Brideprice

Ryan Schram

ANTH 2654: Forms of Families

13 August 2015

Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2654/3

Raise your hand high if these questions are true.

Look around.

We are all different, even though it's not always obvious.

Rule of residence, matrilocal (WM), patrilocal (HF), virilocal (H), uxorilocal (W), avunculocal (HMB). Agnatic, uterine (enatic), cognatic. Incest, exogamy.

• Changes in marriage
  • People are getting married later. Fewer women ever marry. Why?
  • Marriage as a civil rights issue. Is it?
• Marriage is a package of behaviors
• Many different types of marriage
  • Crow marriage by capture (Lowie 2004 [1935]: 186)
  • Dobu serial marriages (Fortune 1963 [1932]: 21-23, 43-53)
  • PNG Highlands, polygynous marriage common, as is separate residences for husband and wives.
  • Is same-sex marriage a new type of marriage? Why or why not?
• Many ways of establishing marriage
  • Betrothal of children
  • Child marriage
  • Ghost marriage
  • Bridewealth
  • Love match
• Two approaches to marriage:

  1. Top-down, holistic: Kinship as an exchange system (Levi-Strauss 1969)
  2. Individualistic: Marriage is part of a moral discourse people use to understand and express themselves as individuals.

Time permitting: alliance versus descent.

Plus: Notes on marriage trends.

Fortune, R. F. 1963 [1932]. Sorcerers of Dobu: The Social Anthropology of the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press.

Lowie, Robert Harry. 2004 [1935]. The Crow Indians. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press.