Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China

Indiana University presents Professor Sara Friedman, speaking about her recently published edited volume, "Wives, Husbands, and Lovers", which examines how sexual relationships and marriage are understood and practiced in contemporary urban China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Professor Friedman will speak about her recently published edited volume, Wives, Husbands, and Lovers, which examines how sexual relationships and marriage are understood and practiced in contemporary urban China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The talk will address new societal and institutional forces reshaping marriage and sexual intimacy, including the changing face of state regulation, the expansion of no fault divorce laws, lower rates of childbearing within marriage, and the increased tolerance for non-marital and non-heterosexual intimate relationships. By tracing how the marital "rules of the game" have changed substantially across the region, the volume challenges long-standing assumptions that marriage is the universally preferred status for all men and women, that extramarital sexuality is incompatible with marriage, or that marriage necessarily unites a man and a woman. The talk will point to some of the potential futures for marriage, sexuality, and family across these culturally Chinese societies.

Sara Friedman is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University.  She is the author of Intimate Politics: Marriage, the Market, and State Power in Southeastern China (Harvard UP, 2006).  Her recent research focuses on marital migration from China to Taiwan and the consequences of Chinese immigration for Taiwan’s sovereignty dilemmas.  Her book, tentatively titled Exceptional States: Chinese Marital Immigrants and the Challenges of Taiwanese Sovereignty, is forthcoming from the University of California Press.

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