What is bridewealth

If his daughter fails to bear children or becomes divorced, he must return them to his former in-laws. He may otherwise use them to acquire wives for himself or other members of his family. A father is expected to provide first wives for his sons, although this contribution, as many other transactions in the system, sets up a debt.

In the South African system marriage cattle form the focus of an alliance system similar to one constructed through cross cousin marriage , except that cattle as well as women are systematically transferred from family to family. In some cases lobola and cross cousin marriage are interrelated. He will usually use these cattle to acquire a wife of his own, a benefit for which he becomes indebted to his sister.

Accordingly, he is required to give her the right to determine the marriage of one of his daughters and forgo any expectation of a bride payment. His sister may marry off her niece to her son, creating a matrilateral cross cousin marriage.

The South African example introduces a curious problem related to the status of family and lineage groupings. The alliance theory of marriage maintains that the circulation of women and cattle binds the groups that make up the society into a system of reciprocal exchange and cooperation in which all units are equal.

In the South African systems economic, political, and social inequalities are actually structural features of marriage institutions. Selected patrilineages assume aristorcratic statuses in numerous kingdoms and chiefdoms in the region and maintain and validate their leadership positions specifically in terms of the lobola system. This arrangement is term hypergamy , an institution in which women marry upward rather than in an egalitarian circle.

They accumulate at the top, where the major power holders benefit and enhance their status by having many wives in return for the redistribution of their cattle to lower ranking groups. These payments were traditionally made in the form of valuables e. However, increasingly globalized market economies inform the commodities in contemporary exchanges, which can consist of cash, practical necessities and tools, as well as luxury goods.

Bridewealth remains the most common form of marriage transaction in the world. Among the cultures listed in Murdock's World Atlas of Cultures , practice bridewealth. The Rationale Behind Bridewealth.

Comparative anthropology has shown that bridewealth is more likely to be paid amongst populations whose main mode of food getting system is horticulture or pastoralism. In many of these societies, when the girl marries, she leaves her parents' family, and sometimes her village, and continues her life in her husband's village or family virilocality.

In her new married life, the bride's labor benefits her husband and at times her husbands' family and no longer benefits her family of birth. Bridewealth is said to establish strong social bonds by opening kinship roads between the families of the bride and the groom and to formalize an alliance between different clans.

Many speak of bridewealth as a token of respect for the girl and her family, and a form of appreciation for the hard work they put into raising her. It is also understood as a form of compensation for the loss of labor, productive and reproductive, the bride's family incurs when she marries and moves out. Her children will belong to the lineage and clan of their father. Also known as bride price, bride token, or under different vernacular names e.

The Code of Hammurabi details this practice in ancient Mesopotamia, the books of Genesis and Exodus dictate regulations for the payment of Moha from the groom to the bride's father and passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that bridewealth was a custom in Homeric Greece. The practice of paying bridewealth maintains cultural importance in a number of contemporary societies where it persists not only in rural areas, but in urban settings as well, including in the marital unions of the well-educated middle and upper class.

Bride service could take several months or even years to complete. This is most common in pastoral or agricultural societies where a market exchange is prevalent. Indirect dowry is a little like bride price. Woman exchange : With woman exchange, no gifts are exchanged by the families but each family gives a bride to the other family; each family loses a daughter but gains a daughter-in-law. Gift exchange : In this practice, the families of the betrothed exchange gifts of equal value.

Bonvillain, Nancy. Cultural Anthropology , 2nd edition. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Crapo, Richley. Cultural Anthropology: Understanding Ourselves and Others.