81 books match the query 'Belonging' and 3 start with m

cover of Making Home: Faith, Love and the Politics of Belonging in Japanese-Filipino Families

Making Home

Faith, Love and the Politics of Belonging in Japanese-Filipino Families

Mario Ivan Lopez

National University of Singapore Press, 2026

An anthropological account of how religion helps sustain bonds within transnational families.

How do faith, family, and migration intersect in the intimate lives of transnational couples? This ethnography examines Japanese-Filipino marriages in contemporary Japan to reveal how gendered Catholic practices, cultural negotiation, and the politics of belonging shape everyday life. Set in Northern Kyushu, Making Home explores the often tense dynamics of these relationships—how love, faith, and social expectations are navigated across multiple domains. Through long-term fieldwork, it shows how Filipino migrants and their Japanese partners create “contact zones” where faith becomes both a resource for connection and a site of struggle. 

Religion, far from being a private matter, becomes a powerful tool for migrants to sustain family ties, negotiate identities, and transform the intimate spaces they live in. Centering religious practices within migration studies, this book offers fresh insights into the evolving landscape of transnational families in Japan.
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cover of Marriage Matters: Imagining Love and Belonging in Uganda

Marriage Matters

Imagining Love and Belonging in Uganda

Edited by Lotte Meinert, Julaina A. Obika, and Nanna Schneidermann

University College London, 2025

A vivid account of how marriage, love, and kinship are changing in Uganda. 

Building on a collaborative research project between African and European scholars, this volume examines changes in ideas of partnership, kinship, child filiation, friendship, love, and commitment in Uganda. Through detailed portraits of Ugandan couples and communities, Marriage Matters offers fresh new insights within the burgeoning field of scholarship on marriage and family, as well as thought-provoking reflections on the consequences of partnership changes for the country’s future. Engaging with new and classical anthropological theory and gender studies, the volume reflects not only on how Ugandans imagine the relationships between genders and generations, but also broader trends in how we understand love and intimacy.
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cover of Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America

Jake Johnson

University of Illinois Press, 2019

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopted the vocal and theatrical traditions of American musical theater as important theological tenets. As Church membership grew, leaders saw how the genre could help define the faith and wove musical theater into many aspects of Mormon life. Jake Johnson merges the study of belonging in America with scholarship on voice and popular music to explore the surprising yet profound link between two quintessentially American institutions. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Mormons gravitated toward musicals as a common platform for transmitting political and theological ideas. Johnson sees Mormons using musical theater as a medium for theology of voice--a religious practice that suggests how vicariously voicing another person can bring one closer to godliness. This sounding, Johnson suggests, created new opportunities for living. Voice and the musical theater tradition provided a site for Mormons to negotiate their way into middle-class respectability. At the same time, musical theater became a unique expressive tool of Mormon culture.
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