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Social anthropology Cultural anthropology |
Exogamy is the social norm of mating or marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which two groups continually intermarry with each other.[1]
In social science, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects: biological and cultural. Biological exogamy is the marriage of people who are not blood relatives. This is regulated by incest taboos and laws against incest. Cultural exogamy is marrying outside a specific cultural group; the opposite is endogamy, marriage within a social group.
Exogamy often results in two individuals that are not closely genetically related marrying each other; that is, outbreeding as opposed to inbreeding. This may benefit offspring as it reduces the risk of the offspring inheriting two copies of a defective gene. Nancy Wilmsen Thornhill states that the drive in humans to not reproduce or be attracted to one's immediate family is evolutionarily adaptive, as it reduces the risk of children having genetic defects caused by inbreeding, as a result of inheriting two copies of a deleterious recessive gene.[2]
In one Old Order Amish society, inbreeding increases the risk of "neonatal and postneonatal mortality".[3] In French populations, the children of first cousins develop cystinosis at a greater rate than the general population.[4]
 | This section needs more citations. (March 2009) |
Cultural exogamy is the custom of marrying outside a specified group of people to which a person belongs. Thus, persons may be expected to marry outside their totem clan(s) or other groups, in addition to outside closer blood relatives. For instance among the Baganda of Uganda, it's taboo and illegal for two people from the same totem clan to marry.[5]
Researchers have proposed different theories to account for the origin of exogamy. Edvard Westermarck said an aversion to marriage between blood relatives or near kin emerged with a parental deterrence of incest. From a genetic point of view, aversion to breeding with close relatives results in fewer congenital diseases. If one person has a faulty gene, breeding outside his group increases the chances that his partner will have another functional type gene and their child may not suffer the defect. Outbreeding favours the condition of heterozygosity, that is having two nonidentical copies of a given gene. J. F. McLennan[6] holds that exogamy was due originally to a scarcity of women among small bands. Men were obliged to seek wives from other groups, including marriage by capture, and exogamy developed as a cultural custom.
Émile Durkheim[7] derives exogamy from totemism. He said that a people had religious respect for the blood of a totemic clan, for the clan totem is a god and is present especially in the blood, a sacred substance.
In most forms of Hinduism, people can only marry outside their gotra which is a traditional group of people who may be distantly related but have been living in the same area or have an ancestral home in the same area.
Morgan[8] maintains that exogamy was introduced to prevent marriage between blood relations, especially between brother and sister, which had been common in an earlier state of promiscuity. Frazer[9] says that exogamy was begun to maintain the survival of family groups, especially when single families became larger political groups.
Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced the "Alliance Theory" of exogamy,[10] that is, that small groups must force their members to marry outside so as to build alliances with other groups. According to this theory, groups that engaged in exogamy would flourish, while those that did not would all die, either literally or because they lacked sufficient ties for cultural and economic exchange, leaving them at a disadvantage. The exchange of men or women served as a uniting force between groups.
Dual exogamy, in which two groups continually intermarry with each other, is a traditional form of arranging marriages in numerous modern societies and in many societies described in classical literature. It can be matrilineal or patrilineal. Some Indigenous Australian Nations use groupings often called "skins" or "skin groups" to further structure Kinship Systems that guide cultural practices, including marriages. It was historically widespread in the Turkic societies,[11][12] Taï societies (Ivory Coast),[13] Eskimo,[14] among Ob-Ugrians[15][16] and others. In tribal societies, the dual exogamy union lasted for many generations, ultimately uniting the groups initially unrelated by blood or language into a single tribe or nation.
Linguistic exogamy is a form of cultural exogamy in which marriage occurs between speakers of different languages. The custom is common among indigenous groups in the northwest Amazon, such as the Tucano tribes.[17]
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{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Exogamy is the social norm of mating or marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which two groups continually intermarry with each other. In social science, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects: biological and cultural. Biological exogamy is the marriage of people who are not blood relatives. This is regulated by incest taboos and laws against incest. Cultural exogamy is marrying outside a specific cultural group; the opposite is endogamy, marriage within a social group.
Raksha Bandhan is a popular and traditionally Hindu annual rite or ceremony that is central to a festival of the same name celebrated in South Asia, and among people around the world influenced by Hindu culture. On this day, sisters of all ages tie a talisman or amulet, called the rakhi, around the wrists of their brothers. The sisters symbolically protect the brothers, receive a gift in return, and traditionally invest the brothers with a share of the responsibility of their potential care. Raksha Bandhan is observed on the last day of the Hindu lunar calendar month of Shravana, which typically falls in August. The expression "Raksha Bandhan" (literally, Sanskrit for "the bond of protection, obligation, or care") is now principally applied to this ritual. Until the mid-20th century, the expression was more commonly applied to a similar ritual, held on the same day, with precedence in ancient Hindu texts. In that ritual, a domestic priest ties amulets, charms, or threads on the wrists of his patrons, or changes their sacred thread, and receives gifts of money. This is still the case in some places. By contrast, the sister-brother festival, with origins in folk culture, had names which varied with location. Some were rendered as saluno, silono, and rakri. A ritual associated with saluno included the sisters placing shoots of barley behind the ears of their brothers. Of special significance to married women, Raksha Bandhan is rooted in the practice of territorial or village exogamy. The bride marries out of her natal village or town, and her parents by custom do not visit her in her married home. In rural north India, large numbers of married Hindu women travel back to their parents' homes every year for the ceremony. The brothers also travel to their sisters' married home to escort them back. Many younger married women arrive a few weeks earlier at their natal homes and stay until the ceremony. The brothers serve as lifelong intermediaries between their sisters' married and parental homes, as well as potential stewards of their security. In urban India, where families are increasingly nuclear, the festival has become more symbolic but continues to be highly popular. The rituals associated with this festival have spread beyond their traditional regions and have been transformed through technology and migration. Other factors that have played a role are: the movies, social interaction, and promotion by politicized Hinduism, as well as by the nation state. Among females and males who are not blood relatives, the act of tying the rakhi amulets has given rise to the tradition of voluntary kin relations, which has sometimes cut across lines of caste, class, and religion. Authority figures have been included in such a ceremony.
Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development was a paper read by B. R. Ambedkar at an anthropological seminar of Alexander Goldenweiser in New York on 9 May 1916. It was later published in volume XLVI of Indian Antiquary in May 1917. In the same year, Ambedkar was awarded a PhD degree by Columbia University on this topic. In 1979, the Education Department of the Government of Maharashtra (Bombay) published this article in the collection of Ambedkar's writings and speeches Volume 1; later, it was translated in many languages. In the paper, Ambedkar made a presentation a social phenomenon that emerged from the strategy of the Brahmins who adopted a strictly endogamous matrimonial regime, leading the other groups to do the same in order to emulate this self-proclaimed elite. He said that "the superposition of endogamy on exogamy means the creation of caste".
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details remain unknown or non-specific, clan members may claim descent from a founding individual or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societies' exogamy rules are on a clan basis, where all members of one's own clan, or the clans of both parents or even grandparents, are excluded from marriage as incest. Clans preceded more centralized forms of community organization and government, and have existed in every country. Members may identify with a coat of arms or other symbol. Some kinship-based groups may also have a symbol of origin, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor serving as a symbol of the clan's unity. Traditional anthropological thought (as for example in the work of Gerardus van der Leeuw) classified non-human examples of such "ancestors" (frequently animals) as totems.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
