MARRIAGE AND STUFF
Marriage = customs, rules, obligations that establish socially endorsed relationship between adults/children
- Relatively stable union between M/F that involves responsibility for children, economic exchange
- Leads to group cooperation -> expansion of social group in which people share resources
A society without marriage: the Na of China
Na do not practice marriage
- Sese = joins M/W in sexual/reproductive partnerships
o Na visit: Man stays night in lover’s home, return to own family in morning (always male goes
to women)
o Concealment is necessary: Na taboo forbids male members to see/hear sexual talk/activity
of females
- Relationships include love, respect, intimacy but NO responsibility for children, permanence, fidelity
- No coercion; either may accept/decline
Both M/W have multiple partners, no records are kept to ascertain paternity of children
- Matrilineal
- If no daughters, household may adopt/encourage son to bring lover in
o No husbands, fathers
Forms, functions, and rules of marriage
US – heterosexual, monogamous marriage
Some African societies - Woman-woman marriage – surrogate bears children
Azande – man-man if shortage of women
Incest taboos: rules that prohibit sexual relationships with specific categories of kin
- Universal, differ per categories of kin/society
o Bio theory: Prevents inbreeding (deleterious effects)
o Psych theory: Innate aversion to siblings or sexual competition among siblings/parents creates
disruptions
o Alliance theory: force people to marry out of group, increase social bonds
▪ Lévi-Strauss – there’s adaptive value of cooperation among groups, larger than nuclear
fam
- Parent-child, siblings (except some) relationships are prohibited suggests kinship as culturally
constructed
Exogamy: marry-out
- Forge links between entire communities, allowing for military alliances, political federations, and inter-
tribal networks of cooperation and exchange
Endogamy: require people to marry WITHIN group
- May be outside village, but within tribe/ethnic group
- Keeps wealth, privileges within group
- Castes, religious groups, social classes, racial groups
o India used to have laws against intercaste marriage
Preferential Marriage
Many small-scale societies distinguish sharply between 2 kinds of cousins
Cross-cousin marriage = preferred partner = children of parent’s siblings (mother’s brother, father’s sister)
- Reinforces ties between kin groups
Parallel-cousin marriage = children of parents’ same sex sibling (mother’s sister, father’s brother)
- Helps prevent fragmentation of family property
- Keeps economic resources within fam - Reinforces solidarity of brothers, but also socially isolates brothers from each other (increases fractional
disputes)
Levirate vs. Sororate | rules that allow marriage to survive death of partners, continued alliance between
GROUPS (emphasizes marriage as a group thing)
- Levirate = man marries widow of deceased brother
o Enables children to remain within dead husband’s descent group
- Sororate = wife dies, man marries her sister
Monogamy Only one spouse at any given time
Polygamy Plural marriage
Increases man’s wealth, social position, alliances
Polygyny - Chiefs, leaders take many wives from diff. groups to increase
1 man, several women political power
Increases family’s labor supply, productivity
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