Class Legitimacy and Individual Choice: An Ethnographic Study of Indian Urban Middle-Class Intimate Relationships

This chapter explores the reproduction and legitimization of class inequalities through intimate relationships. In my ethnographic fieldwork among the Indian urban middle class, I have learned that the focus of scholars and my informants is on a variety of relationships: arranged and love marriages, love-cum-arranged marriages (and vice versa), informal relationships, to name a few. To classify a relationship as a particular type, the nature of the choice is often assessed. These distinctions could provide food for thought for an important (system) structure—(individual) agency debate. However, I would like to depart from this debate and ask, instead, why do middle-class members find it necessary to mark their choices as truly autonomous and individual? (cf. Romanowicz, forthcoming). Scholars have paid attention to the role of elites and grassroots in various forms of inequality (Pardo and Prato, Querying urban inequalities. In: P. Italo and G. B. Prato (eds.), Urban Inequalities: Ethnographically Informed Reflections. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and legitimacy (Pardo and Prato, Legitimacy: Ethnographic and theoretical insights. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). This chapter supplements these studies with a middle-class perspective. Ultimately, I conclude that the emphasis on “individual choice” aids governance, despite jarring levels of inequalities being maintained and perpetuated.