Mode of Marriage

According to the Ethnographic Atlas of G.P. Murdock, the variable type of marriage is about the „prevailing mode of obtaining a wife.“ In most cases some transactions are involved: bride price, bride service, Marriage gifts oder dowry – though dowry has more to do with prevailing mode of obtaining a husband more.

In all societies marriage-settlements need some kind of authenticity. The rules to get such blessing are displayed on the Marriage Map. The typology used for the map combines two different criteria:

First: How considerable are the transactions of goods and/or services for marriage? The empirical scale ranges from nil to very substantial, whereby services may extend to many years.

Second: Which direction doe the transactions take (if at all): to the side of the bride or the groom? Whatever the level of flows, the shift my be symmetric or skewed. One important possibility of reciprocity is to give a „sister“ for a bride.

Definition (PDF, 73 KB)

It goes without saying that marriage is a matter of profound consequences. The marriage issue has references to nearly all other themes of this website, e.g.: The type of kinship system discloses the kind of communities (clans, sibs, villages etc.) which are linked by marriage transactions; the marriage rules reveal the relevance of social classes; they also may be instrumental for political alliances or food security, depending on the kind of subsistence economy; the rules of residence after marriage strongly determines the family typology, and the extendedness and elaboration of marriage rules tell us much about the level of political centralization because family and kinship organization often serves as a functional equivalent to political institutions.

Inspite of such high interconnectedness, the marriage map displays a strangely monotonous picture map:

• On the one hand – in Africa and many parts of Asia –, most common are rules (cf. red shade) which demand substantial transfers from the family or kin of the groom (takers) to the family or kin of the bride (givers).
• On the other hand – in India and northern China –, the transfers go to the opposite direction (yellow shade).
• Only in a few countries – mainly Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Madagascar and the Isle of Java besides Assam and Kerala in India – are the transactions limited or negligible (green shade).

The huge and apparently homogenous block with some kind of pride price probably gives a distorted picture. The critical point is that the specific Arab variant of marriage transaction called mahr was not codes separately by Murdock. In fact, mahr is a special form which is neither brideprice nor dowry.

Discussion (PDF, 72 KB)

Map extract of northeast India:
In the northeast of India, all the main forms of marriage transactions come together:
- dowry (yellow), i.e., transfer of a substantial amount of property from the bride´relatives to the bride, the groom or the kinsmen of the latter.
- bride-price, bride-wealth or bride-service (red), i. e., transfer of a substantial consideration in the form of livestock, goods, money or labor from the groom or his relatives to the kinsmen of the bride.
- token bride-price (green), i. e., a small or symbolic payment only.

The map extract shows how much the geographical space is interspersed with different marriage rules. It reveals a patchwork of local patterns which lies underneath the generalized dominant forms – in India also displayed on the level of federal states. Islamic Bangladesh (red) and and the traditional tribal Assam (green) differ clearly from India and southern China (dominantly yellow).

More about Marriage:
Map of Marriage Rules
Definition of Categories
Discussion