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MARRIAGE
ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 19
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 11
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY: NOT PRESENT
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1.
Be able to identify and distinguish between incest, exogamy, and endogamy.
2.
Know the different explanations that have been put forth to explain the incest taboo.
3.
Understand the marital rights that same-sex marriages should have.
4.
Understand how marriage functions as a form of group alliance and the role that
bridewealth and dowries play in creating and maintaining these alliances. In addition,
you need to be able to distinguish between sororate and levirate marriages.
5.
Know how divorce varies across cultures. In particular, you should be familiar with the
factors that affect rates of divorce.
6.
Be able to identify and distinguish between the different kinds of plural marriages and
the conditions that favor each.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. There is no single definition of marriage that is adequate to account for all of the
diversity found in marriages cross-culturally.
B. Terms
1. Genitor refers to the biological father of a child.
2. Pater refers to the socially recognized father of a child.
II. Incest and Exogamy
A. Exogamy is the practice of seeking a spouse outside one's own group.
1. This practice forces people to create and maintain a wide social network.
2. This wider social network nurtures, helps, and protects one's group during times of
need.
B. Incest refers to sexual relations with a close relative.
1. The incest taboo is a cultural universal.
2. What constitutes incest varies widely from culture to culture.
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C. In societies with unilineal descent systems (patrilineal or matrilineal), the incest taboo is
often defined based on the distinction between two kinds of first cousins: parallel
cousins and cross cousins.
1. Sexual relations with a parallel cousin is incestuous, because they belong to the same
generation and the same descent group.
2. Sexual relations with a cross cousin is not incestuous because they belong to the
opposite group or moiety.
D. Specific cultural examples are taken from the Yanomami, the Lakher, and middle-class
America.
III. Explaining the Taboo
A. Instinctive Horror
1. This theory argues that Homo sapiens are genetically programmed to avoid incest.
2. This theory has been refuted.
a. However, cultural universality does not necessarily entail a genetic basis (e.g., fire
making).
b. If people really were genetically programmed to avoid incest, a formal incest taboo
would be unnecessary.
c. This theory cannot explain why in some societies people can marry their cross
cousins but not their parallel cousins.
B. Biological Degeneration
1. This theory argues that the incest taboo developed in response to abnormal offspring
born from incestuous unions.
2. A decline in fertility and survival does accompany brother-sister mating across
several generations.
3. However, human marriage patterns are based on specific cultural beliefs rather than
universal concerns about biological degeneration several generations in the future.
a. Neither instinctive horror nor biological degeneration can explain the very
widespread custom of marrying cross cousins.
b. Also, fears about degeneration cannot explain why sexual unions between parallel
cousins but not cross cousins are so often tabooed.
C. Attempt and Contempt
1. Malinowski (and Freud) argued that the incest taboo originated to direct sexual
feelings away from one’s family to avoid disrupting the family structure and relations
(familiarity increases the chances for attempt).
2. The opposite theory argues that people are less likely to be sexually attracted to those
with whom they have grown up (familiarity breeds contempt).
D. Marry Out or Die Out
1. A more accepted argument is that the taboo originated to ensure exogamy.
a. Incest taboos force people to create and maintain wide social networks by
extending peaceful relations beyond one's immediate group.
b. With this theory, incest taboos are seen as an adaptively advantageous cultural
construct.
2. This argument focuses on the adaptive social results of exogamy, such as alliance
formation, not simply on the idea of biological degeneration.
3. Incest taboos also function to increase a group's genetic diversity.
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IV. Endogamy
A. Endogamy and exogamy may operate in a single society, but do not apply to the same
social unit.
1. Endogamy can be seen as functioning to express and maintain social difference,
particularly in stratified societies.
2. Homogamy is the practice of marrying someone similar to you in terms of
background, social status, aspirations, and interests.
B. Caste
1. India’s caste system is an extreme example of endogamy.
2. It is argued that, although India’s varna and America’s “races” are historically
distinct, they share a caste-like ideology of endogamy.
C. Royal Incest
1. Royal families in widely diverse cultures have engaged in what would be called
incest, even in their own cultures.
2. Manifest function: the reason given for a custom by its natives.
3. Latent function: an effect a custom has that is not explicitly recognized by the natives.
4. The manifest function of royal incest in Polynesia was the necessity of marriage
partners having commensurate mana.
5. The latent function of Polynesian royal incest was that it maintained the ruling
ideology.
6. The royal incest, generally, had a latent economic function: it consolidated royal
wealth.
D. Edmund Leach argued that there are several different kinds of rights allocated by
marriage.
1. Marriage can establish the legal father of a woman’s children and the legal mother of
a man’s.
2. Marriage can give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.
3. Marriage can give either of both spouses rights to the labor of the other.
4. Marriage can give either of both spouses rights over the other’s property.
5. Marriage can establish a joint fund of property—a partnership—for the benefit of the
children.
6. Marriage can establish a socially significant relationship of affinity between spouses
and their relatives.
V. Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage
A. In the section Kottak argues that same-sex marriages are legitimate unions between two
individuals because like other kinds of marriage, same-sex marriage can allocate all of
the rights discussed by Leach.
1. In the U.S., since same-sex marriage is illegal, same-sex couples are denied many of
these rights (e.g., rights to the labor of the other, over the other’s property,
relationships of affinity with the other’s relatives).
2. This does not mean that same-sex marriages, like any other cultural construction, are
not capable of meeting these needs, only that in the U.S. laws prevent them from
doing so.
B. There are many examples in which same-sex marriages are culturally sanctioned (e.g., the
Nuer, the Azande, the Igbo, berdaches, and the Lovedu).
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VI. Marriage as Group Alliance
A. Bridewealth
1. Particularly in descent-based societies, marriage partners represent an alliance of
larger social units.
2. Bridewealth is a gift from the husband’s kin to the wife’s, which stabilizes the
marriage by acting as an insurance against divorce.
3. Brideprice is rejected as an appropriate label, because the connotations of a sale are
imposed; but progeny price is considered an equivalent term.
4. Dowry, much less common than bridewealth, correlates with low status for women.
5. Fertility is often considered essential to the stability of a marriage.
6. Polygyny may be practiced to ensure fertility.
B. In the News: Love and Marriage
1. Typically, anthropologists have overlooked romantic love as a factor in the
interpersonal relationships of the people they study, but this has begun to change.
2. As motifs of romantic love have become more widespread, globally, it has come to
play an increasingly important role in the selection of marriage partners, even to the
extent of being a basis for resistance against arranged marriages, for example.
C. Durable alliances
1. The existence of customs such as the sororate and the levirate indicates the
importance of marriage as an alliance between groups.
2. Sororate marriages involve the widower marrying one of his deceased wife’s sisters.
3. Levirate marriages involve the widow marrying one of her deceased husband’s
brothers.
VII. Divorce
A. Divorce is found in many different societies.
1. Marriages that are political alliances between groups are harder to break up than
marriages that are more individual affairs.
2. Payments of bridewealth also discourage divorce.
3. Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies as well as societies in which
postmarital residence is matrilocal.
4. Divorce is harder in patrilocal societies as the woman may be less inclined to leave
her children who, as members of their father’s lineage, would need to stay him.
B. In foraging societies forces act to both promote and discourage divorce.
1. Promote divorce:
a. Since foragers lack descent groups, marriages tend to be individual affairs with
little importance placed on the political alliances.
b. Foragers also have very few material possessions.
2. Discourage divorce:
a. The family unit is the basic unit of society and division of labor is based on gender.
b. The sparse populations mean that there are few alternative spouses if you divorce.
C. Divorce in the U.S.
1. The U.S. has one of the world’s highest divorce rates.
2. The U.S. has a very large percentage of gainfully employed women.
3. Americans value independence.
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VIII. Plural Marriages
A. Polygamy is illegal in North America, but North Americans do practice serial monogamy,
through multiple marriages and divorces.
B. Polygyny
1. Even in cultures that approve of polygamy, monogamy still tends to be the norm,
largely because most populations tend to have equal sex ratios.
2. Polygyny is more common than polyandry because, where sex ratios are not equal,
there tend to be more women than men.
3. Multiple wives tend also to be associated with wealth and prestige (the Kanuri of
Nigeria and the Betsileo are used as examples).
C. Polyandry
1. Polyandry is quite rare, being practiced almost exclusively in South Asia.
2. Among the Paharis of India, polyandry was associated with a relatively low female
population, which was itself due to covert female infanticide.
3. Polyandry is usually practiced in response to specific circumstances, and in
conjunction with other marriage formats.
4. In other cultures, polyandry resulted from the fact that men traveled a great deal, thus
multiple husbands ensured the presence of a man in the home.
LECTURE TOPICS
1.
Describe the pattern of mating that has recently developed in America, including early
sex, “relationships,” trial marriages, short early marriages followed by divorce, and more
permanent subsequent marriages. Discuss that pattern in terms of adaptation to the
current economic situation and in terms of American ideals about gender and marriage.
2.
Discuss the various payments and exchanges that go along with marriages-their
direction, their amounts, and their functions. Point out the vestiges of such exchanges in
our own ideas about who pays for marriages, who provides for household furnishings,
and so on.
3.
Discuss manifest and latent functions in practices such as the sororate, levirate, the rules
of endogamy or exogamy.
4.
As gay marriages have become an issue in American political discourse, many writers
(columnists, political commentators, social activists, etc.) have presented their arguments
regarding the “true nature” of marriage. It is interesting to present several of the
arguments and place them according to their cultural-political-historical context.
SUGGESTED FILMS
Strange Relations
1992 60 minutes
This film explores the cross-cultural variations found in marriages. Examples include a Nyinba
couple in Nepal, the Wodaabe of Niger, and a couple in Canada. Part of the series Millennium:
Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, narrated by David Maybury-Lewis. Presented by PBS
Video.
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Dadi's Family
1981 58 minutes
This film presents an extended family living in India that is presided over and held together by
the grandmother, Dadi. The film explores the roles of women, kin ties, and marriage. From the
PBS Odyssey series. Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, MA.
An Argument about a Marriage
1966 18 minutes
This film examines a conflict between two groups of bushmen in the Kalahari Desert of southern
Africa over the legitimacy of a marriage and a child born out of wedlock. Documentary
Educational Resources, Watertown, MA.
The Wedding Camels
1980 107 minutes
This films explores the importance of marriage, bridewealth, and livestock among the Turkana of
Kenya. Directed by David and Judith MacDougall.
USING THE ATLAS
Use the Chapter 19 map, Systems of Marriage Relationships, to discuss the spatial
distribution of different systems of marriage. You can use this map to show that the plural forms
of marriage discussed in the textbook are not isolated, oddball cases. This map can also be used
to show that in societies with plural marriages, it does not mean that everybody has multiple
spouses. Rather, a mixture of plural and monogamous marriages characterizes these societies.
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