫关系上的交汇，同时也更广泛地表达了当代人对爱情和婚姻的看法。
【名家推荐】
名家推荐：
“一幅日本人关于婚姻的习俗和态度的全景图，在人们协调依赖关系和个人利益的时候，人们关于婚姻的很多习俗和看法都在改变……日本并不被认为是婚姻浪漫的典范，这种看法在《亲密的分离》中得到了反映。不过，秉持着不作评判地解释的人类学精神，阿列克西的书有助于理解一个正在摆脱将婚姻等同于正常的社会。”
——《日本时报》
“《亲密的分离》提供了关于当代日本改变对婚姻、亲密和关系的期望的极其丰富的解释。阿列克西对离婚的深刻并富于同理心的分析，一定会丰富我们对这一全球日益普遍的人生决定及其法律、经济和情感后果的经验性理解。”
——宫崎广和，西北大学
“这是本内容丰富的民族志，研究了日本日益增多的离婚现象和对熟年离婚的公开讨论，阿列克西还深入探讨了流行的离婚女性赋权问题。阿列克西在书中对当代日本的性别动力学、劳动力市场和社会经济结构进行了细致描述，这本易读但精心写就的书将是文化人类学和性别研究领域的重要补充。”
——竹山秋子，堪萨斯大学
“我强烈推荐这本书给任何有兴趣了解日本当前婚姻和离婚状况的人……这本书提供了对于日本过去二十年的转变的有益概述，提出了关于当代日本的法律、经济和劳动现实的深刻见解。”
——《日本研究新声音》

Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking widespread public comment and concern. Through the close ethnographic examination of case studies drawn from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense places new and changing forms of marriage in comparative perspective as a transforming and also transformative social institution. In conditions of widespread socio-political inequality and instability, how are the personal, the familial and the political co-produced? How do marriages encapsulate the ways in which memories of past lives, present experience and imaginaries of the future are articulated?
Exploring the ways that marriage draws together and distinguishes history and biography, ritual and law, economy and politics in intimate family life, this volume examines how familial and personal relations, and the ethical judgements they enfold, inform and configure social transformation. Contexts that have been partly shaped through civil wars, cold war and colonialism – as well as other forms of violent socio-political rupture – offer especially apt opportunities for tracing the interplay between marriage and politics. But rather than taking intimate family life and gendered practice as simply responsive to wider socio-political forces, this work explores how marriage may also create social change. Contributors consider the ways in which marital practice traverses the domains of politics, economics and religion, while marking a key site where the work of linking and distinguishing those domains is undertaken.
Praise for Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense
‘Can marriage, under the banner of conformity and “tradition”, become the vehicle for innovative, even radical, social change? The authors in this volume explore this provocative question through exquisitely rich ethnographic accounts of the transformational potential of marriage in diverse cultures across the globe. They beautifully illuminate the subtle work of “ordinary ethics” through which people reimagine and reshape the contours of the normative expectations that ricochet through the worlds of individuals, families and nations.’
Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia