Don S. Browning. Marriage and Modernization: How Globalization Threatens Marriage and What to Do about It. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. 258. $30.00 (Paper).

Abstract

"Don Browning's Marriage and Modernization is, first, a comprehensive examination of how globalization impacts modern marriage and, second, a call for interdisciplinary, international, and interreligious dialogue that addresses the challenges of contemporary marriage. Browning's primary argument is that it is absolutely necessary for Christianity and other religions to maintain a key role in effectual interdisciplinary dialogue about marriage and to construct a normative approach to marriage. [2] Browning maintains that modernization, "the spread throughout the world of technical rationality and its efficiency-oriented and cost-benefit logics and patterns," and globalization, "the process by which information, images, symbols, and styles of life zigzag back and forth across the world," are a threat to the institution of marriage. These processes, he argues, are having disruptive consequences on families in all corners of the earth, and, therefore, the "worldwide revival and reconstruction of marriage" must involve a "complex cultural work" that is religious, political, legal, economic, and psychological. This work does not, however, "pit modernization against marriage but will be about having both modernization and marriage." Browning notes early on the litany of modern trends (smaller families, women working in the wage economy, more equality between spouses, more education, less control of extended family over the conjugal couple, more divorce, premarital childbirth, and cohabitation, ...) which have been endlessly researched and oft lamented in both the academic and popular press. The bulk of this book, however, does not discuss particulars per se but elaborates upon the assertion that religion is an essential dimension of the new cultural work necessary for the reconstruction of marriage and family. It excavates the philosophies, theologies and cultural meanings that undergird marriage and family and discusses particular issues as a means of illustration and rationale for the practical dialogue he calls for. The main elements that would go into the world practical-theological dialogue as envisioned by Browning are: research and reflection, reformation of marriage traditions, development of a public theology to undergird the public institution of marriage, discussion of work and family issues by state and religious institutions, and marriage education."(pg 1)