Transcript Sex in marriage

Love, Sex, and Marriage
Sex, Love, and Marriage
Reading: 1) Kinship and Marriage; 2) Jankowiak and
Fischer, A Cross-Cultural Perspective on
Romantic Love, Ethnology.
Family and Kinship Practices 亲族实践
Reading: M. Wolf, Uterine Families and the
Women’s Community; P. L. Kilbride, African
Polygyny: Family Values and Contemporary
Changes
Reading: 1) Rubie Watson, The Named and the
Nameless; 2) V. Fong, China’s One-Child Policy
and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters
Anthropology and the Study of
Kinship Practices
Kinship (family, marriage,
gender) forming the basis of
the discipline;
 ‘comparable to logic in
philosophy and the nude in
art’
Culture and Reproduction
 Every human population, at all times, has had
culturally constructed ways to either promote or
limit population growth.
 Three general modes of reproduction:
-the foraging mode existed for most of human prehistory and had low rates of population growth.
-the agricultural mode emerged with permanent
settlements had increased birth rates.
-industrialized mode (demographic transition)
 Anthropologists have done much less research on
reproduction than on production.
The difficulty of conducting field research
on sexual intercourse and fertility
 Sexuality involves private, secret beliefs and
behaviors. The ethics of participant observation
disallow intimate observation or participation, data
can only be obtained indirectly.
Ex.“How many times did you have intercourse last year?”
 Malinowski’s first anthropology study of sexuality
based on fieldwork in the Trobriands.
- Sexual lived of children; sexual techniques; love
magic; erotic dreams; husband-wife jealousy, etc.
Note: Since the late 1980s, anthropologists have paid
a lot of attention to the study of sexuality, given the
increase of STDS and HIV/AIDS.
When to Begin Having Intercourse?
 Biologically speaking, sexual intercourse between
a fertile female and a fertile make is normally
required for human reproduction.
 Cultures socialize children about the appropriate
time to begin sexual intercourse. Guidelines for
initiating sexual intercourse differ by gender, class,
race, and ethnicity.
 Cross-culturally, rules more strictly forbid
premarital sexual activity of girls than of boys.
 In some cultures, a high value is placed on a
woman becoming pregnant soon after she reaches
menarche, making “teenage pregnancy” a desired
condition instead of a social problem (as perceived
by many experts in the US and China).
How often should one have intercourse?
 The wide range in frequency of sexual intercourse
confirms the role of culture in shaping sexual
desire.
 A study of reported intercourse frequency for
Euro-Americans in the US and Hindus in India
revealed that Indians had intercourse far less
frequently (less than twice a week) than the EuroAmericans did (two to three times a week) in all
age groups.
 Fertility is higher in India than many other parts of
the world where religiously based restrictions on
sexual intercourse do not exist.
Fertility Decision Making and Fertility Control
 Family-level
 National-level
 Global-level
 Family planning programs of many types
 Induced-abortion
 The new reproduction technologies
Love, Sex and Marriage
 What is marriage?
-control of sexual relations
-rule of sexual access
-incest taboo
-endogamy and exogamy
 What is the distinction between marriage
and mating?
 Why is marriage a cultural universal?
Defining MARRIAGE
No single definition of marriage is adequate to account
for all of the diversity found in marriages crossculturally.
A non-ethnocentric definition of marriage is a
relationship between one or more men (male or
female) and one or more women (female or male)
who are recognized by society as having a continuing
claim to the right of sexual access to one another.
Although in many societies husbands and wives live
together as members of the same household, this is
not the true in all societies.
Most marriages around the world tend to involve a
single spouse (monogamy). Yet most societies permit
and regard as most desirable, marriage of an
individual to multiple spouses (polygamy).
According to Edmund Leach,
marriage includes:
 Social identity of children
(who is the legal father or legal mother ?)
 Regulating sexual intercourse
 Rights to spouse’s labor / sexual division of labor
 Rights over spouses’ property
 Joint fund of property & rules of inheritance
 Establishing relations between spouses & their
relatives, or relations of affinity
社会、文化、法律对婚姻实践的构建
Perspectives from bio-anthropology
 Among primates, the human female is
unusual in her ability in sexual activity
whenever she wants to or whenever her
culture tells her it is appropriate,
irrespective of whether or not she is fertile.
 Although such activity may reinforce social
bonds between individuals, competition for
sexual sexual access can be disruptive, so
every society has rules that govern such
access.
* Reproductive success is defined as the passing of
genes onto the next generation in a way that they
too can pass those genes on.
Perspectives from bio-anthropology
 Whatever their virtues,
men are more violent
than women. Why do
men kill, rape, and wage
war, and what can be
done about it? Drawing
on the latest discoveries
about human evolution
and about our closest
living relatives, the great
apes, Demonic Males
offers some startling new
answers to these
questions.
marriage vs. mating
 All animals mate (form a sexual bond with
individuals of the opposite sex). In some
species, the bond last no longer than a
single sex act. While some animals mate
with a single individual others mate with
several.
 Only marriage, however, is backed by
social, legal, and economic forces.
 Mating is biological, marriage is cultural.
Cultural Regulations of Sexuality:
Permissiveness vs. Restrictiveness
 Premarital sex
- Preparation for later marriage roles; given complete
instructions in all forms of sexual expression; trial
marriages.
- Disgrace; responsibility of guarding the chastity and
reputation of daughters of marriageable age as a burden of
the mother; display of blood-stained sheets as test of premarital chastity
 Sex in marriage
- Positions & patterns; privacy; occasions
 Extramarital sex
-not uncommon in most societies; a difference between the
restrictive code and actual practice; double standard
(gender bias); rumors
 Homesexuality
Why is marriage (almost) universal?
 The need to regulate sexual relations so
that competition over sexual access does
not introduce a disruptive, combative
influence into society.
 The specific form marriage takes is
related to who has rights to offspring that
normally result from sexual intercourse,
as well as how property is distributed.
The near universality of incest taboo
 INCEST refers to sexual relations with a
close relative (parents/children/siblings
 The incest taboo is a cultural universal
(which can be loosely translated as 乱伦)
 What constitutes incest varies widely from
culture to culture and a true convincing
explanation is yet to be advanced.
Ex. Difficulties of defining DIRT.
Explaining INCEST Taboo
Instinctive Horror
 This theory argues that Homo sapiens are
genetically programmed to avoid incest.
 This theory has serious flaws.
– Cultural universality does not necessarily
entail a genetic basis (e.g., fire making).
– If genetically programmed, a formal incest
taboo would be unnecessary.
– Cannot explain why in some societies people
can marry their cross cousins (children of
one’s brother and sister) but not their
parallel cousins (children of two brothers
and two sisters).
INCEST Taboo
Biological Degeneration
 Incest taboo developed in response to abnormal
offspring born from incestuous unions.
 A decline in fertility and survival does
accompany brother-sister mating across several
generations.
 However, human marriage patterns are based
on specific cultural beliefs rather than universal
concerns about biological degeneration several
generations in the future.
– Neither instinctive horror nor biological
degeneration can explain the very widespread
custom of marrying cross cousins.
– Fears about degeneration cannot explain why
sexual unions between parallel cousins but
Explaining the Taboo
Attempt and Contempt:
 Malinowski (and Freud) argued that the
incest taboo originated to direct sexual
feelings away from one's family to avoid
disrupting the family structure and relations
(familiarity increases the chances for
attempt).
 The opposite theory argues that people are
less likely to be sexually attracted to those
with whom they have grown up (familiarity
breeds contempt). 青梅竹马？
Ex. Kibbutz in Israel
Kibbutz and the control of sexual relations ?
Although children
raised together on an
Israel kibbutz rarely
marry one another, it is
not because of any
instinctive desire to
avoid mating with
people who are close.
They marry outside
their group because
service in the military
takes them out of their
kibbutz
Royal Incest
* Royal families in widely diverse cultures
have engaged in what would be called
incest, even in their own cultures.
*The manifest function of royal incest in
Polynesia was the necessity of marriage
partners having commensurate mana.
* The latent function of Polynesian royal
incest was that it maintained the ruling
ideology.
* The royal incest, generally, had a latent
economic function: it consolidated royal
wealth.
Royal incest
Marry out or die out?
A more accepted argument: the taboo originated
to ensure exogamy. Incest taboos force
people to create and maintain wide
social networks by extending peaceful
relations beyond one's immediate group.
Incest taboos are seen as an adaptively
advantageous cultural construct.
This argument focuses on the adaptive social
results of exogamy, such as alliance formation,
not simply on the idea of biological
degeneration.
Incest taboos also function to increase a group's
genetic diversity
Perspectives from sociocultural
anthropology
 Despite the potentially harmful biological
results of systematic inbreeding, human
marriage patterns are based on specific
cultural beliefs rather than universal
concerns about biological degeneration
several generations in the future.
Marriage Prohibition in the US
 State laws prohibited the marriage of some
relatives (parent-child and sibling marriages;
marriages between first cousins)
 Cousin prohibitions were enacted long
before the discovery of the genetic
mechanism of disease
 Powerful myth based on a discredited social
evolutionary theory and contradicted by the
results of modern genetic research
 Underlying cultural logic
GIFT
means present in English
means poison in German
means married in the Scandinavian
languages.
Q: any significance for kinship
analysis?
Marriage as Group Alliance: exchange between
“givers and takers”
 One classical anthropology theory defines
marriage as the “exchange of gift” between two
groups - “wife-givers” and “wife-takers”
 Ideally there is a “balanced exchange between
the givers (bride’s family) and the takers
(groom’s family)
 Rules of “balanced/expected reciprocity”
 Marriage payment:
brideprice/bridewealth/bride service; dowry
 Marriage strategy: hypergamy vs. hypogamy
 Marriage rules: endogamy; exogamy
Endogamy
 Endogamy and exogamy may operate in
a single society.
 Endogamy can be seen as functioning to
express and maintain social difference,
particularly in stratified societies.
 Homogamy is the practice of marrying
someone similar to you in terms of
background, social status, aspirations,
and interests.
Example of Endogamy
- India's caste system.
- It is argued that, although India's
varna and America's "races" are
historically distinct, they share a
caste-like ideology of endogamy.
Caste / casta /jati
(stratification system in South Asia)
Castes = “breeds” or “types”
(“ascribed status”)
1) Brahmans (priests)
2) Kshatriyas ( nobles and warriors)
3) Vaishyas (merchants or skilled
artisans)
4) Shudras (common labors)
Harijians (outcasts / untouchables)
Marriage and Jati Hierarchy
Endogamy
(marrying within Jati)
Hypogamy
(marrying “down” hierarchy)
Hypergamy
(marrying “up” hierarchy)
-avoid “ritual pollution”
Other examples of endogamy?
- Religious
Ex. Orthodox Jewish, Muslims
(including the Chinese Hui),
- Race/ethnicity
Problems of crosscultural marriages?
- Socioeconomic class
How about homogamy
Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage
 Most anthropologists would agree same-sex
marriages are legitimate unions between two
individuals because like other kinds of
marriage, same-sex marriage can allocate all
of the rights discussed by anthropologist
Leach.
 In the U.S., since same-sex marriage is
illegal, same-sex couples are denied many of
these rights (e.g., rights to the labor of the
other, over the other's property, relationships
of affinity with the other's relatives).
Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage
There are ethnographic examples in
which same-sex marriages are
culturally sanctioned (e.g., the
Nuer, the Azande, the Igbo,
berdaches, and the Lovedu).
Bridewealth and Dowry





Particularly in descent-based societies, marriage
partners represent an alliance of larger social units.
Bridewealth is a gift from the husband's kin to the
wife's, which stabilizes the marriage by acting as
an insurance against divorce.
Dowry, less common than bridewealth, correlates
with low status for women.
Fertility is often considered essential to the
stability of a marriage.
Polygyny (man taking more than one wife) may
be practiced to ensure fertility.
The “marriage” of women to the church
 In Europe, where both
men and women inherit
family wealth, the
“marriage” of women to
the church as nuns passed
wealth that might
otherwise have gone to
husbands and offspring to
the Church instead.
Love and (monogamous) Marriage
Love and marriage, love and
marriage
They go together like a horse
and carriage
This I'll tell you brother
You can't have one without
the other
Love and marriage, love and
marriage
They go together like a horse
and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one without
the other
Love and marriage, love and
marriage
It's an institute you can't
disparage
Ask the local gentry
And they will say it's
elementary
Try, try, try to separate them
It's an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will
only come
To this conclusion
Try, try, try to separate them
It's an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only
come
To this conclusion
Love and marriage, love and
marriage
They go together like a horse
and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one without
the other
Romantic Love and (Monogamous) Marriage
 Typically, anthropologists have overlooked romantic love as
a factor in the interpersonal relationships of the people they
study, but this has begun to change.
 “There is romantic love in cultures around the world.”
 As motifs of romantic love have become more widespread,
globally, it has come to play an increasingly important role
in the selection of marriage partners.
 In a survey of ethnographies from 166 cultures, they found
what they considered clear evidence that romantic love was
known in 147 of them – 87 percent.
 Evidence from tales about lovers, or folklore, that offered
love potions or other advice on making someone fall in love.
 While romantic love appears to be a human universal, it is a
still an alien idea that in many cultures that such infatuation
has anything to do with the choice of a spouse.
Source: Jankowiak and Fischer, A Cross-Cultural
Perspective on Romantic Love, Ethnology
Romantic Love as a Cultural Construction
 The media
propagate popular
culture, and images
from around the
world are creeping
into everyday lives.
 Cultural sources are
being merged in
ways that are
forcing the
redefinition of
identity across the
globe.
Divorce
 Divorce is found in many different societies.
- Marriages that are political alliances between
groups are harder to break up than marriages that
are more individual affairs.
- Payments of bridewealth also discourage divorce.
- Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies
as well as societies in which postmarital residence
is matrilocal (such as Naxi of SW China)
- 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 him.
Divorce in the U.S.
-
-
-
The U.S. has one of the world's highest
divorce rates (a steep rise between 1970
and 1994
The U.S. has a very large percentage of
professional women.
patterns of residence and family types
vary with socioeconomic class (ex.
extended families as a response to
poverty)
Americans value independence.
Plural Marriages
 Polygamy
- Illegal in North America and Post-1949 China
- “serial monogamy” in postindustrial societies
(multiple marriages and divorces)
 Polygyny (multiple wives)
- Practiced in patriarchal societies (ex. prerevolutionary China, some African countries
and elsewhere in the world)
 Polyandry (multiple husbands)
Ex. Fraternal polyandry in Tibet (brothers share a
wife)
Polygyny vs. Polyandry
Is Polygamy confusing or just a
matter of family values?
African Polygyny: Family values and
contemporary changes
Enculturation/ Socialization and the
Life Cycle
 The main agents of SOCIALIZATION
(enculturation) – family, school, peer
groups, the mass media, and the work
(particular attention to gender
socialization) .
 The main stages of life cycle identified as:1)
infancy; 2)childhood and adolescence, 3)
young and mature adulthood, and 4) old
age
 Anthropological notions of “social birth”
and “social person”
 Social death vs. biological death
Readings:
 Jankowiak and Fischer, A Cross-
Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love,
Ethnology.
 M. Wolf, Uterine Families and the
Women’s Community.
 Philip L. Kilbride
African Polygyny: Family values and
contemporary changes