perkawinan sebagai sarana penyatuan kelompok
TRANSCRIPT
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MARRIAGE AS
GROUP ALLIANCEOutside 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
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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 giftbefore, 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.
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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 UnitedStates 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
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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 herbridewealth.
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
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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,
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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, anotherwoman
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.
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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, itis 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).