perkawinan sebagai sarana penyatuan kelompok

7/30/2019 perkawinan sebagai sarana penyatuan kelompok

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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).

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