1. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 1 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Marriage What Is Marriage? Incest and Exogamy Explaining the Taboo Endogamy Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage Marriage As a Group Alliance Divorce Plural Marriages

2. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. What Is Marriage? –Establishes legal parentage of children –Gives spouses rights –Genitor – biological father of a child –Pater – socially recognized father of a child No definition of marriage broad enough to apply easily to all societies and situations

3. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 3 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Incest and Exogamy –Forces people to create and maintain a wide social network Incest – sexual relations with a close relative –The incest taboo is a cultural universal –What constitutes incest varies widely from culture to culture Exogamy – practice of seeking a spouse outside one’s own group

4. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 4 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Incest and Exogamy 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 – children of two brothers or two sisters –Cross cousins – children of a brother and a sister

5. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 5 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Parallel and Cross Cousins and Patrilineal Moiety Organization

6. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 6 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Matrilineal Moiety Organization

7. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 7 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. –Cross cultural finding show incest and its avoidance shaped by kinship structures –Focus on risks and avoidance of father- daughter incest correlates with a patriarchal nuclear family structure Explaining the Taboo No universally accepted explanation for fact that all cultures ban incest

8. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 8 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. –This theory has been refuted Specific kin types included within the incest taboo have a cultural rather than a biological basis Instinctive Horror Theory Homo sapiens are genetically programmed to avoid incest

9. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 9 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. –Decline in fertility and survival accompanies brother-sister mating across several generations –Human marriage patterns based on specific cultural beliefs rather than universal concerns about biological degeneration several generations in the future Biological Degeneration Theory Incest taboo developed in response to abnormal offspring born from incestuous unions

10. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 10 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Malinowski (and Freud) argued incest taboo originated to direct sexual feelings away from one’s family to avoid disrupting the family structure and relations Attempt and Contempt –Opposite theory argues that people are less likely to be sexually attracted to those with whom they have grown up

11. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 11 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Explaining the Taboo –More accepted argument is that taboo originated to ensure exogamy –Incest taboos force people to create and maintain wide social networks –Incest taboos are seen as an adaptively advantageous cultural construct Marry Out or Die Out

12. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 12 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Endogamy Endogamy can be seen as functioning to express and maintain social difference, particularly in stratified societies Endogamy and exogamy may operate in a single society, but do not apply to same social unit

13. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 13 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Endogamy Homogamy – practice of marrying someone similar to you in terms of background, social status, aspirations, and interests Caste –India’s caste system is extreme endogamy –Although India’s varna and America’s “races” historically distinct, they share caste-like ideology of endogamy

14. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 14 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Royal Incest Royal families in widely diverse cultures engaged in what would be called incest, even in their own cultures –Manifest function – reason given for a custom by its natives –Latent function – effect of custom that was not explicitly recognized by the natives –Royal incest, generally, had latent economic function

15. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 15 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage –Establish legal father and legal mother –Give monopoly in sexuality of the other –Give rights to labor of the other –Give rights over the other’s property –Establish joint fund of property –Establish socially significant “relationship of affinity Edmund Leach argued that rights allocated by marriage include

16. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 16 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. –This does not mean same-sex marriages, like any other cultural construction, are not capable of meeting these needs, only that in U.S. laws prevent them from doing so –There are many examples in which same- sex marriages are culturally sanctioned In U.S., since same-sex marriage is illegal, same-sex couples denied many of these rights Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage

17. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 17 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Bridewealth and Dowry –Bridewealth – gift from husband’s kin to the wife’s –Dowry – marital exchange in which the wife’s group provides substantial gifts to the husband’s family Particularly in descent-based societies, marriage partners represent an alliance of larger social units

18. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 18 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Durable alliances Continuation of marital alliances when one spouse dies –Sororate – may marry wife’s sister if wife dies –Levirate – right to marry husband’s brother if husband dies

19. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 19 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Sororate and Levirate

20. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 20 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Divorce –Marriages that are political alliances between groups harder to break up than marriages that are more individual affairs –Bridewealth discourages divorce –Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies as well as societies in which postmarital residence is matrilocal Divorce found in many different societies

21. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 21 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Divorce 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 with him –Contemporary Western societies stress romantic love as necessary for good marriage

22. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 22 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Divorce –Very large percentage of gainfully employed women –Americans value independence U.S. has one of world’s highest divorce rates

23. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 23 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Plural Marriages –Even in cultures that approve of polygamy, monogamy tends to be the norm –Polygyny more common than polyandry because, where sex ratios are not equal, there tend to be more women than men Multiple wives tend to be associated with wealth and prestige No single explanation for polygyny Polygyny

24. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 24 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Plural Marriages –Polyandry quite rare, being practiced almost exclusively in South Asia Polyandry usually practiced in response to specific circumstances, and in conjunction with other marriage formats Among Paharis of India, polyandry associated with relatively low female population, due to covert female infanticide In other cultures, polyandry resulted from the fact that men traveled a great deal Polyandry