Roles of Marriage Partners in the US With Those of a Less Industrialized Nation

Marriage in Eastern and Western Nations

A Comparative Analysis of Marriage Rituals and Customs in the North America and Asia

Throughout the history of humanity, distinctions and differences between the Eastern and Western cultures had been studied, most especially during the 20th century, wherein anthropological studies uncovered the various cultures extant in the world during the said period. Indeed, between the 20th century and the present time, these differences prevail, primarily because there are still evident distinctions that characterize both Eastern and Western cultures.

One important aspect of these numerous distinctions is the differences in marriage rituals among peoples of the Eastern from the Western cultures. Take as an example the differences in the marriage practices between North American and Asian nations: the latter are considered as subsisting to more elaborate and implicitly meaningful ceremonies while cultures in Western societies are often considered as straightforward and practical. Furthermore, religion plays a vital role in strengthening marriage practices among Asian cultures, while it plays minor significance for those who had been assimilated with North American norms on marriage and domestic partnership.

Given these basic differences between the Asian and North American cultures, this paper provides a comparative analysis of the different practices and beliefs in marriage in the American, Malaysian, and Japanese contexts. Moreover, given the said analysis, this paper also delves into the occurrence of both hybridization and persistent exclusivity of prevalent cultures in these societies (American, Malaysian, and Japanese). In effect, marriage rituals are characterized as dynamically developing to include or allow social changes that happen in terms of looking for a potential domestic partner.

In establishing the thesis that marriage rituals among the three societies cited are dynamically developing and possess the characteristic of being hybrid (mixture of two or more cultures) or exclusive, the texts that follow provide a descriptive analysis of marriage as conducted in the United States, Malaysia, and Japan.

In the American culture, marriage ritual is primarily based not on the conduct of specific activities, but through subsisting to a specific ideology or belief in choosing a potential and future domestic partner in life. Current research on marriage in the American context showed that instead of changes in rituals, changes in marriage beliefs have become prevalent, specifically in cultivating liberal ideas such as same sex marriages. According to Kim and Reed (2004), marriage rituals in general are considered more than religious rituals; they are significantly tied to people's lives, a manifestation of how, in light of the issue of same sex marriages, marriage is a domain where "church and state vie for authority over our intimate lives."

The significance of marriage in reflecting the power and authority between the church and the state is manifested in Oswald's (2001) study, wherein qualitative analysis of relationships between gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals and their community led to the generalization that religion or the church played an essential role in providing support to the individual -- that is, the existence of religious diversity and liberalism (47). This finding on the said research highlights the fact that in the American context, marriage is a civil activity that is relevant to two important domains in the society: politics and religion. More than a celebration of a cultural activity, marriage is considered a celebration of peoples' rights to freely subsist to religious or political beliefs when involving one's self into domestic partnership and life.

Malaysian society provides a far more different portrayal and conduct of marriage. In Malaysian societies, marriage is exclusively tied with the society's culture, specifically, religion. Weddings are conducted in order " ... To monitor the genealogical appropriateness of the marital pair ... thanks moyang (ancestors) for the past good year and ask for a good year to come" (Nowak, 2000). Inevitably, marriage is tied with mysticism and religious rituals, an activity that is devoid of any political influence. What makes Malaysian wedding rituals different from the American society's is that the latter conduct weddings not to focus on the celebrants or the bride and the groom, but on the ritual itself. This contradicts the American experience, wherein the bride and the groom (or the celebrants) are given central roles in the said activity, thereby resulting to a social activity borne out of the beliefs of people or individuals rather than social actors (people) emerging out of a social activity (wedding).

While American weddings reflect the dynamic process that marriage and domestic partnership undergo, and Malaysian societies demonstrate exclusivity in celebrating weddings in the context of the society's culture, Japanese wedding rituals are mainly identified as a hybrid form of modern and traditional cultures of the country. Japanese wedding rituals are also characterized as having a dynamic or ever-changing process of creating and developing marriage beliefs as well as the reinforcement of traditional practices and usage of material essentials needed in conducting weddings.

Japanese society is portrayed as a hybrid form of culture when it comes to marriage rituals because it has the character of both traditional and modern practices. Traditional practices often conducted are the usage of the traditional wedding attire, called "ju nihitoe" and setting up weddings in Shinto shrines (Goldstein-Gidoni, 2000:45; Coeyman, 2002). However, the prevalence of modern ideas on marriage is illustrated in the Japanese couples' practice of recognizing same-sex marriages, as well as acknowledgment of the fact that people can live together without going through the tedious process of arranging marriages according to tradition. At present, however, Western influence on marriage practices has a more powerful effect on the nature of Japanese weddings. Not only do weddings become modernized or 'Westernized,' they have also assumed the appearance of completely commercialized and practical marriages (Goldstein-Gidoni, 2000:50).