As Stephen Ross describes in his essay “Demystifying Networks” networks are a “net-like arrangement of threads and wires” later to stand for an interlocking system aka stuff and relationships. Something that I can speak on behalf of is the concept of arranged marriages. Now my reader is seeing the word arranged marriages from an individualistic societal perspective. I beg that they don’t. Arranged marriages are a reflection of a collectivistic culture and to say that it is backwards or “not right” is insulting and dehumanizing an indentity. Moving forward, the way that arranged marriages operate is essentially through a network. For example, you feel like you’re at the right age to get married. Your mother and father will spread the word through their friends that you want to settle down. They will spread the news through a network. Each friend of your parents’ also has a network which the news will spread through. And so on.
Now you could be satisfied to marry someone so far along networks that you can’t really see how you found each other, but that isn’t the point. What you really strive for in this process is someone from a network you relate to, can vouch for the family. So you would want to marry into a family preferably from your aunt’s network, because presumably your aunt is a trusted source. Your parents would be the centrality as they decided that your aunt is an important part of the network to give responsibility to. So the concept of arranged marriages is entirely based off of networks.
I came to this idea of arranged marriages as a network after watching this commercial someone had sent to me over Facebook.
Just as a post note, there are different types of ways to approach arranged marriages. It’s not an oppressive way to trap women. (Though we are in modern times, I would be an idiot to not recognize that forced marriages do occur still.) The arranged marriage that I am describing in my post is a typical Pakistani manner of an arranged marriage in which both prospects have the freedom to say no, yes, etc.