Rationale D1: Polygyny - Exchange & Marriage (DEM28)

  • Is polygyny possible for Focus Group men?
  • Is polygyny possible for Neighbour Group men?
  • Is polygyny possible for men from all societal strata?

Possible response: - Yes - No

Goal

This question identifies whether polygyny occurs in Focus Group society, or Neighbour Group society. The answers to this question should be about the overall pattern in society, and not restricted to marriages between Focus Group and Neighbour Group people. The answers to this question may help us further understand the nature of population movements between the two groups, and the general complexity of marriage dynamics.

Definitions

Polygyny: the pattern of marriage whereby men can have more than one wife. It is a subset of polygamy, and is the most common form of polygamy world-wide.

Examples

  • All male members of the Dani community (Papua New Guinea) are allowed to have more than one wife from the moiety opposite to theirs, but access to marriage is age-graded in the sense that most men enter marriage after maturity, while women enter marriage in young age. Securing access to marriage through the life span guarantees high rates of multiple marriages among men. (Schwimmer 1995–2003; Butt 2001.) This would trigger the answer "yes” to all three questions.
  • In many traditional societies in southern Africa, access to multiple marriage reflected social stratification in the sense that commoners usually had only one wife, while chiefs, nobles, or other elite members of the society had several wives (Schwimmer 1993–2005; Musisi 1991; Delius & Glaser 2004). In this context, appropriate answers to "Is polygyny permissible for Focus Group men?" and "Is polygyny permissible for Neighbour Group men?" would be "yes" if access to multiple marriage is shared by Focus and Neighbour Group, but the answer to "Is polygyny permissible for men from all societal strata?" would be "no".

Theoretical & Empirical Support

Characterizing patterns of intermarriage between Focus Group and Neighbour Group in terms of whether polygyny is permissible, and for whom, allows us to better understand the nature of population movements between the two groups. Given that access to polygyny is often socially stratified (only a portion of the male population can afford several spouses), this can also count as an additional measure of opportunities of contact between Focus Group and Neighbour Group (this is under the assumption that polygamous men who marry across the two groups are more exposed to contact with the other group than individuals who don’t). In general, this question is also a way of getting a more fine-grained picture of marriage dynamics, which is often missing in discussions of contact.

Several explanations have been proposed to account for polygyny as a feature of marriage exchange. Among these, it has been suggested that polygyny occurs in situations of demographic imbalance between the two sexes, where women significantly outnumber men, for instance as a consequence of warfare. However, polygyny is also attested in societies where no such demographic imbalance exists between the sexes or, if it exists, it goes in the opposite direction (more men then women). In societies that practice polygyny, typically some men accumulate more spouses than others, because they are older and/or because they have have more means to sustain bridewealth requirements. In such contexts, polygyny becomes a way of defining social prestige and power dynamics in the male populations.

    Questions