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Based on qualitative research on marital problems in Dhaka, this article uses the term 'intimate extractions' as a lens to explain the relationship between escalating levels of demand dowry and neoliberal development in Bangladesh. Evidence from across Bangladesh shows that demands for cash made by husbands, accompanied by threats of violence or divorce, are on the rise. Building on gendered theories of contemporary capitalist development and feminist analysis of microcredit, the article argues that demand dowry should be understood within the current context of rapid economic development in Bangladesh. High levels of precarity, lack of state welfare and the need for cash for businesses, labour migration, education and healthcare mean that people from all social classes are in perpetual need of money. Marriage problems and the practice of demand dowry present opportunities for husbands to extract money from wives and their families. Embedded in the intimate relationship of marriage, demand dowry can therefore be understood as a 'conversion', a process in which intimate relationships are converted into projects of capital accumulation, thus becoming an 'intimate extraction'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on Andrea Pia's notion of the ethical fix, this article shows how emotional fixes are used to bring emotions into balance at a feminist nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Promoting a noninterventionist stance in which its advisers do not directly tell their clients what to do, the NGO provides legal advice and counseling to women facing problems in their marriages. Emotional fixes include building clients' inner strength, cooling emotions, and shaming abusive husbands. These fixes enable the advisers to reconcile what appears from the outside to be contradictory positions: feminism, on the one hand, and adherence to hierarchical kinship norms, on the other. This means that more intractable issues are avoided and the potentially contradictory ethical stances of the advisers are obscured. Client emotions are malleable and fluid, and injunctions by advisers for clients to cultivate particular states, such as 'coolness' can work in a range of ways. While the antipolitics of the emotional fix can cut both ways—concealing both emancipatory and conservative politics ‐ like Pia's ethical fixthe emotional fix itself remains piecemeal and fragile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between social mobility, insecurity, and connectedness to hierarchically ordered foreign places in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Here, particular areas have migratory connections with Britain, a destination which is perceived by those left behind as supplying bountiful economic opportunities and long-lasting security. In contrast, Bangladesh is experienced as insecure and lacking in prospects. Within this context, social connections are vital, for through them links to Britain are produced and maintained; this is especially the case for young men who are hoping to find a British bride. For them, connectedness results from both their social capital (relationships to successful ‘Londoni’ migrants who help arrange their marriages) and their cultural capital (gained by participating in particular forms of work and lifestyles, thus making them more attractive as prospective grooms). Meanwhile for those families settled in Britain, another form of transnational connectedness takes place, in which the political insecurity and social exclusion experienced in Britain are offset by economic and social investments in the desh (homeland). Résumé L'article explore la relation entre mobilité sociale, insécurité et connections avec des lieux situés à l'étranger et entre lesquels une hiérarchie est établie. Dans le Sylhet, région du Bangladesh, certaines zones ont des connections migratoires avec la Grande-Bretagne, destination que ceux qui sont restés perçoivent comme riche de possibilités économiques lucratives et de sécurité durable alors que le Bangladesh est perçu comme peu sûr et dépourvu de perspectives. Dans ce contexte, les connections sociales sont vitales car elles font le lien avec la Grande-Bretagne, en particulier pour les jeunes hommes qui espèrent y trouver une épouse. Dans leur cas, les connections sont le produit à la fois d'un capital social (relations avec les émigrés londoni qui ont réussi et qui aident à arranger les mariages) et d'un capital culturel (acquis en participant à certaines formes de travail et de mode de vie qui améliorent leur attrait en tant que maris potentiels). Pour les familles installées en Grande-Bretagne, les connections transnationales prennent une autre forme, dans laquelle l'insécurité politique et l'exclusion sociale vécues sur place sont compensées par les investissements économiques et sociaux dans le desh (« le pays »). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paperarticle, based on ongoing research carried out in Bangladesh since the mid-1980s and field-work in London in the late 1990s, I take a historical approach to the analysis of transnational Sylheti marriages. By showing how the form of these marriages has changed since the mid-twentieth century, I argue that transnational migration is itself highly fluid. The role of wives in maintaining transnational links is central to the account. I focus in particular on the wives of “first-generation” migrant men who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and whose families were generally reunited in Britain by the 1980s. By describing the household and caring work of these wives both in Sylhet and London, I demonstrate that rather than being “dependants” of their migrant husbands, women have been central to the success of migrant households. The rewards of transnational connectedness have, however, come at a cost – long-term separation from loved ones. Isolation and loneliness have been hallmarks of the experiences of these earlier generations of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]