The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America: Bending and Breaking the Rules
The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America: Bending and Breaking the Rules
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Abstract
Traditional treatments of marriage among indigenous people focus on what people say about whom one should marry and on rules that anthropologists induce from those statements. This volume is a cultural and social anthropological examination of the ways the indigenous peoples of lowland South America/Amazonia actually choose whom they marry. Detailed ethnography shows that they select spouses to meet their economic and political goals, their emotional desires, and their social aspirations, as well as to honor their commitments to exogamic prescriptions and the exchange of women. These decisions often require playing fast and loose with what the anthropologist and the peoples themselves declare to be the regulations they obey. Inevitably then, this volume is about agency and individual choice in the context of social institutions and cultural rules. There is another theme running through this book—the way in which globalization is subverting traditional hierarchies, altering identities, and eroding ancestral marital norms and values—how the forces of modernization alter both structure and practice. The main body of the book is given over to eleven chapters based on previously unpublished ethnographic material collected by the contributors. It is divided into three sections. The first collects essays that describe the motives behind breaking the marriage rules, the second describes how the marriage rules are bent or broken, and the third gathers chapters on the effects of globalization and recent changes on the marriage rules.
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Front Matter
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Introduction
Paul Valentine andStephen Beckerman
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Part I
Dan Rosengren-
1
Marriage Matsigenka Style: Some Critical Reflections on Theories of Marriage Practices
Dan Rosengren
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2
Marriages, Norms and Structures: The Dilemma of Finding a Wife among the Piaroa of the Sipapo
Alexander Mansutti Rodríguez
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3
To Be Seen or Not to Be Seen! Marriage Choices among Ese Eja of the Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon
Daniela Peluso
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1
Marriage Matsigenka Style: Some Critical Reflections on Theories of Marriage Practices
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Part II
Dan Rosengren-
4
Why Did They Marry? A Very Short Tale of a Lasting Wayù (Guajiro) Marriage
François-René Picon
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5
Beyond the Norms: Marriage and Incest among the Ye’kwana
Nalúa Rosa Silva Monterrey
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6
Why Do the Ye’kwana Commit Incest So Frequently? A Discussion of Silva’s “Beyond the Norms”
Paul Valentine
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7
Why Do Women Run Away? Matrimonial Strategies among the Yanomami
Catherine Alès
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4
Why Did They Marry? A Very Short Tale of a Lasting Wayù (Guajiro) Marriage
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Part III
Dan Rosengren-
8
“Poor Me, I Have No Cousin”: The Pragmatics of Marital Choice in the Northwest Amazon
Janet Chernela
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9
Why Was There a Transition from an Elementary Kinship Structure to a Complex One? A Short Ethnography of an Amazonian Village
Paul Valentine andLionel D. Sims
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10
Changes in Canela Marriage over 70 Years: From Authorizing to Stealing
William H. Crocker
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11
Waorani Marriage
Pamela I. Erickson and others
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8
“Poor Me, I Have No Cousin”: The Pragmatics of Marital Choice in the Northwest Amazon
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End Matter
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