In middle-class Pakistan, marriage is the prescribed future for all women, but premarital contact between the sexes is discouraged. To find the right partner, then, without visibly flouting social norms, requires a skillful balancing act between private interests and aspirations, and between public representations and collective concerns. Young women often navigate these conflicting demands by developing what they call an understanding: a secret premarital relationship that they normalize by involving family at a late stage to orchestrate an arranged marriage. Firmly enmeshed within the social life of joint families, understandings are an instance neither of defying patriarchal norms nor of pursuing self-cultivation within them. Instead, they offer a window into how young women live and explore new possibilities within the vestiges of normative structures. [love, marriage, desire, morality, consumption, joint family, Lahore, Pakistan]

中文翻译：

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爱是理解

在巴基斯坦的中产阶级，婚姻是所有女性的既定未来，但不鼓励两性之间的婚前接触。因此，要找到合适的合作伙伴，而又不要明显地违反社会规范，就需要在私人利益和志向之间，在公共代表和集体关注之间进行巧妙的平衡。年轻女性通常通过发展一种她们所谓的理解来应对这些相互冲突的需求：一种秘密的婚前关系，她们通过在后期让家人参与安排包办婚姻来使这种关系正常化。牢固地融入共同家庭的社会生活，理解既不违抗父权规范，也不追求修身养性。相反，它们提供了一个窗口，可以了解年轻女性如何在规范结构的遗迹中生活和探索新的可能性。[爱情，婚姻，欲望，道德，消费，合家，拉合尔，巴基斯坦]