Changes in Canela Marriage over 70 Years

Adding to his significant body of work on the Canela, Crocker focuses on recent and important changes that have taken place in regards to Canela marriage. His conclusions are based on his profound knowledge of the Canela together with new quantitative data collected specifically for this study. By the 1980s, the authority of the council of elders as expressed through the authority of the “uncles” over the marriages of their nephews and nieces had weakened considerably in contrast to the power they had been able to exert during the 1930s and 1940s. There have been few arranged marriages, an increase in “stolen” marriages, an increase in divorce in which children were involved, and a decline in the power of the set of close female relatives of the bride to vet the groom’s suitability. Moreover, the chapter describes the forces of globalization and acculturation that have contributed to the elders’ waning powers.

Why Was There a Transition from an Elementary Kinship Structure to a Complex One?

During the 1930s in the Venezuelan village of San Carlos de Río Negro, the Baré practiced cross-cousin marriage. However, by the 1980s they married hypergamously among the Curripaco, Geral, and Criollos, all of whom had recently migrated to the village. There is considerable historical material on San Carlos, which when coupled with fieldwork, facilitate the formulation of a number of hypotheses to test what best accounts for this transformation of marital rules. Lévi-Strauss predicted the causes of the breakdown of elementary kinship structures and the creation of complex ones; this chapter suggests an alternative scenario. In a parallel case, Curripaco women migrated to San Carlos in the 1970s and 1980s, could marry someone employed directly or indirectly in the government project, Codesur (Comisión para el Desarrollo del Sur), and became incorporated into the complex kinship structure of this ex–rubber boom village. This chapter suggests their social transformation sheds light on the Baré transformation of some forty years earlier.

Marriages, Norms and Structures

Mansutti adopts Needham’s scheme of distinguishing three analytical levels; the jural rules; the statistical-behavioural, and the categorical. He includes a computer simulation to gain a time depth in his model of Piaroa kinship and marriage, which demonstrates that the exceptions to the marriage rules are not residual and inexplicable but are necessary to maintain the ideal model anticipated by the formal rules. Although violations of the rules are motivated by personal desires and not a desire to save the formal system, they are in fact necessary to its preservation. Moreover, he employs Bourdieu’s distinction between official and private kinship, and illustrates his approach with apposite case studies. For instance, he describes how personal interests can be transmuted into community interests, and genealogical relationships between two people in small-scale societies can be “read” along different routes with telling results.

Waorani Marriage

The chapter records changes in Waorani marriage as acculturative forces reduce the power of young people’s parents to decide whom they must marry. With the arrival of missionaries, oil workers, anthropologists, and tourists, the social world has expanded; new possibilities for marriage have been presented and indeed encouraged by non-Waorani; new residential patterns and ways of making a living have reduced the influence of parents. There are more love matches, more extra-marital pregnancies, and fewer planned alliances between families. Most ethnographers who have worked with indigenous populations have probably noticed that with contact and acculturation, one of the first things to weaken is the authority of the older generation over the sexual behavior of the younger. Because of the dramatic history of the Waorani and the ethnographic attention they have received, this case is particularly well documented and instructive.

“Poor Me, I Have No Cousin”

Chernela’s analysis describes the consequences of globalization on Kotiria (also known as Wanano) kinship and marriage. Drawing on the insights of Robert Murphy (1971), she examines a number of the major themes that reoccur throughout this book, such as the dialectic between rules and practice, the relationship between structural intransigence and agency fuelled by needs and desires, and the emergence of innovation and practical considerations. If one looks at the formal model of Kotiria kinship and marriage, one might predict that they are constrained by a narrow range of alternatives when they choose a spouse. However, drawing on recent history, Chernela selects case studies that illustrate the range of possibilities actually open to the Kotiria. She presents cases in which marriage rules were disregarded or changed, as well as a case in which a descent group simply passed out of existence because of its members’ unwillingness to violate their own marriage rules.

Why Do the Ye’kwana Commit Incest So Frequently?

Based on Silvia Monterrey’s extensive field data and ethnogrpahic literature on the Ye’kwana, Valentine argues that Monterrey overestimates the proportion of “out of order” marriages, and that although the Ye’kwana have a kinship terminology that articulates a clear set of norms, because each community wishes to retain its population, “wrong marriages” with the parallel cousin are a way to keep villagers from leaving the village. Upon their marriage, parallel cousins are immediately reclassified as cross-cousins. In addition, this chapter argues that there are certain oscillations in the social structure, and that structural and contingent factors account for why the Ye’kwana have “married in” and survived, rather than marrying out and dying out. Several other hypotheses are also suggested that could be tested with additional historical research and fieldwork.

Marriage Matsigenka Style

Rosengren critiques Lévi-Strauss’s (1969) formalized analytical models by targeting the way his structural model of reciprocal exchange does not correspond to Matsigenka palpable reality. Rosengren calls for scholars to move on from Lévi-Strauss’s grand design and describe “people as intentional subjects situated in the everyday world of their own experience.” He concludes that Matsigenka rules are less a normative system that governs people’s behavior and more a discursive convention. For instance, people who are mutually attracted define each other as cross-cousins. Sometimes Matsigenka marry their cross-cousins, but that is more a consequence of them coming into contact with one another more frequently, than obedience to the rule that the Matsigenka marry their cross-cousins. The implication of his work is that the cross-cousin exchange rules may be shorthand for approximating the unintentional patterns that arise from strategies informed by residence preferences.

Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of the theories employed by the contributors. They agree that social spaces are equally or more relevant to understanding why marital rules are sometimes ignored or manipulated. All but one of the contributors direct their attention to differentiating and exploring the relationship between kinship and marriage structures as they ought to be and as they are. They arrive at the same conclusion: there were or are mechanisms to impart flexibility to what appears to be rigid elementary kinship structures. The introduction also describes how and to what use these strategies of manipulating the marital norms are put, starting with individual effort and moving to community-wide strategies. Running through the book is another theme—the way globalization is subverting traditional hierarchies, altering identities and eroding ancestral norms and values. Several chapters describe how the diminishing authority of elders has led to more extra-marital pregnancies, more “love” marriages, and fewer alliances between families. Finally the introduction critiques two of Lévi-Strauss’s key findings; rather, people manipulate the marital rules in an attempt to maximize their potential spouses—they may succeed or fail.

Why Do Women Run Away?

This chapter examines the way the Yanomami manipulate their kinship and marriage system. Alès demonstrates that the Yanomami do not use only genealogical relationships for the categorization of marriage practices, but rather select from a number of strategies in response to a set of structural variations in order to obtain a desired outcome. Nearly one-third of marriages are between classificatory brothers and sisters if the appropriate genealogical paths are taken, and not between classificatory husbands and wives. The Yanomami employ strategies that bend or break the rules while simultaneously maintaining their ideal conceptual model of the kinship and marriage structure. Alès’ description of parents deciding the relationship terms of their children’s possible spouses is one of many examples. She concludes that affinity is not determined mechanically from birth, but rather, one might say, affinity is “elective.”

Beyond the Norms

This chapter focuses on the norms that lead to qualifying marriage as permitted versus “incestuous” (incorrect or prohibited) in the Ye’kwana marriage system. The Ye’kwana live in lowland South America/Amazonia, have a Dravidian kinship system, and a very high proportion of incestuous marriages. This chapter works with a rich data base; 200 marriages drawn from 2,366 people of whom 820 marriages were registered. The material collected by Silva Monterrey, together with that collected by de Barandiarán in the 1950s, shows that over a quarter of marriages were incestuous and that this pattern is old. Moreover, variations in the frequency of incestuous marriages cannot be explained as a consequence of demographic changes. One could not hope for a firmer demonstration of the importance of looking beyond the formal rules of marriage and exploring actual behaviour. Silva Monterrey throws down the challenge and asks, why do the Ye’kwana apparently commit marital incest with such astounding frequency?