Exogamy

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Exogamy ( ancient Greek éxō "outside, out", and gámos "wedding": outside marriage) describes a marriage rule in ethnosociology that prefers or prescribes marriages outside of one's own social group , for example the partner should come from another extended family , ancestry group , tribal group or social Shift come. Its opposite is endogamy , in which one or should marry within one's own group, for example in the Bintʿamm marriage in the Arab cultural area . Both rules are based on the respective moral , religious or legal conceptions of one's own and that of the other group and which groups marriageable persons belong to.

In biological terms, exogamy increases the selective opportunities for evolutionary variation.

to form

Like all marriage rules, exogamy can act as a target expectation (preferential) or as a prescribed norm (prescriptive). In the case of an exogamy command , marriages within the same group are not tolerated and an exogamy breach is punished with exclusion from the group or even death (as previously with the Tolai people in Papua New Guinea). Such marriage bans do not have to forbid unmarried members from entering into sexual partnerships with members of their own group.

The Exogamieregel can basically close or continue to be prepared and on the nearby relatives refer or to more distant relatives, such as the communities or local grouping (see also anisogamy Marriage outside one's own socio-economic status group ). Since almost all of the 1300 indigenous peoples and ethnic groups recorded worldwide  follow the incest barrier towards biological parents and siblings (“minimum exogamy”), exogam does not mean the usual “marrying out” of one's own nuclear family . Exogamy refers to larger groups such as groups of descent ( lineages ) or entire lineages ( moieties ), which see themselves as a social unit and do not allow marriages within their community. The mutual exogamous marriage between two (or more) groups can thus become the basis of their alliance formation , which includes further cooperation .

Almost always exist in groups and societies simultaneously with exo monogamous provisions also (parent) endo game Marriage rules that focus on local, economic , political , religious related, ethnic or other affiliations or age groups, sometimes on the descent from a common ancestor ( Different degrees of cosanguinity ): While the spouse may not come from their own social subgroup, they should basically belong to the same community, for example also be of Jewish faith or belong to the same caste (see also Isogamy : Marrying within the same class).

For the position of the individual it is decisive whether the exogamy is realized through matrilinearity or patrilinearity .

Emergence

In 1949, the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss tried in his studies to show the connection between exogamy and the avoidance of incest (pairing between blood relatives ), marriage was a systematic form of exchange between social groups that had developed from the prohibition of incest (see incest: Scientific explanations ). The extension of the original incest barrier (between parents and children and between siblings) to a larger part of the kinship would make exogamous marriage outside of one's own group necessary. This would mutual exchange and cooperation ( cooperation ) of larger, beyond their own lineage communities require. This is particularly evident in the cross-cousin marriage , which is widespread in matrilineal cultures , in connection with a symmetrical exchange relationship, in which one group has to compensate for the introduction of a woman with the transfer of another to her clan or by exchanging rings with another. The marriage with the cross cousin is an exogamous marriage rule because the cousin - unlike the rare parallel cousin marriage - is assigned to a different social group than her cross cousin; she lives in a patrilocal society as the child of the father's aunt in another clan.

The derivation of the exogamous marriage rules from the incest prohibition is rejected in the more recent ethnosociology , since girls or women in many ethnic societies are lawfully allowed to have sex with men of their own group, but these cannot become their lawful spouses. Exogamy rules are not based directly on the incest barrier, which only affects the choice of sexual partners, but from an ethosociological perspective primarily serve social and political purposes, for example the formation of alliances. So it is not an anthropological constant, but a (more or less) binding social norm that has different social functions and e.g. B. may have arisen through social learning processes.

In contrast, Edvard Westermarck argued that exogamy is not a social or cultural function, but rather an evolutionary psychological function that characterizes learning processes at a young age: sexual attraction does not develop when people have grown up in close proximity. Exogamy thus offers a selection advantage by avoiding inbreeding and diseases of the offspring. With this, Westermarck, whose hypothesis has been confirmed in several empirical studies, differs from Sigmund Freud's theory of the Oedipus conflict . The general validity of his declaration is disputed, u. a. by Eran Shor and Dalit Simachai on the basis of an empirical study of people who grew up together in Israeli kibbutzim . Even Jesse Bering holds exogamy for a cultural norm: people would sexual preferences, particularly against people develop that resemble their parents or themselves.

Social functions and consequences of a radical exogamy law

A social further development of exogamy rules in (from an evolutionary point of view) a relatively short time and their functional change can be described on the basis of their constant radicalization by Christianity over the course of more than 1000 years: from Augustine 'prohibition of incest to Ambrosius ' prohibition of cousin marriage, that by Theodosius I. was confirmed, and the decisions of the Council of Ephesus in 431 led this development to far-reaching marriage bans for distant relatives in the High Middle Ages in ever wider degrees and in several directions, not only within the consanguinity, but also within the relationship in law and within the spiritual relationship (sponsorship). The new rules went far beyond the biblical rules. The Catholic Church thus smashed the endogamous family, which was at the same time a source of the accumulation of wealth and power. This initially served to distinguish oneself from the Jews and strengthened proselytizing through imitation in circles of acquaintances and networks, but developed into an expansive strategy of opening up and breaking up kinship systems in general. This strategy successfully prevented Christians from restricting themselves in the direction of the formation of an endogamous ethno-religious group . Such a restriction would hardly have been successful in the “wild urban environment of late antiquity”. Parallel to this development, the elevation of marriage to the sacrament , the postulate of its indissolubility, monogamy , celibacy , sexual hostility, appreciation of virginity , but also an increase in the position of women in church and society, which culminated in the cult of Mary : In 325 Mary was proclaimed as the bearer of God ( theotókos ).

Later this policy of the church served to prevent the transfer of property within the families, in particular to restrict the power of the nobility - for the high nobility, who were all over Europe, the marriage bans could hardly be observed - and to contain powerful family networks, i.e. annoying competitors. Soon there were hardly any people left to marry in order to inherit. The policy of extending the marriage bans reached its peak in the 11th century, when marriages were forbidden up to the 7th degree of kinship, but was in some cases continued into the 18th century: marriages with the brother's widow, between descendants of a great-grandfather ( this corresponds to third degree cosanguinity) or children of godparents were still forbidden by canon law in the early modern period.

Examples

Exogamously marrying peoples are, for example, the Nuer and the Lotuko (Africa), the Rajputs (India), the Sherpa (Himalaya Mountains), the Ainu (Japan), the Kickapoo , Acoma and Absarokee (North America).

In the many ethnic societies in Papua New Guinea , which are divided into two “halves” ( moiety systems ), these primarily serve to regulate mutual exogamous marriages. Between them, endo games marriage is strictly forbidden, the spouse must be found in the other half of society (for example the Tolai ).

The caste endogamy widespread in India is superimposed by an extreme clan exogamy and village exogamy of the higher castes as well as by hypergamy , whereby the bride comes from a lower subcaste.

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: exogamous  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
  • Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek: Forms of marriage, marriage rules and goods transactions related to marriage. (PDF; 853 kB) In: Introduction to the Forms of Social Organization (Part 3/5). Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 2011, pp. 99–105 , archived from the original on October 17, 2013 ; accessed on October 10, 2018 (documents for your lecture in the summer semester 2011).
  • Helmut Lukas, Vera Schindler, Johann Stockinger: Exogamy. In: Online Interactive Glossary: ​​Marriage, Marriage, and Family. Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on October 10, 2018 (in-depth remarks, with references).
  • Brian Schwimmer: Exogamy and Incest Prohibitions. In: Tutorial: Kinship and Social Organization. Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Canada, 2003, accessed October 10, 2018 (English, extensive kinship tutorial).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek: Exogamy. (PDF; 853 kB) In: Introduction to the Forms of Social Organization (Part 3/5). Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 2011, p. 103 , archived from the original on October 17, 2013 ; accessed on October 10, 2018 : “Exogamy is sometimes also referred to as“ out-marriage ”. The term exogamy, which was coined by McLENNAN, is used quite generally in ethnosociology "... to designate any kind of out marriage" (BARNARD / SPENCER 1997: p. 605) or, under exogamy, "a requirement for marriage outside a particular social group or range of kinship or category "(cf. KEESING 1975: p. 149, Glossary, SEYMOUR-SMITH 1986: p. 107 and BARNARD / SPENCER 1997: p. 605) or the exogamy" as a practice of obtaining wives from outside one's group "(see HARRIS 1971: p. 284) or as" the oligation to choose a marriage partner outside the close family group "(see BARNARD / SPENCER 1997: p. 350)."
  2. ↑ a b Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek: Endogamy and exogamy must be precisely specified. (PDF; 853 kB) In: Introduction to the Forms of Social Organization (Part 3/5). Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 2011, p. 105 , archived from the original on October 17, 2013 ; Accessed on October 10, 2018 : “In many cases, endogamy and exogamy regulations exist in a society and each individual belongs to a number of endogamous and exogamous groups at the same time. (see HARRIS 1971: p. 284 and BARNARD / SPENCER 1997: p. 350) B. in the Indian caste system, where “… one must (with certain exceptions) marry out of one's lineage but within one's caste group; there is thus lineage exogamy and caste endogamy "(WINTHROP 1991: p. 175)."
  3. ↑ Lukas, Schindler, Stockinger: Marriage prohibitions. In: Online Interactive Glossary: ​​Marriage, Marriage, and Family. University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on October 10, 2018 .
  4. ↑ The Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock now contains data sets on 1300 ethnic groups (as of 2015 in the InterSciWiki ), of which often only samples were evaluated, for example in the HRAF research project , a large-scale database for holistic cultural comparisons of 400 recorded peoples .
  5. ^ A b Lukas, Schindler, Stockinger: Alliance system. In: Online Interactive Glossary: ​​Marriage, Marriage, and Family. University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on October 10, 2018 : "Alliance system: A system of relationships that produces or is expressed through fixed and permanent marriage relationships by means of marriages repeated over several generations between unilinear descent groups or other kinship groups."
  6. ↑ a b Lukas, Schindler, Stockinger: Exogamie. In: Online Interactive Glossary: ​​Marriage, Marriage, and Family. University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on October 10, 2018 .
  7. ^ Edvard Westermarck: Recent Theories of Exogamy. In: The Sociological Review . Volume 26, 1934, pp. 22–44. The theory was first published in Westermarck's book The History of Human Marriage (2 volumes, London 1891).
  8. ↑ Eran Shor, Dalit Simchai: Incest Avoidance, the Incest Taboo, and Social Cohesion: Revisiting Westermarck and the Case of the Israeli Kibbutzim . In: American Journal of Sociology . Volume 114, No. 6 , 2009, ISSN  0002-9602 , p. 1803-1842 , doi : 10.1086 / 597178 .
  9. ↑ Jesse Bering: Oedipus Complex 2.0: Like it or not, parents shape their children's sexual preferences. In: Scientific American . 17th August 2010.
  10. ↑ Rodney Stark : The Rise of Christianity - New Insights from a Sociological Perspective. Beltz Athenaeum, Weinheim 1997, ISBN 3-89547-713-3 , pp. 21–24.
  11. ↑ Emmanuel Todd : Sad Modernity - A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus. Beck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-72475-6 , p. 137 ff., In particular p. 146.
  12. ^ Jack Goody : The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. Cambridge University Press 1983, p. 45.
  13. ↑ Goody 1983, p. 70.
  14. ↑ Dorett Funcke, Bruno Hildenbrand: Origins and Continuity of the Nuclear Family - Introduction to Family Sociology. Springer, 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-18441-4 , pp. 85 ff. ( Side view in the Google book search).
  15. ↑ Kerstin Gudemuth: Culture of Love in India: Passion and Devotion in Hindu Mythology and the Present. Münster 2003, p. 96.