Residence:
Raymond Firth calls “marri-age” as the fountainhead of kinship, the family resulting from “marriage is the molecule of kinship, All atoms of kinship exist in the family, An individual basically belongs to a family. Which is of two kinds:
- A Family of Orientation, in which he/she is born, and consists of his/her parents and siblings,
- A Family of Procreation, which he/she establishes after his/her marriage, and consists of his/her spouse and his/her children.
In order to establish a family of procreation, married couples, resort to the socially stipulated rule of residence, Rules of residence are norms, which govern where people should live, They direct who shall live where and with whom, These rules of residence may vary from society to society, and the frequency of the occurrence of each type of residence also varies. The various rules of residence and their frequencies of occurrence in human societies are as follows:
- Patrilocal residence: This rule requires the married couple to reside in or near the bridegroom’ s parental home, The term virilocal or patrivirilocal is employed to specify a residence, which characterizes the man’ s place about 67% of all societies conform to the patrilocal rule of residence. The examples include Gusii (Kenya), iban (Borneo) , Lepcha (Sikkim), Mende (sierra Leone) , Tallensi (Ghana), oraon (India) , HO (India) , Bhil (India) and Santhal (India).
- Matrilocal residence: This rule requires the married couple to reside in or near the bride’s parental home. The term uxorilocal is employed to specify a residence, which characterizes the woman’s place, about 15% of all societies conform to the matrilocal rule of residence. The examples are Khasi and Garo (Meghalaya in India), and the nineteenth century Nayars (Kerala in India) ,
- Bilocal residence: This rule permits the married couple to reside with or near the parents of either spouse, About 7% of all societies give the choice to live matrilocally or patrilocally to its people. The Samoans (in Polynesia) practise bilocality:
- Matri-patrilocal residence: This is a transitory rule of residence, which is intermediate between the matrilocal and patrilocal types. It reveals a special combination of matrilocal and patrilocal residences that alternate periodically throughout the married life of couple. This constant shift then makes it quite a rare occurrence. only about 2% of all societies follow this rule of residence. For example, Dobuans (in Melanesia) follow this rule of residence.
- Avunculocal residence: This rule of residence requires a married couple to reside with or near the bridegroom’s mother’s brother i.e. maternal uncle. This rule invariably involves an initial period of matrilocal residence when the baby stays with its mother and later when it grows up shifts to its uncle’s home. About 4% of all societies conform to the avunculocal rule of residence. For example, Trobriand Islanders (in Melanesia) follow avunculocality
- Neolocal residence: This rule requires a married couple to establish a domicile independent of the location of the parental home of either spouse, and even at a considerable distance from both the bride’s and the bridegroom’s parental home. About 5% of all societies follow this rule of residence. Societies in which there is food shortage also adopt this rule for obvious economic advantages. Examples include the highly industrialized societies, and the many food-gathering societies.
The rules of residence reflect the general environmental, economic, social and cultural conditions of the society. Thus one might venture to correlate the following conditions with the specific rules of residences as follows:
- Patrilocality: Generally where males contribute most to. The economy and do most of the subsistence work, patrilocality obtains. Societies, which practice agriculture with plough, and do hunting require the labour of men on a large scale, it is men in these societies who own land and other types of property. Further, such a large aggregation of members of society requires an effective political organization in order to control threats both from within and without.
- Matrilocality: Generally where females contribute most to the economy and do most of the subsistence work, matrilocality occurs. Societies, which practice horticulture generally, require the services of women who are most suited to this type of labour, in such societies, women are attached to their land and so property is inherited through women. That is why women do not move away from their land after marriage, but ask their men to reside with them and assist them in their economic enterprise. Further, the absence of certain negative conditions like warfare, effective political organization, and polygynous marriages all favour matrilocal residence.
- Bilocality: where equal importance is given to men and women in economy with proper division of labour between the two sexes such that they complement each other through their roles, Bilocality obtains, the inheritance and ownership rules are also balanced between men and women in such societies. Factors such as the relative wealth or status of the two families are likely to determine whether the newlywed couple will choose to reside with the bride’ s family or with the bridegroom’s family. Another circumstance that favor’s Bilocal residence among hunter-gatherer societies is related to the environment. The hunter-gatherers often live in small migratory bands in regions, which might have unpredictable and low rainfall. In this case, residential choice depends on adjusting marital residence to where a couple will have the best chance to survive, Generally those societies, which favour bilocal residence, have relatively peaceful conditions with negligible warfare.
- Matri-Patrilocality: Generally, this transitory rule of residence is associated with the occurrence and regular practice of “marriage by service. invariably then, the newlywed couple stay with the bride’s family for the first few years and later on shift to the bridegroom’s place of residence. The ‘service’ put in by the bridegroom through continuous physical labour at the bride’s family’s land assumes the form of a bride price or bride-wealth paid by the groom to the bride’s family.
- Avunculocality: The presence of a rule of avunculocal residence is the most common feature among several matrilineal societies, This is because men inherit the properties of their maternal uncles, For purposes of group membership alone, matrilineality may be reckoned, while for purposes of inheritance and succession, avunculocality is mainly recognized. Generally, for a new born, it requires a matrilocal residence for an initial period followed by a permanent avunculocal residence for males, while females move over to their husband’s place.
- Neolocality: Neolocal residence is most often related to the presence of a money or commercial economy in modern industrialized societies. Money seems to allow a couple to live on their own independently, without having to depend on other kin for their living. That is why neolocality is associated with nuclear family organization and not with extended or joint family organization. Even in societies with a nonmoney economy and with acute food shortage, people may have to live in small nuclear families. This is then a form of adaptation to the severe environment.
To be precise: environmental, economic, social and cultural factors condition the types of residences. When these underlying conditions change, the rules of residences also tend to get modified accordingly, For example the Crow Red Indians of North America are an example of changing economy bringing about change in residence, thus, they were originally matrilocal when they were practicing horticulture. Later, with the introduction of horse breeding, there was a shift in their economy and they became buffalo hunters leading to the change in residential rule from matrilocality to patrilocality.