Marriage and Peace

This is a guest post by Marielle Risse, author of Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman

It is difficult to write about my book, Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman, given the current war in the Middle East. The anthropological study of people’s lives seems unimportant in the face of such terrors and tragedy. Also it’s hard to understand why such a peaceful country as Oman has been pulled into the war, given that for over 50 years its unofficial motto has been ‘Friend to All, Enemy to None’. Salalah, the city in southern Oman where I lived for 19 years, has been bombed twice.

Anthropology in war is a fraught undertaking; the Human Terrain project, the American government’s attempt to merge military logic with ethnography, did not work.

Anthropology is more along the lines of ballroom dancing. You need peace now, peace in the recent past and the expectation of peace in the future to get started; you also need a group of people who are willing to learn a new way of movement. I like the analogy because people who haven’t done ballroom dancing can dismiss it as frivolous but learning when to turn, when to cross, how to follow the music and how to move in clothes and shoes that are unfamiliar while making the right kind of small talk is excellent training to become an ethnographer. 

And marriage is a peace-time activity; you need peace and food security to think of adding someone to the family and for people and goods to travel to the celebration. So my book is a peace-time book. It reflects my thinking about how Omanis in the southernmost region go about finding someone to spend their life with and how to create a peaceful life together. I cover how men and women decide to start looking for a partner and all the following steps, including the dissolution of a marriage and old age. I did most of my work with people from the hakli, or qara, group of tribes whose first language is a Modern South Arabian language called Gibali (Jebbali/Shahri /Shehret).

I loved going to marriage parties in Dhofar. It was so comfortable with women sitting happily together in brightly light, scented rooms. There was always a range of styles, from women in printed cotton dhobes (loose house dresses) to women in elaborately designed dresses with lace, chiffon, ribbons, sparkles and rhinestones. You could spend 3 hours on your make-up or go without any; wear rings on every finger or leave your jewelry at home. You sipped tea, coffee or juice while snacking for hours, and it was fine to join in conversations or simply sit with a pleasant expression on your face and watch all the colours.

And I loved hearing from my female friends and the men in my research groups about their marriages: how they met their spouse, how they asked/were asked to marry, how they planned their wedding, how they learned to live in harmony. My book is made up of the conversations I was part of, the parties I attended, the stories I heard and the questions I asked. I am so sorry it will arrive in a war-torn era and I hope the peace I enjoyed for 19 years will once again settle over Oman and the Arabian Peninsula.