MARRIAGE AS GROUP ALLIANCE

Outside industrial societies, marriage is often more a relationship between groups than one between individuals. We think of marriage as an individual matter. Although the bride and groom usually seek their parents approval, the fi nal choice (to live together, to marry, to divorce) lies with the couple. The idea of romantic love symbolizes this individual relationship.

Contemporary Western societies stress the notion that romantic love is necessary for a good marriage. Increasingly this idea characterizes other cultures as well. Described in this chapters Appreciating Anthropology is a cross-cultural study that found romantic ardor to be widespread.

The mass media and migration increasingly spread Western ideas about the importance of love for marriage to other societies. However, marriages in the nonWestern societies where anthropology grew up, even when cemented by passion, remain the concern of social groups rather than mere individuals.

The scope of marriage extends from the social to the political. Strategic marriages are tried and true ways of establishing alliances between groups. People dont just take a spouse; they assume obligations to a group of in-laws. When residence is patrilocal, for example, a woman often must

leave the community where she was born. She faces the prospect of spending the rest of her life in her husbands village, with his relatives. She may even have to transfer her major allegiance from her own group to her husbands.

Bridewealth and Dowry

In societies with descent groups, people enter marriage not alone but with the help of the descent group. Descent-group members often have to contribute to the bridewealth, a customary gift before, at, or after the marriage from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin. Another word for bridewealth is brideprice, but this term is inaccurate because people with the custom dont usually regard the exchange as a sale. They dont think of marriage as a commercial relationship between a man and an object that can be bought and sold.

Bridewealth compensates the brides group for the loss of her companionship and labor. More important, it makes the children born to the woman full members of her husbands descent group. For this reason, the institution is also called progeny price. Rather than the woman herself, it is her children, or progeny, who are permanently transferred to the husbands group. Whatever we call it, such a transfer of wealth at marriage is common in patrilineal groups.

In matrilineal societies, children are members of the mothers group, and there is no reason to pay a progeny price.

Dowry is a marital exchange in which the brides family or kin group provides substantial gifts when their daughter marries.

For rural Greece, Ernestine Friedl (1962) has described a form of dowry in which the bride gets a wealth transfer from her mother, to serve as a kind of trust fund during her marriage. Usually, however, the dowry goes to the husbands family, and the custom is correlated with low female status. In this form of dowry, best known from India, women are perceived as burdens. When a man and his family take a wife, they expect to be compensated for the added responsibility.

Although India passed a law in 1961 against compulsory dowry, the practice continues. When the dowry is considered insuffi cient, the bride may be harassed and abused. Domestic violence can escalate to the point where the husband or his family burn the bride, often by pouring kerosene on her and lighting it, usually killing her. It should be pointed out that dowry doesnt necessarily lead to domestic abuse. In fact, Indian dowry murders seem to be a fairly recent phenomenon. It also has been estimated that the rate of spousal murders in the contemporary United States may rival the incidence of Indias dowry murders (Narayan 1997).

Sati was the very rare practice through which widows were burned alive, voluntarily or forcibly, on the husbands funeral pyre (Hawley 1994). Although it has become well known, sati was

mainly practiced in a particular area of northern India by a few small castes. It was banned in 1829. Dowry murders and sati are fl agrant examples of patriarchy, a political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.

Bridewealth exists in many more cultures than dowry does, but the nature and quantity of transferred items differ. In many African societies, cattle constitute bridewealth, but the number of cattle given varies from society to society. As the value of bridewealth increases, marriages become more stable. Bridewealth is insurance against divorce. Imagine a patrilineal society in which a marriage requires the transfer of about 25 cattle from the grooms descent group to the brides. Michael, a member of descent group A, marries Sarah from group B. His relatives help him assemble the bridewealth. He gets the most help from his close agnates (patrilineal relatives): his older brother, father, fathers brother, and closest patrilineal cousins.

The distribution of the cattle once they reach Sarahs group mirrors the manner in which they were assembled. Sarahs father, or her oldest brother if the father is dead, receives her bridewealth. He keeps most of the cattle to use as bridewealth for his sons marriages. However, a share also goes to everyone who will be expected to help when Sarahs brothers marry. When Sarahs brother David gets married, many of the cattle go to a third group: C, which is

Davids wifes group. Thereafter, they may serve as bridewealth to still other groups. Men constantly use their sisters bridewealth cattle to acquire their own wives. In a decade, the cattle given when Michael married Sarah will have been exchanged widely.

In such societies, marriage entails an agreement between descent groups. If Sarah and Michael try to make their marriage succeed but fail to do so, both groups may conclude that the marriage cant last. Here it becomes especially obvious that such marriages are relationships between groups as well as between individuals. If Sarah has a younger sister or niece (her older brothers daughter, for example), the concerned parties may agree to Sarahs replacement by a kinswoman. However, incompatibility isnt the main problem that threatens marriage in societies with bridewealth. Infertility is a more important concern. If Sarah has no children, she and her group have not fulfi lled their part of the marriage agreement. If the relationship is to endure, Sarahs group must furnish another woman, perhaps her younger sister, who can have children. If this happens, Sarah may choose to stay with her husband. Perhaps she will someday have a child. If she does stay on, her husband will have established a plural marriage.

Most nonindustrial food-producing societies, unlike most foraging societies and industrial nations,

allow plural marriages, or polygamy. There are two varieties; one is common, and the other is very rare. The more common variant is polygyny, in which a man has more than one wife. The rare variant is polyandry, in which a woman has more than one husband. If the infertile wife remains married to her husband after he has taken a substitute wife provided by her descent group, this is polygyny. Reasons for polygyny other than infertility will be discussed shortly.

Durable Alliances
It is possible to exemplify the group-alliance nature of marriage by examining still another common practice: continuation of marital alliances when one spouse dies.

Sororate What happens if Sarah dies young? Michaels group will ask Sarahs group for a substitute, often her sister. This custom is known as the sororate (Figure 11.5). If Sarah has no sister or if all her sisters are already married, another woman from her group may be available. Michael marries her, there is no need to return the bridewealth, and the alliance continues. The sororate exists in both matrilineal and patrilineal societies. In a matrilineal society with matrilocal postmarital residence, a widower may remain with his wifes group by marrying her sister or another female member of her matrilineage sororate Widower marries sister of his deceased wife.

Levirate What happens if the husband dies? In many societies, the widow may marry his brother. This custom is known as the levirate. Like the sororate, it is a continuation marriage that maintains the alliance between descent groups, in this case by replacing the husband with another member of his group. The implications of the levirate vary with age. One study found that in African societies, the levirate, though widely permitted, rarely involves cohabitation of the widow and her new husband. Furthermore, widows dont automatically marry the husbands brother just because they are allowed to. Often, they prefer to make other arrangements (Potash 1986).