Toward a Theory of Marriage: The Economic Anthropology of Marriage Transactions

Abstract

The economic arrangements that surround marriage are an area of enduring interest for economic anthropologists and one of re-examination for women's studies. The formation of new households and family ties based on a sexual division of labor and on long-term investment in a new generation of laborers involves major economic shifts for individual women and men, and for society as a whole. In many societies, marriage entails rather explicit group negotiations regarding personnel and property. Economic anthropologists attempt to identify the costs and benefits to the parties involved, and to explain the occurrence of different types of transfers and exchanges between families and kin groups. However, the interested parties have rarely been analyzed in terms of gender differences. Most of the literature on marriage negotiations and transactions takes a social or androcentric perspective in which marriageable women are portrayed as passive objects rather than active participants whose livelihoods are at stake. In this discussion, I analyze some of the literature on women in marriage transactions in order to re-evaluate the theoretical approaches that economic anthropologists bring to the cross-cultural study of marriage. One difficulty in analyzing and generalizing about marriage transactions is the variability of marriage practices themselves. Another is the fact that in many societies, marriage is not defined by a single event, ceremony, or onetime economic transaction. It may be established slowly, by increments, with varying rights and complex obligations, and it may be established without any formal transfers of property. The economic implications of marriage arrangements over the lifecycle are more difficult to study than transactions that occur at some moment. For this reason, there has been a tendency to telescope the process of marriage, and oversimplify the complexities of gender and generational economics in the reproductive systems of other cultures.