Marriage Regulations: Incest Taboo, Exogamy, Endogamy and Preferential Marriage

Marriage regulations are the rules by which a society decides whom a person may not marry, must marry, or should preferably marry. Anthropologists group them into three kinds. Proscriptive rules forbid certain unions, the incest taboo being the universal case. Prescriptive rules fix the group within or outside which one must marry: endogamy, exogamy, hypergamy and hypogamy. Preferential rules favour particular relatives, as in cross-cousin marriage, levirate and sororate.

This is a complete study note on marriage regulations for the UPSC Anthropology Optional. It covers the incest taboo and the theories that explain it, the rules of exogamy and endogamy, hypergamy and hypogamy, the preferential marriages, and the theories of cross-cousin marriage put forward by Lévi-Strauss, Malinowski, and Homans and Schneider, with examples from Indian tribes and world ethnography. It falls under Paper I, topic 2.3 (laws of marriage: endogamy, exogamy, hypergamy, hypogamy, incest taboo; marriage regulations: preferential, prescriptive and proscriptive) of the Anthropology Optional syllabus.

Key points at a glance

• Three kinds of rule: proscriptive (whom not to marry), prescriptive (the group one must marry within or outside) and preferential (the relative one should marry if possible).
• Incest taboo: the prohibition of sexual relations and marriage between certain close kin. The ban within the nuclear family is universal in recent societies; the few historical exceptions were mostly royal.
• Theories of the incest taboo: childhood familiarity (Westermarck), psychoanalytic (Freud), family disruption (Malinowski), cooperation or alliance (Tylor, White, Lévi-Strauss) and inbreeding (Morgan, Durham).
• Exogamy: marrying outside one's lineage, clan, gotra, village or moiety. Endogamy: marrying within one's tribe, caste, sub-caste or religious community. Every society has both, at different levels.
• Hypergamy (anuloma): a woman marries a man of equal or higher status. Hypogamy (pratiloma): a woman marries a man of lower status.
• Preferential marriages: cross-cousin, parallel-cousin and uncle-niece marriage; levirate, sororate and filial widow inheritance.
• Cross-cousin marriage explained: Lévi-Strauss by the exchange of women between groups (restricted and generalised exchange); Malinowski by the conflict between matrilineal descent and a father's affection; Homans and Schneider by the extension of sentiments.

Why every society regulates marriage

No society leaves the choice of a spouse entirely to the individual. Marriage creates rights over people and property, places children in a descent group, and ties families together as affines. A union that suited two individuals might still upset inheritance, confuse kinship roles or break an alliance. Rules about marriage are the means by which a society protects these wider interests.

The rules do two opposite things at once. They push people out of their own small group, so that families are linked to one another. They also hold people in a larger group, so that the tribe, caste or community keeps its identity. Understanding marriage regulations means seeing how these two movements are combined.

Marriage rules at a glance

The customs described in this note are those recorded in ethnographies and older texts. Many have changed, and some are no longer lawful.

Basic concepts

Consanguines and affines

• Consanguines are relatives by descent ("blood"): parents, children, siblings, cousins.
• Affines are relatives by marriage: a spouse, the spouse's kin, and the spouses of one's own kin.

Marriage rules are mostly about turning some consanguines into forbidden partners and some into preferred ones.

Cross-cousins and parallel cousins

The reason for the difference is descent. In a society with unilineal descent groups, parallel cousins on one side belong to one's own lineage or clan, while cross-cousins always belong to a different one. A rule of clan exogamy therefore forbids the first and leaves the second available.

Descent groups

• Lineage: a group tracing descent from a known ancestor through one line.
• Clan: a larger group whose members believe in common descent from a remote, often mythical or totemic, ancestor.
• Phratry: a group of linked clans.
• Moiety: one of two halves into which a whole society is divided.

Wife-givers and wife-takers

Where marriage follows a fixed direction, each group stands to others as a giver or a receiver of brides. The relation is seldom one of equals: in some systems the wife-givers are superior, in others the wife-takers. This becomes important in the discussion of hypergamy, hypogamy and matrilateral cross-cousin marriage.

I. Proscriptive rules: the incest taboo

A proscriptive rule states whom one should not mate with or marry. It is the negative rule of marriage, and every society has it in the form of the incest taboo: the prohibition of sexual intercourse or marriage between certain categories of kin. It is the most rigid of all marriage regulations.

The universal core

The most general part of the taboo covers three relationships: mother and son, father and daughter, and brother and sister. No society in recent times has permitted sexual relations or marriage between these pairs as a general rule.

The historical exceptions

These cases are notable because they are so few, and because in most of them the permission was confined to royalty and denied to everyone else. They confirm the rule more than they weaken it.

Variation in the extension of the taboo

Outside the nuclear family the taboo varies greatly.

• Cousins. Some societies forbid marriage with all first cousins, and some with second cousins too. Others forbid parallel cousins and prefer cross-cousins.
• Whole clans. In societies with clans, everyone of one's own clan may be forbidden, however distant the actual relationship.
• Affines and ritual kin. Some societies extend the ban to step-relatives, a spouse's kin, or godparents.
• Relative seriousness. Among the Tallensi of Ghana, studied by Meyer Fortes, relations with a distant "sister" of the clan were treated lightly, while relations with the wife of a lineage mate were an unpardonable sin. Jack Goody showed from such cases that what a society counts as incest depends on its descent system.

Incest taboo and exogamy distinguished

The two usually coincide, since people one may not marry are generally people one may not mate with. They can come apart: a society may tolerate a relationship it would never allow as a marriage. As Robin Fox put it, the difference between them is the difference between sex and marriage.

Why is the incest taboo universal? The theories

Because the taboo within the family is found everywhere, anthropologists have looked for a cause that is present everywhere. Five main explanations have been offered. A sound explanation has to pass two tests: it must explain why a rule is needed at all, and it must explain why the rule covers brother and sister as well as parent and child.

1. Childhood-familiarity theory (Westermarck)

Edward Westermarck argued that people who have been closely associated from earliest childhood, such as siblings, are not sexually attracted to one another and so avoid marriage. On this view the taboo expresses an aversion more than it imposes a prohibition.

The theory was set aside for a time, largely under Freud's influence, when it was argued that children do feel attraction to parents and siblings. Later studies revived it.

Criticism.

• If familiarity produces disinterest, why does society need a rule to forbid what people would avoid anyway?
• The theory predicts that first-cousin marriage would be banned where cousins grow up in the same community. Cross-cultural evidence does not bear this out.
• It does not explain why married couples can remain attracted to each other after many years together.

2. Psychoanalytic theory (Freud)

Sigmund Freud took the opposite view. In Totem and Taboo (1913) he proposed that the taboo is a reaction against unconscious and unacceptable desires. The son is attracted to his mother and feels jealousy and hostility towards his father; the daughter feels the same in reverse. Because these feelings would invite the parent's retaliation, they are repressed into the unconscious. The horror people feel at the thought of incest is a defence against the forbidden impulse that persists there.

Criticism.

• It may account for the aversion to parent-child incest, but not for why society needs an explicit rule, especially for brother and sister.
• It conflicts with the evidence supporting Westermarck that familiarity breeds disinterest.
• Malinowski argued from the Trobriand Islands that the pattern Freud described is not universal: in a matrilineal society the boy's tensions are directed at the mother's brother, who holds authority, not at the father.

3. Family-disruption theory (Malinowski)

The theory usually associated with Bronisław Malinowski holds that sexual competition among family members would create so much rivalry and tension that the family could not function. Since society depends on the family for the rearing of children, it has to remove that competition. Talcott Parsons and Kingsley Davis added that incest would confuse kinship roles: a child of such a union would stand in two incompatible relationships to the same person, and the authority on which socialisation depends would collapse.

Criticism.

• The argument explains why parent-child unions must be forbidden. It does not explain why brothers and sisters could not be allowed to marry once adult, which would not disturb the parents' authority.
• Brother-sister marriage did exist in ancient Egypt without the family collapsing.
• The theory explains a function of the taboo, not its origin.

4. Cooperation or alliance theory (Tylor, White, Lévi-Strauss)

This theory looks outward from the family. E. B. Tylor argued that tasks necessary for the welfare of the community need large numbers of people working together. To break down suspicion between family groups, early humans had to ensure that their members married into other families. The choice, in his famous phrase, was "between marrying out and being killed out".

• Leslie White restated the argument: the taboo is a cultural device that widens the circle of cooperation, and has nothing to do with instinct or biology.
• Claude Lévi-Strauss made it the foundation of his theory of kinship. The incest taboo is the rule that marks the passage from nature to culture. Its positive side matters more than its negative side: by forbidding a man his own sister and daughter, it obliges him to give them to others and to receive wives in return. Exchange, and with it society, begins there.

Criticism.

• Marriage does not always produce peace. Among the Gusii of Kenya people marry those they fight.
• Cross-cultural testing has found no greater peacefulness between communities that are required to intermarry than between those that are not.
• Even if alliance is valuable, a family could send out some members and keep others. The theory does not show why all marriage within the family must be banned.
• It explains exogamy, a rule of marriage, better than it explains the incest taboo, a rule about sex. Many societies tolerate premarital relations; sex within the family could in principle be tolerated too, provided marriage took place outside it.

5. Inbreeding theory

One of the oldest explanations points to the harmful effects of close inbreeding. L. H. Morgan held this view in the 19th century.

• The genetic argument. Harmful recessive genes are common. A person who carries one copy is usually unaffected. Close relatives are far more likely than unrelated people to carry the same recessive gene, so their children are more likely to inherit two copies and suffer the condition.
• The evidence. A study comparing children born of incest within the family with other children of the same mothers found serious abnormalities in a large proportion of the first group and a small proportion of the second. The risk falls as the parents are more distantly related. It is about twice as high for the children of uncle-niece marriages as for the children of first cousins, in line with the closer relationship.
• The old objection. The theory was long rejected on the analogy of animal breeding, where close inbreeding produces prize specimens. The analogy is misleading: breeders discard the many unhealthy offspring and are not concerned with ailments that appear late in life.

Could earlier peoples have known? William Durham's cross-cultural survey found that where ethnographers reported what people believed about the consequences of incest, harm to the offspring was mentioned in about half the cases. Raymond Firth recorded among the Tikopia of the Pacific the firm belief that unions of close kin carry their own doom (mara): the children of such unions are sickly and likely to die young, and examples were cited to prove it.

The strength of the theory. Whether or not people understood the cause, groups that observed the taboo would have had healthier children and so an advantage over groups that did not. Other customs could serve the purposes named by the family-disruption and cooperation theories, but only a ban on mating within the family solves the problem of inbreeding. That makes this the one theory that explains why the rule is universal and why it covers brother and sister.

Criticism.

• The taboo often covers people who are not biologically close, such as adoptive kin and affines, and omits some who are, such as cross-cousins.
• It explains the ban on mating, but societies also ban marriage between clan members who are scarcely related at all.

Other views

• Demographic theory. Mariam Slater argued that in early human groups, with short lives and wide spacing of births, mating within the family would rarely have been possible. Marrying out began as a necessity and later became a rule.
• A combined view. Robin Fox and others suggest that an evolved tendency to avoid those one is reared with (Westermarck) accounts for the avoidance, while the social advantages of alliance (Tylor, Lévi-Strauss) account for the elaborate rules built on it.

The theories compared

Why do some societies forbid cousin marriage and others allow it?

The extension of the taboo to first cousins varies, and inbreeding theory helps to predict it. Melvin Ember's cross-cultural study found that first-cousin marriage tends to be permitted in large, densely populated societies. There the chance that any two people who marry are closely related is small, so the risks of inbreeding in the population as a whole stay low. Small societies generally forbid it, because in a small population repeated cousin marriage quickly concentrates harmful genes. The exceptions are very small societies that have recently lost much of their population, where so few partners are available that cousins may have to be allowed.

II. Prescriptive rules

Prescriptive rules are the positive rules of marriage. They state the social group within which, or outside which, a spouse must be found. Breaches are dealt with firmly, sometimes by expulsion from the group. The terms "exogamy" and "endogamy" were introduced by J. F. McLennan in Primitive Marriage (1865).

A. Exogamy

Exogamy (exo, outside; gamy, marriage) is the rule that a person must marry outside his or her own group. E. A. Hoebel defined it as the social rule that requires an individual to marry outside a culturally defined group of which he is a member.

Units of exogamy

Functions of exogamy

• It prevents marriage between close relatives and keeps kinship roles clear.
• It removes sexual rivalry from within the group and so protects its solidarity.
• It creates alliances between groups and widens the circle of cooperation.
• It spreads cultural contact and exchange between communities.
• It lowers the biological risks of close inbreeding.

Explanations of its origin

• McLennan: exogamy arose from the scarcity of women caused by female infanticide, which forced men to capture wives from other groups.
• Morgan: it was adopted to avoid the ill effects of inbreeding.
• Westermarck: it is an extension of the aversion felt towards those with whom one grows up.
• Tylor and Lévi-Strauss: it is the means of alliance between groups.
• Malinowski: clan exogamy is the incest taboo of the family extended to the whole descent group.

B. Endogamy

Endogamy (endo, within) is the rule that a person must marry within his or her own group. Hoebel defined it as the social rule that requires an individual to marry within a culturally defined group of which he is a member.

Functions of endogamy

• It preserves the identity, customs and solidarity of the group.
• It keeps property and skills within the group.
• It maintains boundaries of rank between groups, as in the caste order.
• It ensures that spouses share language, religion and way of life.

Its costs. Endogamy narrows the choice of partners, can encourage practices such as dowry where suitable grooms are few, and hardens divisions between groups. B. R. Ambedkar regarded endogamy as the mechanism by which caste is maintained.

Exogamy and endogamy work together

The two rules are not alternatives. Every society applies both, at different levels. A Gond must marry outside the clan but within the tribe. A Hindu traditionally marries outside the gotra but within the jati. The inner rule sends people out of their descent group; the outer rule keeps them inside the community.

C. Hypergamy (anuloma)

Hypergamy is the rule or practice by which a woman marries a man of equal or higher social status than her own family. In Hindu tradition it is called anuloma, marriage "with the grain", and the texts permitted it.

• Where it is found. It belongs to stratified societies. In India it has been described among the Rajputs, whose clans are ranked; among the Anavil Brahmins and the Patidars of Gujarat, who formed ranked marriage circles; among the Kulin Brahmins of Bengal; and in the unions of Nayar women with Nambudiri Brahmin men in Kerala.
• Why families practise it. A daughter's marriage into a higher family raises the standing of her own.
• Its consequences. Men at the top are in demand, which raises dowry. Women of the highest groups have few eligible grooms, and men of the lowest have few available brides. Among the Kulin Brahmins it led to men taking many wives.

D. Hypogamy (pratiloma)

Hypogamy is the reverse: a woman marries a man of lower status than her own family. In Hindu tradition it is called pratiloma, "against the grain". The texts disapproved of it strongly and assigned a low position to the children of such unions.

Hypogamy is not everywhere disapproved. Among the Kachin of highland Burma, studied by Edmund Leach, it is the rule. Wife-givers (mayu) rank above wife-takers (dama), so that a woman always marries into a group lower than her own, and bridewealth flows upward in return. The same marriage that north Indian hypergamy treats as a gift to superiors is here a gift from them.

Marriage between equals is called isogamy. In present-day India, marriages across caste lines in either direction are lawful, and the state encourages them.

III. Preferential marriages

Within the field left open by the proscriptive and prescriptive rules, many societies go further and point to a particular relative as the proper spouse. Marriage between kin is common in small-scale societies. In Aboriginal Australia a man was expected to marry a woman standing in a specific kinship relation to him, and every person in the society was classified as kin of one kind or another.

Prescriptive and preferential: a distinction

Rodney Needham distinguished two cases that are often confused.

• Prescriptive marriage. The kinship terminology itself divides people into marriageable and unmarriageable categories, and a person must marry into the prescribed category. There is no legitimate alternative.
• Preferential marriage. A certain relative is the favoured choice, and marrying that person is approved, but other marriages are allowed.

Most of the Indian examples below are preferential in this sense. The six preferential marriages usually listed are cross-cousin marriage, parallel-cousin marriage, uncle-niece marriage, levirate, sororate and filial inheritance.

1. Cross-cousin marriage

Cross-cousin marriage is the marriage of a man with his mother's brother's daughter (MBD) or his father's sister's daughter (FZD). It is the commonest preferential marriage in the world and the orthodox form among many Indian tribes. Marriage with the mother's brother's daughter is the more frequent of the two.

Types

Distribution

• India. Reported among the Gond, Oraon, Baiga and Kharia of Central India; among the Garo, Khasi, Kuki, Karbi, Nocte and several Naga groups of the North-East; and very widely among the castes of South India.
• Elsewhere. Much of Melanesia, Aboriginal Australia, Sri Lanka, parts of Polynesia, southern and eastern Africa, and Siberia.

Indian illustrations

• Gond. Cross-cousin marriage is known as dudh lautawa, "the return of the milk". A family that gave a daughter in one generation receives a daughter back in the next, so that what was given is returned.
• Garo. In this matrilineal society a man marries his mother's brother's daughter. The husband chosen for the heiress daughter, the nokrom, comes from her father's lineage, which keeps the bond between the two lineages alive from one generation to the next.
• Khasi. Marriage with the mother's brother's daughter is allowed, but by custom only after the death of the mother's brother.
• South India. Irawati Karve showed that the Dravidian kinship terminology is built around cross-cousin marriage: the terms for mother's brother and father-in-law, and for cross-cousin and spouse's sibling, coincide.

Why societies prefer cross-cousin marriage

• It is compatible with exogamy. A cross-cousin always belongs to a different descent group. Where a society is divided into two exogamous moieties, the cross-cousin is the nearest marriageable relative.
• It reduces or recovers the bride price. Bargaining is easier among kin, and what one family paid in one generation comes back when a daughter is given in the next.
• It renews alliance. Two families that are already linked marry again and remain allied.
• It keeps property and people together. Wealth that left with a sister returns with her daughter.
• It gives security. The bride enters a household where her in-laws are already her relatives.

Such rules are easier to follow in small, simple societies. As a society becomes more complex and mobile, people seek exceptions, and the preference weakens.

2. Parallel-cousin marriage

Parallel-cousin marriage is the marriage of a man with his father's brother's daughter (FBD) or his mother's sister's daughter (MZD). In most societies it is forbidden, because parallel cousins are classed as brothers and sisters. Where cross-cousin marriage is allowed, parallel-cousin marriage is usually banned.

• Where it occurs. Marriage with the father's brother's daughter is the preferred form among the Bedouin and many other Arab and Middle Eastern peoples, and is found among some Muslim communities in South Asia. It is reported for the Riang of Tripura.
• The property explanation. Under Islamic law daughters inherit. If a daughter marries her father's brother's son, her share stays within the patrilineal group.
• The solidarity explanation. Among nomadic herders such as the Bedouin, the marriage keeps men and their loyalties within the lineage and so preserves its strength for defence. Fredrik Barth, and R. F. Murphy and L. Kasdan, analysed it as a marriage that turns the lineage inward, the opposite of alliance.

Joking and avoidance. In societies that allow cross-cousin marriage, a man has a formal and respectful relationship with his female parallel cousins and a joking relationship with his cross-cousins. The joking marks the possibility of marriage; the respect marks the strength of the incest taboo.

3. Uncle-niece marriage

In parts of South India a man may marry his elder sister's daughter. The spouses belong to two different generations. The practice has been reported among many castes of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Its logic is that of cross-cousin marriage taken one step further: a daughter is returned to the family her mother came from. It is absent among the matrilineal groups of Kerala, for whom the mother's brother is a member of one's own descent group. The genetic risk to children is higher than in cousin marriage, as noted above.

4. Levirate

Levirate (Latin levir, husband's brother) is the custom by which a widow marries her dead husband's brother.

• The principle. In a patrilineal society a man's heir is often his brother, who succeeds to his status and responsibilities and to the care of his household.
• A duty more than a right. The nearest kinsman is obliged to provide for a widow left with children, land and herds.
• Status of children. In some societies the children born to the new couple are counted as children of the dead man. Among the Nuer, Evans-Pritchard distinguished this from ghost marriage, in which a man marries a wife in the name of a kinsman who died without heirs.
• Functions. The widow and children remain in the husband's group; the alliance with her family continues; and the bridewealth does not have to be returned.

Niyoga. The ancient Hindu texts describe a related practice. Under niyoga a childless widow, or the wife of a man unable to father children, could bear a son by an appointed man, often the husband's brother, and the child was counted as the husband's. The Mahabharata gives instances, and the Manusmriti discusses the practice and restricts it. It differs from levirate in that no marriage took place.

5. Sororate

Sororate (Latin soror, sister) is the custom by which a widower marries his dead wife's sister. In some societies it is obligatory and in others merely permitted.

The sororate is reported from almost every Native North American people outside the Pueblo area.

• Why it is practised. Where bride price is high, a second wife is hard to obtain. The younger sister is given in place of the one who died, as a continuation of the same contract. The children are cared for by their mother's sister.
• Not to be confused with sororal polygyny. In the true sororate a man is married to one sister at a time, the second only after the death of the first. In sororal polygyny he marries two or more sisters while all are living.

Levirate and sororate both show that marriage is a contract between families, which outlasts the life of either spouse.

6. Filial inheritance

Filial inheritance, or filial widow inheritance, is the custom by which an heir other than a brother, typically a son, inherits the widows of the dead man. A son takes his father's wives other than his own mother.

• Condition. It is possible only where polygyny is practised.
• Examples. Reported for the Sema Naga, for the medieval Mongols and for the Inca.
• Function. It keeps the women, and the bridewealth paid for them, within the family, and provides for their support.

Preferential marriages compared

Why cross-cousin marriage? The theories

Generations of anthropologists have studied cross-cousin marriage. Three explanations are central: the structural theory of Lévi-Strauss, the social and psychological account of Malinowski, and the psychological theory of Homans and Schneider.

A. Lévi-Strauss: structural implications

In The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Claude Lévi-Strauss began from the incest taboo. Among animals mating is unregulated. The incest taboo, by forbidding a man the women of his own group, dictates an ordered exchange of women and so institutes rules of marriage. The rules lead to exogamy, and a cycle of reciprocal exchange is set in motion. Kin groups come to be linked by repeated marriage and remain affines of one another across generations. These are alliances.

For Lévi-Strauss the basic function of all exchange is to promote solidarity through interdependence, and the exchange of women in marriage is its most important form. How the exchange is organised determines the kind of integration a society achieves. He called systems that name the category of spouse elementary structures, and systems that only forbid certain kin and leave the rest to choice, as in modern societies, complex structures.

Restricted exchange: symmetrical cross-cousin marriage

• Exchange is confined to two groups. Group A gives its women to group B and receives women from B.
• It is as if two sets of brothers exchanged sisters. One's wife is at once a mother's brother's daughter and a father's sister's daughter.
• The account is settled within a single generation.
• The two groups are alike: each is both giver and receiver. The result is what Durkheim called mechanical solidarity.
• The tie is real but limited. It can join only two groups at a time, or multiples of two.

Delayed exchange: patrilateral cross-cousin marriage

• Where men marry the father's sister's daughter, the direction of exchange reverses in each generation.
• In one generation A gives to B and B to C; in the next C gives to B and B to A.
• The balance is restored after two generations. The groups remain functionally equivalent, and the solidarity is again mechanical.
• Lévi-Strauss regarded this as a short cycle that never grows into a lasting structure.

Generalised exchange: matrilateral cross-cousin marriage

• Where men always marry the mother's brother's daughter, women move in one direction only: A gives to B, B gives to C, and C gives to A.
• No group receives wives from the group to which it gives them. The debt is never repaid directly, and the cycle closes only when the last group gives to the first.
• Each group depends on the whole chain, so any number of groups can be bound together. The roles of wife-giver and wife-taker are distinct, which gives organic solidarity.
• Givers and takers are often unequal in rank, as among the Kachin.

Lévi-Strauss concluded that matrilateral cross-cousin marriage integrates society more firmly than the other forms. That, he argued, is why it is the commonest: it confers an advantage in the survival of societies.

Criticism of Lévi-Strauss.

• He treats women as objects exchanged by men, a view that feminist anthropologists have challenged.
• Edmund Leach showed from the Kachin that marriage rules cannot be separated from politics, rank and the flow of bridewealth.
• Actual marriages often depart from the stated rule; the model describes an ideal.
• Louis Dumont refined the theory for South India, arguing that what is inherited there is the relation of affinity itself.

B. Malinowski: the father's affection in a matrilineal society

Malinowski, in The Sexual Life of Savages (1929), explained why patrilateral cross-cousin marriage is favoured in a society that traces descent through women.

• Among the Trobriand Islanders a man's heir is his sister's son, not his own son.
• Yet a father is attached to his own son and would wish him to benefit.
• There is therefore a conflict between the principle of matrilineal descent and paternal feeling.
• The marriage of a man's son to the man's sister's daughter eases it. The son remains near his father and shares in his position while he lives, and the son's children, through their mother, belong to the father's own matrilineage.

Malinowski thus gave a social and psychological basis for the patrilateral form in a matrilineal society.

C. Homans and Schneider: the extension of sentiments

George Homans and David Schneider, in Marriage, Authority and Final Causes (1955), noted a link between the side of the preferred cousin and the rule of descent, and proposed a psychological explanation.

Sentiments formed towards a parent are extended to that parent's siblings and their children, and marriage follows the line of affection.

Criticism.

• Rodney Needham, in Structure and Sentiment (1962), replied that the theory rests on an unproven psychological process, the extension of sentiments from primary to secondary relatives, and that it confuses preference with prescription. A rule that binds a whole society cannot be explained by the feelings of individuals.
• G. P. Murdock pointed out that most patrilineal societies do not practise matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, and most matrilineal societies do not practise the patrilateral form.

The three theories compared

Marriage regulations in India

North and south

Irawati Karve, in Kinship Organization in India (1953), showed that the rules of marriage divide the country into broad zones. See also our note on Indian anthropologists.

The traditional Hindu rules

• Endogamy of the jati.
• Exogamy of the gotra and pravara, and of sapinda kin.
• Hypergamy permitted and hypogamy disapproved.

In North India the clan rule was often widened into a ban on marrying into the gotras of several grandparents, sometimes called the four-gotra rule.

Tribal India

• Tribe endogamy with clan exogamy is the general pattern, as among the Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Ho and Gond.
• Totemic clans. Many clans are named after an animal or plant which the members respect and do not harm.
• Cross-cousin marriage is preferred among many tribes of Central and North-East India.
• Levirate and sororate are widely permitted.
• Sanctions. Breaches of clan exogamy are treated as grave offences by the tribal council. Among the Santhal the penalty was bitlaha, a form of social boycott.

For current issues among these communities, see tribal India today.

Law and change

• What has weakened. Gotra and village exogamy in cities; the preference for cross-cousin marriage among the educated; levirate and sororate.
• What persists. Caste and community endogamy remains strong, though marriages across these lines are increasing.
• Why. Education, migration, later age at marriage, awareness of genetic risk, and the legal equality of persons.

Consanguineous marriage and genetics

Marriage between close relatives is of interest to biological anthropology as well as to social anthropology.

• Coefficient of inbreeding. This measures the probability that a child receives two copies of the same gene from a common ancestor. It is 1/16 for the children of first cousins and 1/8 for the children of an uncle and niece.
• Effect. Consanguinity raises the frequency of recessive disorders and of some conditions that appear later in life. The rise is modest for first cousins and greater for closer unions.
• In populations. In small endogamous groups the effect accumulates over generations, which is why population size matters in Ember's explanation above.

The social advantages that make kin marriage attractive, and the biological costs it can carry, pull in opposite directions. Different societies have struck the balance differently.

Key thinkers at a glance

Using this topic in a UPSC answer

• Classify first. State the three kinds of rule, proscriptive, prescriptive and preferential, in one line each.
• On the incest taboo, give at least four theories with the thinker's name, and one criticism of each. End with inbreeding theory as the one that explains universality, and the combined view.
• On exogamy and endogamy, stress that they operate together at different levels, with a tribe and a caste example.
• On hypergamy, name anuloma and pratiloma and contrast north India with the Kachin.
• On cross-cousin marriage, draw the exchange as arrows: A and B exchanging for restricted exchange; A to B to C to A for generalised exchange.
• Use Indian material: Gond dudh lautawa, the Garo nokrom, Karve's north-south contrast.
• Close with change: law, education and mobility have loosened the preferential rules more than the rule of endogamy.

For presentation, see our guide to anthropology answer writing with diagrams, thinkers and case studies.

Practice questions

1. Critically examine the theories put forward to explain the universality of the incest taboo.
2. Distinguish between proscriptive, prescriptive and preferential rules of marriage with examples.
3. Exogamy and endogamy are complementary and not contradictory. Discuss with Indian examples.
4. What are hypergamy and hypogamy? Examine their social consequences.
5. Discuss Lévi-Strauss's theory of the exchange of women with reference to cross-cousin marriage.
6. Compare the explanations of cross-cousin marriage given by Malinowski and by Homans and Schneider.
7. Write short notes on levirate, sororate and filial inheritance.
8. How far does the inbreeding theory explain variation in rules about cousin marriage?

Frequently asked questions

What are marriage regulations in anthropology?

Marriage regulations are the social rules that govern the choice of a spouse. They are of three kinds: proscriptive rules that forbid certain partners, prescriptive rules that fix the group one must marry within or outside, and preferential rules that favour particular relatives.

What is the difference between proscriptive, prescriptive and preferential marriage rules?

Proscriptive rules say whom one must not marry, as in the incest taboo. Prescriptive rules say within or outside which group one must marry, as in endogamy and exogamy. Preferential rules name the relative one should marry if possible, as in cross-cousin marriage.

What is the incest taboo?

The incest taboo is the prohibition of sexual relations and marriage between certain close relatives. Its application to parent and child and to brother and sister is found in all recent societies.

Why is the incest taboo universal?

Five main explanations are offered: childhood familiarity produces aversion (Westermarck), the taboo defends against repressed desire (Freud), it prevents rivalry in the family (Malinowski), it forces alliance between families (Tylor and Lévi-Strauss), and it avoids the harm of inbreeding. The inbreeding theory best explains its universality.

What is the difference between exogamy and endogamy?

Exogamy requires marriage outside one's own group, such as the clan or gotra. Endogamy requires marriage within one's own group, such as the tribe or caste. Most societies apply both rules at different levels.

What is the difference between incest taboo and exogamy?

The incest taboo is a rule about sexual relations between specific kin. Exogamy is a rule about marriage outside a group. They usually coincide, but exogamy can cover people who are only distantly related.

What are hypergamy and hypogamy?

In hypergamy, called anuloma in Hindu tradition, a woman marries a man of equal or higher status. In hypogamy, called pratiloma, she marries a man of lower status. Hindu texts permitted the first and disapproved of the second.

What is cross-cousin marriage?

Cross-cousin marriage is the marriage of a man with his mother's brother's daughter or his father's sister's daughter. It is preferred among many Indian tribes and across South India.

What is the difference between cross-cousins and parallel cousins?

Cross-cousins are the children of a brother and a sister. Parallel cousins are the children of two brothers or of two sisters. Parallel cousins are often treated as siblings and forbidden as spouses, while cross-cousins are often preferred.

What are restricted and generalised exchange?

In Lévi-Strauss's theory, restricted exchange is the direct exchange of women between two groups, linked with bilateral cross-cousin marriage. Generalised exchange is one-way giving in a chain of three or more groups, linked with matrilateral cross-cousin marriage.

What is the difference between levirate and sororate?

In levirate a widow marries her dead husband's brother. In sororate a widower marries his dead wife's sister. Both continue the alliance between the two families.

What is the difference between sororate and sororal polygyny?

In sororate a man marries his wife's sister only after his wife's death. In sororal polygyny he is married to two or more sisters at the same time.

What is filial inheritance?

Filial inheritance is the custom by which a son inherits the widows of his father other than his own mother. It is reported for the Sema Naga and the medieval Mongols.