Analysis Of Robert K. Merton´s Intermarriage And The Social Structure

In “Intermarriage and the Social Structure”, Robert K. Merton’s classic theoretical work on mixed marriages, Merton tells us: “No society lacks a system of marriage. In no society is the selection of a marriage partner unregulated and indiscriminate”. Marriage, and the laws regulating it, can be seen as emblematic of a specific lens through which the historian might view certain topics in history such as migration, citizenship and race. While interracial relationships between colonial functionaries and local women occurred throughout France’s colonial empire, as Elisa Camiscioli tells us in Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century, it was the First World War that brought French women and “men of color” into contact in large numbers for the first time. The resulting relationships Camiscioli states were viewed as “morally suspect and racially unsound”. During and following decolonlization, the discource around interracial relationships, and more speficilly interacial relationships between French women and male migraints from, or citizens of, formerlly colonized contries continued to evelove. …show more content…
This research piquecd my intrest in French women in mixed relationships and how they were seen by society during and after declonization. For my research masters, I would like to study the discourse surrounding French women in mixed relationships from 1955-1975. I hope to better understand how French women in transgressive relationships were seen, not only by the popular press, but by the acedemic community. In this way I hope to better undersand the interplay between race and gender in post-colonial