Rationale D3: Social Categories - Exchange & Marriage (DEM31)

Is it typical for Focus Group men to marry Neighbour Group women? - Yes - No Is it typical for Focus Group women to marry Neighbour Group men? - Yes - No

Goal

Here we ask whether intermarriage between Focus Group and Neighbour Group involves movement of people from both sexes (Focus Group men and women as well as Neighbour Group men and women) and in both directions (i.e. from and to Focus Group and from and to Neighbour Group). It is a way of getting a sense of the internal composition of the contact network between Focus Group and Neighbour Group in the context of marriage.

Examples

  • Marriage exchange between Bantu, agriculturalist, and 'Khoisan', hunter-gatherer, communities in southern Africa was historically highly sex-biased in the sense that Khoisan women would marry in Bantu communities, but not the other way round (Bantu women marrying in Khoisan communities, see Pakendorf et al. 2011: 70). These situations would yield a "Yes" answer for "It is typical for Focus Group men to marry Neighbour Group women?" and "No" answer for "Is it typical for Focus Group women to marry Neighbour Group men?".
  • Reciprocal spouse exchange is often found between intermarrying sib settlements with patrilineal and patrilocal descent. In such cases, for any group A woman who marries a group B man, a marriage between a group B woman and a group A man is expected in return. This type of reciprocal spouse exchange is for instance common in Aboriginal Australian societies. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2016a.) In this case, the answer for both "It is typical for Focus Group men to marry Neighbour Group women?" and "Is it typical for Focus Group women to marry Neighbour Group men?" would be "Yes".

Theoretical & Empirical Support

Linguistic transmission in multilingual settings can be affected by the direction of marriage exchange. This is because marriage exchanges play a fundamental role in establishing systems of descent and shaping the kin systems of the intermarrying groups. Marriage exchange create the very context for population movements across groups and they also contribute to shape the population structures of the respective groups. The direction of marriage exchange is also connected with post-marital residence rules, which regulate where the married couple establishes its place of residence after marriage. For a recent study on the relationship between intermarriage practices in multilingual settings (viewed from the perspective of postmarital residence rules) and its consequences for language transmission, see Lansing et al. (2017). _

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