Madam Teacher

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Sex and Marriage

Last week we began to discuss kinship and stressed its importance as an organizing

principle (and source of identity) in many societies. Remember that kinship has two aspects to it:

relationships of consanguinity and relationships of affinity. We’ve already discussed the

relationships of consanguinity: descent groups and systems of kinship calculation. Now we’ll

move on to the relationships of affinity that are formed by marriage.

A brief review

We are considering the various ways in which people organize themselves into groups.

All primates are social animals: we are genetically predisposed to live in groups. So, we are like

other primates in that we live and act in groups. Unlike other primates, however, humans are

capable of belonging to many different groups simultaneously. We all belong to various

communities: families, neighborhoods, the university, the city, the nation, the world. We belong

to those groups by various by a virtue of many different criteria: genetic relatedness, ethnicity,

language, economic relationships, common interests.

No one would deny that individual action is meaningful, but is one perspective on human

action which maintains that human action is most effective when carried out collectively. We

started out by taking about families and immediate kin groups, and larger kin groups such as

clans and lineages. Later, we’ll get to political organizations, nation-states, and that sort of thing.

So we will start small and work our way up.

Starting at the small end, we can look at marriage and families. Marriage is in many ways

the central social institution. Marriage is universal, it found in all societies. But the form is takes

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is cultural. Different cultures have different definitions of what marriage is, that is, they define

the relationship between married people differently. What their duties, rights, and obligations are

to each other and to their families. Different cultures have different rules about who you can and

can’t marry. Different cultures have different rules about how long marriage lasts and whether it

can be ended.

An introductory textbook by William Haviland gives a fairly simple definition of

marriage. “Marriage is a transaction and resulting contract in which a woman and a man are

recognized by society as having a continuing claim to the right of sexual access to one another,

and in which the woman involved is eligible to bear children.”

That’s a minimalist definition and in many ways it inadequate to understand the role of

mariage, especially in traditional societies. In 21 century North America we view marriage as ast

relationship between two individuals. It’s romantic the coming together of two kindred souls in

search of bliss. The bliss lasts for two days or maybe a year; then you get divorced.

In our highly individualistic society, marriage is viewed as a matter of free choice

exercised by two people. But in most traditional societies marriage really isn’t about the two

people who are joined together. It is about the groups that they represent. It’s about the division

within the household. It’s about passing property from one generation to the next.

Marriage is a lot of things and its different things in different places. The British

anthropologist Edmund Leach despaired of ever arriving at a universal definition of marriage.

Instead, he suggested that depending on the society, several different kinds of rights are allocated

by institutions classified as marriage. These rights vary from one culture to another, and no single

one is widespread enough to provide basis for defining marriage.

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According to Leach, marriage can, but doesn’t always, accomplish the following six

things:

1. Establish the legal father of a woman’s children and the legal mother of a man’s

2. Give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.

3. Give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other.

4. Give either or both spouses rights over the other’s property.

5. Establish a joint fund of property - a partnership- for the benefit of the children.

6. Establish a socially significant ‘relationship of affinity’ between spouses and their relatives.

So Leach’s list tells us what marriage does in traditional societies. It focuses in function. The

cultural part tells you how and with whom you do it.

Incest and Exogamy

The first cultural rule of marriage is about who can marry and with whom. Culture tells

you with whom you can have children. In stateless, or pre-industrial societies, a person’s social

world includes two main categories: kin and strangers. Strangers are potential or actual enemies.

There’s an apocryphal story about The Arunta of Australia. The story says that when two

men walking in the outback meet one another they will sit down on the ground and discusses

their lineages. If they can’t find a common relative going back five generations they will get up

and fight to the death.

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Marriage is one of the primary ways of converting strangers into kin, of creating and

maintaining personal and political alliances, relationships of affinity. Exogamy, the practice of

seeking a husband or a wife outside one’s own group, had adaptive value because it links people

into a wider social network that nurtures, helps, and protects them in time of need.

Marriage and Incest

Incest refers to sexual relationships with someone considered to be a close relative. All

cultures have taboos about it, rules that forbid it. However, although the taboo is universal,

cultures define incest differently. As an illustration, consider some of the implications of the

distinction between two kinds of first cousins: cross cousins and parallel cousins.

The children of two brothers or two sisters are parallel cousins. The children of a brother

and a sister are cross cousins. Your mother’s sister’s children and your father’s brother’s

children are your parallel cousins. Your father’s sisters children and your mother’s brother’s

children are your cross cousins.

The American kin term cousin doesn’t distinguish between parallel and cross cousins, but

in many societies, especially those with unilineal descent, the distinction is fundamental. One

common form of kinship organization is called the moiety. Moiety is community with two

descent groups. You either belong to group x or group y. Some societies have patrilineal

moieties, with descent traced through the male line, some have matrilineal moieties, with descent

traced through the female line.

In a moiety organization, parallel cousins always belong to your moiety. Cross cousins

always belong to the other moiety. Incest in these cultures is defined as mating with someone

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within your own moiety. So you can’t marry your parallel cousin. You can marry your cross

cousin, however. He or she isn’t part of your group. In fact, in most moiety societies, the cross

cousin is the preferred mate.

In our society, however, marrying any kind of first cousin is considered incest and banned

by law. Some states ban marriages between second cousins as well. As was noted when we

discussed kinship, the North American system does not distinguish between relatives on your

mother’s side and relatives on your father’s side.

There are even more extreme cases, however. The Lakher of southeast Asia are strictly

patrilineal. That is, they trace descent rigidly through the male line. They adhere to this principle

so rigidly that the mother is not considered a relative, because she belongs to a different descent

group.

Let’s suppose that ego’s father and mother get divorced. Each remarries and has a

daughter by a second marriage. A Lakher always belongs to his or her father’s descent group. All

the member’s of your descent group are too closely related to marry. So if your father has

children in his second marriage, you can’t marry them. They are relatives. But if your mother has

children by her second marriage, you can marry them. They belong to their father’s group, so

they aren’t your relatives.

So cultures have different definitions and expectations of relationships that are

biologically or genetically equivalent from our perspective. And in some cases this is a product

of their view of biological reproduction. For instance, among the Andaman Islanders, they do

not recognize that the husband has a direct role in fathering his wife’s children. He helps, but he

isn’t really responsible. In their view, sex merely prepares a woman to bear children: the

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metaphor that is used is that sex is likely plowing the field (but not planting the seeds). The role

of the man is to open up the woman so that she is prepared to receive the spirit of the child. The

spirit is actually placed inside of her by the ancestors. Ultimately, therefore, the woman’s

ancestors are the “fathers” of all her children.

The Andaman islanders, like many groups of that region, are matrilineal. Last week I

talked about the Trobriand Islanders, which are also matrilineal. In both groups identity (and

property) are passed through the female line. The biological father in those societies is only a

marginal member of the family, and most of the right, duties, and responsibilities we associated

with a father in our society are carried out by the mother’s brother. In fact, the word that we

would translate as “father” in fact refers to a member of the mother’s lineage who is of the same

generation as ego’s mother. In effect, the mother’s brother and all of his siblings are called

“father”.

Incest Avoidance

Many people have proposed over the years that incest avoidance is biological, but there’s

very little solid evidence to support that position. Without doubt inbreeding over several

generations can lead to the expression of deleterious traits, but there isn’t much evidence to

support the idea that we are biologically programmed to avoid such events.

The most accepted explanation for the incest taboo is that it arose to insure exogamy, to

force people to marry outside their kin groups.. In this view the taboo originated early in human

evolution because it was adaptively advantageous in the cultural sense. It create alliances

between groups. Marrying a close relative, within your group, does nothing to build alliances.

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There is more to be gained by extending peaceful relations to a wider network of groups. This

view emphasizes the role of marriage in creating and maintaining alliances.

Endogamy

Endogamy refers to marrying inside of a group. Kinship endogamy is usually done for

ideological reasons, especially ideas of purity.

In the big picture, however, you can’t talk about endogamy and exogamy without talking

about the reference group. For example, kinship exogamy is the norm, but it is often combined

with rule of class endogamy (marrying within your social and economic class).

An extreme example is found in traditional Hindu castes in India. Castes are stratified

groups in which membership is ascribed at birth and is lifelong. Indian castes are divided into

five major groups, called varna. Each is ranked relative to the other four and these categories

extend throughout India. Each varna is divided into subcastes (jati), each of which includes

people within a region who intermarry. So, in that society, the norm is kin group exogamy

combined with caste endogamy.

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Marriage in Tribal Societies

As noted earlier, in traditional or non-industrial societies, marriage is often more of a

relationship between groups than between individuals. It is a way of creating alliances and

enlarging the size of the group you can call on in time of trouble.

It is also the basis of economic organization. In our last lecture we talked about how, in

traditional societies, economics isn’t about money, it’s about fulfilling social obligations.

Marriage is the basis of those obligations. That is why, at the time of marriage, there is usually a

transfer of goods between the families involved. These transfers fall into two major groups:

Bridewealth and Dowry

Bridwealth is where the man’s family gives gifts to the woman’s family at the time of the

marriage. Sometimes instead of gifts and money, the man is obliged to work for the woman’s

family for a period of time. In that case it is called bride service. The idea is the same however,

the bride’s family gets something in exchange for her. This isn’t a purchase (in most cases). It is

viewed as compensation to the family for the loss of the woman, whose labor is valued. More

important, it makes the children born to the woman full members of the man’s descent group.

For this reason, the institution is often called progeny price.

Dowry is the situation where a woman’s family gives gifts to the man’s family at the time

of the marriage. Up until fairly recently dowry was common in Europe. It is still very common

in India, although it has been outlawed.

Bridewealth and dowry are associated with different kinds of societies. Bridwealth is

found in patrilineal societies, as you might expect because the woman goes to the man’s group.

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It is found in societies in which women and their labor are highly valued. When women engage

in productive work in the home or the fields, they have higher status. For instance, in pastoralist

societies in Africa women are the ones who tend the herds. A man’s wealth depends upon the

labor of his wife or wives.

In contrast, dowry is found in societies where the labor of women is not valued. For

instance, in 19 century Europe women were largely confined to the home and did not engage inth

the type of labor that added to household income.

Dowry is probably best know, however, in traditional Hindu groups in India. Women in

traditional Indian society had low status and were often portrayed as burdens to the husband’s

household for which his family was entitled to compensation. If the woman’s dowry was

perceived to be insufficient she might be harassed and abused by the man’s family, even to the

point of being burnt alive. In addition to dowry murders, Indian women were traditionally

subject to the practice of sati, in which the woman as obliged, generally against her will, to join

her husband on his funeral pyre after his death.

Bridewealth is far more common than dowry, however, and in addition to serving as

compensation to a woman’s family, it also functions as insurance. That is, once these gifts are

exchanged, it makes a marriage difficult to undo. The general rule is that as the value of

bridewealth increases, marriages become more stable. Remember that marriage is the alliance of

two groups. If a man wishes to marry and is obliged to pay a large brideprice, he will probably

be obliged to call upon a large group of his kinsmen to assemble the wealth that is required.

On the other side, the woman’s family will take the bridewealth and use it to secure wives

for their male members. If the marriage were to fail they would be obligated to return the

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brideprice, which they are not in a position to do, because they’ve generally spent it. So, ending a

marriage simply because the two people don’t get along is simply out of the question. Neither

side wants to see that happen.

Should the marriage have other problems, such as infertility or the death of a spouse,

there are institutions to work it out and preserve the links between the two groups.

Two common institutions are the sororate and the levirate. In sororate, a sister of the

marriage woman takes her place in the marriage. Say for instance that Rachel marries a man

from group X, in Encino. Say then that she dies shortly after marriage when she is pushed into a

cactus patch by paparazzi. Her kin group would be obligated to provide a new wife for the man

she married. The preferred stand-in would be her sister, but a cousin would do. The pinch-hitter

simply needs to be a member of her kin group.

Death is one example of where the sororate would apply. In some societies, however,

infertility would be another reason for a new wife to be procured. In such cases, the first wife

doesn’t go home to her own group, but continues to reside in the husband’s household and there

are two wives.

The levirate is the flip side of the sororate. It is where another member of the male’s

group substitutes for the husband. Generally, this is done in the case of the man’s death, and the

woman then becomes a wife of the man’s brother. If the brother is already married, she becomes

a second wife.

Sometimes such second marriages are merely symbolic. That is, the woman joins the

brother’s household, but they don’t live together and they don’t have sexual relations. It is an

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economic arrangement that provides security for the woman and additional labor for the man’s

household.

Polygamy

As just noted, in many cultures, people are allowed to have multiple marriage partners.

This is called polygamy. When a man has more than one wife it is called polygyny. When a

woman has more than one husband, it is called polyandry.

There are many cultures where polygyny is socially approved, but many fewer where it is

widely practiced. That is, even in those societies where polygyny is approved, most men are

monogamous.

One reason for this is equal sex ratios. In the U.S. About 105 males are born for every

100 females. In adulthood the ratio equalizes and eventually it reverses. But at the time when

most people select mates the ratios are about equal. If people marry within their cohort, someone

of about the same age, there’s about one man for each woman.

Polygyngy is generally found among societies where men marry later than women. For

instance, among the kanuri of bornu, Nigeria, men get married between the ages of 18 and 30,

women marry between 12 and 14. The age difference mean that there are more widows than

widowers. Most of the widows remarry, some in polygamous untions. Among the Kanuri and

other polygamous socieites, widows make up a large number of the women involved in plural

marriages.

Polygyny is also generally found in societies where women’s labor is highly valued.

Take, for example, pastoralist societies in Africa. Among the Masaii, tending herds is gendered

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female (that is, herd turning is a role that is traditionally associated with women). Herds are

wealth, so in order to accumulate wealth, a man needs to marry. The more wives a man has, the

larger his herds.

Similarly, in pre-contact Hawaii, women’s labor was highly valued. I mentioned how

elite women were involved in specialized crafts such as cape making. Polygamy was also

practiced there, and having multiple wives was one way in which a man could increase his

wealth and his prestige.

Often in polygynous societies, the first wife will ask her husband to secure another wife

to help with the work. Sometimes she will even select the second wife. In such cases, there is

usually a hierarchy among the wives, and they are ranked in the order which they joined the

household. Wives may live in different houses or even in different villages.

Polyandry is not at all common. Found in some areas of southern asia – Tibet, Nepal,

India and Sri Lanka. It usually has to do with demographic factors, a shortage of women. The

shortage can result from female infanticide or In the case of the Paharis, from women joining

monasteries.

The most common form was for brothers to share a wife.