Swap women
Frauentausch referred to in the anthropology (Ethnology) a marriage rule , after the women in fertile capable aged between large groups replaced and mutually ge married or ver be married; the groups can be extended families , lineages, or clans . Such regulations are mainly found among indigenous peoples and ethnic groups who practice agriculture, are divided into equal segments , organize their ancestry according to the patrilineal line and where married couples live where their husbands live ( patrilocal ). In this exogamous exchange, the women's wishes play only a subordinate role or no role at all (compare forced marriage ).
Examples are the " Berdel " (girl swap) in the Kurdish areas in the east and south-east of Turkey (see Kurds in Turkey ), in which two families get married cross-weddings, as well as the earlier common among the Uzbeks in Central Asia " Qarch Quda ”, in which a family that could not afford a bride price exchanged a wife with another family.
In 1948, the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss showed in his theory of the “alliance” of descent groups that the coordinated mutual exchange of women serves to consolidate the common alliance (especially through cross-cousin marriages ).
Origins
The French neo-Marxist economic anthropologist Claude Meillassoux assumed in 1975 that the practice of exchanging women had developed from a system of bride robbery (comparable to the Roman robbery of the Sabine women ). Originally, in his opinion, the farming segmentary societies were organized matrilinearly and matrilocally . It could happen quite often that too few women were born in a family to allow this production cell to continue in the next generation. As a result, women from outside had to be included in the group. Under the conditions of matrilocality (the wife stays with her family), such an integration of other women can only be undertaken by their robbery from other families. This practice alone puts women in a subordinate position, both to the men in their own group who protect them and to the men of the other group who steal them.
Only these constant raids lead to the fact that the position of women, even in matrilineal societies, decreases and that of men increases. It is possible that it is only during this development that women are formally excluded from all hunting and warfare activities, which was / is not the case with societies of hunter-gatherers .
- “ One result of this submission of women to men is that they are now put to work under male protection and entrusted with the most ungrateful, sullen, and unsatisfactory tasks of agriculture and the kitchen. "
When agriculture becomes more important to the survival of the group and the men are more forced to participate, the constant forays threaten production conditions with the deaths and absences they cause. This makes it sensible to regulate the marriage relationship in a way other than violence if possible. The armed robbery of women results in a regulated mutual exchange of women, the matri- local form of circulation is replaced by the patri- local one.
Rules of exchanging women
According to Claude Meillassoux, the circulation of women between families usually takes place on the basis of absolute reciprocity, because a sexually mature woman has no other functional equivalent than another sexually mature woman. Therefore each community can only receive as many wives from the other as it has given away women.
On the other hand, the number of women of childbearing potential should be distributed as evenly as possible in the individual families. For example, a woman can be handed over to a certain community that has no sexually mature young women available to hand over to other communities. This community can repay a woman to the other community at a later date so that the debt is cleared. This can also be the daughter of the woman handed over first, for example.
The exchange of women can take place in two different ways:
-
bilateral, limited exchange
In this form of exchange of women, group A acquires a woman from group B, later group A returns a woman to group B; the exchange of women is only practiced between two communities. -
multilateral, generalized exchange
The men in group A marry a woman in group B, she marries a woman in group C, and these in turn marry a woman in group A; the exchange of women is practiced in a ring between three (or more) communities.
The communities involved in this complicated cycle of multilateral exchanges must be informed at all times of the status of marital transactions and the circulation of outstanding debts to women, so that no one receives more women than she has delivered.
Meillassoux concluded that if there were a large number of these exchanges, not all of them could be remembered. For this reason, according to the contract, there is often a reverse circulation of substitute objects that serve as a reminder of the marriage exchange. The community that cedes a woman receives certain goods from the community receiving the woman, which are called marriage goods . These are mostly relatively durable consumer goods, less food or everyday items. The marriage property is different from the dowry , which includes personal items that the bride takes to her husband's house and that remain in her possession. The simultaneous existence of marriage property and dowry is therefore not mutually exclusive.
Under certain circumstances the marriage goods are transformed from a " pledge ", which symbolizes the future claim to a marriageable woman of the receiving group, into a " commodity " with which women can more or less "buy". This happens when, within the framework of the multilateral exchange between one another, the cycle of marriage transactions expands to such an extent that, despite the existence of the marriage goods, it is no longer possible to determine precisely which community owes the other how much women, and the marriage goods for their own sake to be desired. In addition, the number of marriage goods may no longer match that of the women exchanged. Because the marriage goods consist of relatively permanent objects, they can be put into circulation again and again, even if the original debt they represent, i.e. the one to deliver a marriageable woman, has long been redeemed. The marriage property becomes the expression of a fixed value that corresponds to that of a sexually mature woman. It thus acquires an exchange value within the framework of the matrimonial circulation , the marriage property becomes the “ bride price ”.
literature
- Claude Lévi-Strauss : The Elementary Structures of Relationship . Translated from the French by Eva Moldenhauer . 3. Edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 3-518-28644-7 (French first edition 1948; Lévi-Strauss, 1908–2009, was an ethnologist, founder of ethnological structuralism and early representative of an ethnosociology ).
- Claude Meillassoux: The Wild Fruits of Women - About Domestic Production and Capitalist Economy . Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8108-0010-4 (the 2nd German edition from 1978 is searchable in the Google book search - French first edition 1975; Meillassoux, 1925-2005, was a neo-Marxist economic ethnologist ).
Web links
- Helmut Lukas, Vera Schindler, Johann Stockinger: restricted exchange (of women) . In: Online Interactive Glossary: Marriage, Marriage, and Family. Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on October 1, 2018 (the entry contains in-depth remarks on the exchange of women).
Individual evidence
- ^ Helmut Lukas, Vera Schindler, Johann Stockinger: Alliance system. In: Online Interactive Glossary: Marriage, Marriage, and Family. Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on October 1, 2018 (in-depth remarks with references).
- ↑ Claude Meillassoux: The wild fruits of women - About domestic production and capitalist economy . Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8108-0010-4 , p. 42 .
- ↑ Claude Meillassoux: The wild fruits of women - About domestic production and capitalist economy . Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8108-0010-4 , p. 44 .
- ↑ Claude Meillassoux: The wild fruits of women - About domestic production and capitalist economy . Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8108-0010-4 , p. 86 & # x202 f.; ff .