This special issue seeks to understand the South Asian family in contemporary times, both in its presence and absence, its control and contestation, and its potential to adapt as well as its resilience. The articles in this issue are a collection of compelling exploratory projects that explain the resistance, resilience, and adaptability of the family and its norms and values at the intersection of broader changes, particularly in relation to gender, technological intervention, media, and processes of individualization. The family occupies a pivotal space in the reality and imagination of societies and individuals. It is a crucial building block of identities, often mapped through the conjugal and filial relationships it produces. The family is shaped by-and also shapes-social, cultural, and technological changes. It is therefore pertinent to explain the status, structure, and symbolism of the family in the contemporary lives of South Asians who are undergoing an array of shifts. Being largely dominated by a patriarchal lineage and a family system, South Asian societies are witnessing changes as evident in the increasing participation of women in the work force, the rise of youth culture that shapes the experience of new intimacies, and a public discourse of love and companionship, as well as amendments to existing laws and the enactment of new laws. The family therefore, finds itself propagating continuity of certain normative behavior as it is also compelled to adjust its norms and values. These complex processes of modernization, the increasing use of technology in everyday lives, migration, and the imaginations and desires of South Asians, raise the question of the place and role of the family in contemporary times and how it adapts to-and also shapes-these changes.
3It is this question that has led to the compilation of this issue, since we aim to study the changing realities of contemporary South Asia and the special significance of the family. In doing so, we refrain from proclaiming whether the institution of the family, defined in strict terms, either persists or is on the wane. Instead, through rigorous empirical evidence, we argue that the family and the idea of the family, exists in multiple forms in contemporary South Asia. We explain, for instance, that the idea of the family is constituted or reinforced by media representation, and we also delineate the ways in which the family intervenes in the more individuated spaces of love and romance. With this issue we bring attention to the ways in which the family reflects, and at times resists, the shifts and ruptures that shape South Asian reality. The reality of the family exists in a wide spectrum of social, economic, and cultural practices and representations, and the contributions in this issue bring attention to these from multiple perspectives. They focus on the relation between the individual and the collective (the family, state, and community expectations; facilitating structures (law and technology); different geographic and urban spaces (big ...