Abstract
Weddings are collective rituals that enable couples to show their solemn commitment to an invited audience. In this sense, weddings can thus be viewed as important forms of ‘display work’. While there are clear commonalities between rituals and display work, particularly in terms of their emphasis on spectacle, demonstration and audience, little attention has been given to how display work can inform and indeed transform wedding rituals. We use display work as a lens for exploring how same-sex couples construct and enact their wedding. In particular we show how heteronormative, gendered traditions that underpin the wedding rite are negotiated. Our findings demonstrate the interplay between display work and normative ritual elements. We identify four tactics of ‘reflexive display’: strategic compliance; playful appropriation; annexation; and conspicuous absence. Together, these show how the wedding rite is done, undone or redone, to reflect each couple’s unique relationship and perspective on same-sex union.
Highlights
In this article we investigate a previously under-explored area in the sociology of families, namely display work as applied to rituals
While the wedding ritual may look to the past, it brings present and future aspirations into the ritual space (Gillis, 1997; Myerhoff, 1984). This perception of ritual as an agent of transformation is pertinent and potent, we suggest, in same-sex weddings, and its empowering aspect is revealed through the display work undertaken by couples
Our analysis offers a systematic theorisation of how rituals intersect with display work
Summary
Traditions, and consider the ritual scripts and artefacts that couples use in their display work in this context. Becomes a form of work (Almack, 2008), which serves social goals by communicating that the ritual commitment and solemnity signified by the traditional marriage ceremony is the same in terms of its symbolic and socio-cultural power, but framed, inscribed and performed differently in order to emphasise distinctiveness from the heterosexual norm. Same-sex weddings are contested, as partners are called upon to negotiate the heteronormative and gendered aspects of the rite, while still utilising its legitimising power In this process, the components comprising rituals, including scripts, artefacts, couple roles and audiences, become the elements that the couple has to manage as part of their display work. In line with previous works, such as Harman and Cappellini (2015) and Gabb (2011), we used display as a sensitising concept, to anchor our analysis to the literature as well as to further inform and provide specification to the concept itself (Blumer, 1954), in its interconnectedness to rituals
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