Description
Book SynopsisAngel Park is a Mormon fundamentalist polygamous community where plural marriages between one man and multiple women are common. Based on many years of in-depth ethnographic research,
Illicit Monogamy considers the plural family from the points of view of husbands, wives, and children, giving a balanced account of its complications and conflicts.
Trade ReviewIllicit Monogamy focuses on the polygamous community Angel Park, giving readers a real feel for the society. Jankowiak is superb at treating his subjects with fairness, so that we don't care about who is 'best,' but rather what universal factors shape people's responses. This is a wonderful book—I'd be proud to have written it. -- Elaine Hatfield, author of
What's Next in Love and Sex: Psychological and Cultural PerspectivesJankowiak explores in detail the nature of polygynous relationships from the points of view of husbands, wives, and children. The ethnography is very rich and complex, and he is deeply sympathetic to these families in the almost inevitable clash they experience between religious ideology and human emotion and is able to deeply explore their often-conflicted perspectives. Jankowiak is masterful at this—I feel that I can truly understand from this book what it must be like to live in a plural-family household, in both its happiness and its tensions. -- Gordon Mathews, coauthor of
The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global MarketplaceThis original study of the fundamentalist Mormon polygamous community draws on the background of Jankowiak's cross-cultural and ethnographic research on romantic and companionate love, marriage, and sex in Mongolia, China, and elsewhere. Based on a six-year ethnographic project, the author presents rich details from the individual lives of men, women, and children as they adapt to a patriarchally-based polygamous form of family. Simultaneously the ethnographer discerns general patterns and regularities based on systematic collective norms drawn from religious sources. Jankowiak's brilliant synthesis of ethnography and theory throughout his lucid and engaging presentation will interest anthropologists, sociologists, social workers, and religious studies scholars everywhere. -- Raymond Scupin, author of
Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective, Tenth EditionTable of ContentsA Note to Residents of Angel Park
Acknowledgments
1. Plural Marriage and What It Means to Be Human
2. Fundamentalist Polygamy: Contextual Background
3. In the Name of the Father: Public Adoration, Private Qualification
4. Different Philosophies for Organizing a Family
5. Placement Marriage or Self Choice: Finding Your Soul Mate
6. Managing a Marriage: Expectation, Duty, and Preference
7. Cowife Jealousy, Regret, and Cooperative Exchanges
8. Family Politics Revealed Through Naming Practices
9. Theology and Mother Care: Full-Sibling and Half-Sibling Bonding
10. Theological Parenthood and the Making of the Good Polygamous Teenager
11. The Lonely World of Polygamous Men
Conclusion: Themes and Trends
Notes
References
Index
