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Medientyp:
E-Artikel
Titel:
Bride-Price Reconsidered [and Comments]
Beteiligte:
Kressel, Gideon M.;
Al-Nouri, Qais N.;
Aswad, Barbara C.;
Divale, William T.;
El Guindi, Fadwa;
Joseph, Roger;
Kongar, Emre;
Nakhleh, Khalil;
Oppenheimer, Jonathan;
Pitt-Rivers, Julian;
Sansom, Basil
Erschienen:
University of Chicago Press, 1977
Erschienen in:Current Anthropology
Sprache:
Englisch
ISSN:
0011-3204;
1537-5382
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Beschreibung:
<p>A revised consideration of bride-price and dowry is presented. Marriage payments are viewed as status symbols and mechanisms of fluidity relating to stratification systems. An inability to carry out exchange "in kind" (i.e., bride for bride) appears in cases of marriage between groups of different status and is shaped by cultural principles of stratification. The phenomena of hypergamy, hypogamy, and isogamy, along with different exchange currencies such as money, prestige, services, and patronage, stress the importance of the cultural component. All are solutions to the same structural problem. The solution characteristic of Arab Muslim society stems from the symbolic linking of the ruling hierarchy with the roles of the sexes; the male roles are the preserve of the elite, while the symbol of subjection to authority means effemination. Hypergamy implies that daughters, as representatives of lower strata, move upward. Elite groups are distinguished by the ability to do away with any payments, viz., to protect their daughters' modesty (by means of endogamy or leaving them unmarried) and to expose that of others' daughters by superior means. Exogamy, whose price is high, is required all the more under modern conditions. This is shown with data relating to sedentarized Bedouin and former peasants living in towns in Israel. Urbanization confuses primary groups and endogamic possibilities. New approaches for exploring marriage suggestions and for negotiating with strangers are required, and confusion of former hierarchies accelerates the process of restratification. Achievement replaces ascription, while former modes of conspicuous consumption are retained. Bride-price increases by 5.1 times in a decade, as measured by the increase in maximum (not average) price per annum compared with the increase in income. Cases establishing record sums for marriage expenses are examined in detail.</p>