Sexist attitudes of traditional society?

• male heir preferred to continue the Patrilineage
• Dowry to attract suitors for marriageable daughter

Lancet Medical Journal 

(Jan 2006)

Selective-Sex abortions in India are more common among...

• educated mothers
• urban middle classes
• wealthy business families
  • New Delhi affluent suburbs have worst sex ratios

• Indian population control campaigns of 1970s & 1980s: "happy families are small"
• Economic liberalization
  • Foreign companies market ultrasound
  • Easy credit allows clinics to purchase ultrasound
  • Clinics market selective sex technologies

• can afford to pay for the procedure
• want to be seen as "modern"
• Want male heir to keep wealth/resources within patrilineage

Not popular among poorer people

More children an economic necessity

• Bans doctors from revealing fetus' sex
• Absconds clinic ultrasounds upon violation
• Rarely enforced

Government child support to the poor

• get double rupees for girls' care

One-Child Policy (1979)

Implications

Surplus male population across Asia

Some speculations...

• Only wealthy men can afford wives
• Trafficking in women
• Increase in rapes
• Increase in wars? Macho values need an outlet

Child Rearing 

Darunga extended family

Southern Balkans

• Four-brother household
• Labuniste Village, Macedonia[image]

Kerala State, India: female-headed household

TARAWAD

• Nayar (Nair)
• Matrilineal caste
• [image][image]

• A society has to reproduce itself for the security of its members, young & old
• Marriage provides for
  • Regulation of sexual relations
  • Reproduction & rearing of children
  • Enculturation of those children
• A wedding is a celebration of the continuation of a society and its culture

Western:

• private matter between man and woman
• two freely consenting adults, or "free choice"
• requires emotional attachment

Non-Western:

• Joins two families
• requires relatives' consent
• emotional attachment not required

West Contrasts to East

Ideas about marriage

Differing Views about:

• Love & romance
• Sexual activity
• Cohabitation
• Reproduction & child rearing
• Sharing joys & burdens of life

Long Houses

Melanesia

• Monogamy
  • Serial Monogamy
• Polygamy
  • Polygyny
  • Polyandry
  • Group marriage, Multilateral

one man + more than one wife

• 75% cultures allow its practice
• Within those cultures, monogamy the norm
  • Imbalances of gender ratios, not enough women to go around
  • Economics: who can afford that many wives?
  • Conflicts between co-wives
• Some scholars argue that _____ empowers women; although others disagree

one woman + more than one husband (usually brothers)

• very rare
• Most polyandrous societies in South Asia:
  • Tibet, Nepal, India & Sri Lanka

Not easily explained--Plausible Reasons

• Inheritance of scarce resources- avoid splitting land among brothers; fraternal polyandry; brothers pool resouces & share wife (Tibet)

several people married together

• Emerges from 1960s hippie movement Hog Farm- oldest continual communal living experiment; LLano NM & Tujunga, CA

Polygyny

Reasons for existence

• Economic, a way to accumulate resources
  • one needs to be wealthy to have several wives
• Prestige, a way to show off status
• Political

Polygyny:

minimizing co-wife conflicts

• Sororal polygyny: man marries sisters
• Man marries unrelated women
  • Each takes up separate residence
  • Wives are ranked: senior wife (first & oldest) & junior wives

• Exogamy (outmarriage)
• Endogamy (in-group marriage)
  • Caste system (India)
  • De facto: as if a rule existed, i.e. marrying within same group
  • Religious preferences, Catholic marrying Catholic, Jew marrying Jew, Muslim marrying Muslim
  • Miami Merger

Incest Taboo

Prohibition of sexual relations with certain, usually close, relatives

• Cultural universal
• Always restricts relatives from sex within nuclear family
• Outside the nuclear family, the taboo is culturally constructed, i.e. the culture determines which relatives are taboo for sex

Incest Taboo

Some explanations

• Biological
  • Instinctual
  • Prevents transmission of recessive genes
• Psychological (E. Westermarck)
  • "familiarity breeds contempt;" i.e. sexual appetite dulled by people living together for a long time
• Social conflict avoidance (Malinowski)
  • Sexual contact within group creates jealousy and competition among them

Marital Exchanges

Transfer of goods and services between families at marriage

• Bridewealth (brideprice): Male's family --> female's family
  • Compensation for loss of her services
  • Makes future children full members of male's descent group
• Dowry: goods that female brings into the new household
  • Compensates man's gamily for taking on the added responsibility
  • Today social problem: "Dowry Deaths" in India
• Bride Service: male works with woman's family for period before wedding.

• Patrilocal: with or near husband's parents (70%)
• Matrilocial: with or near wife's parents (13%)
• Avunculocal: with or near husband's mother's brother (2-7%)
• Bilocal: couple can choose between mother's or father's relatives
• Neolocal: couple sets up own household (5%)

Zagrunda in Western Bosnia

Household group takes precedence over nuclear family

William G. Lockwood's study in Western Bosnia (1967)

• Composition: senior male & wife; adult married siblings & children; unmarried adult offspring
• Living Arrangements
  • Married couples have sleeping room
  • Common sleeping room for children >age 12
  • Three meal setting for men, women & kids
  • All share common property, clothes
  • Adults discipline all children
  • Children stay with zagruda even after divorce
• Household segmentation
• Senior male dies; eldest son is head
• Sons later divide property under Islamic law

• Ritual marriage: after three days, man & woman return to separate tarawad
• Men are warrior caste, often away to fight
• women have multiple sex partners
• Children reside with mother; paternity never an issue 
• Women return "marriage" ornament at "hustban's" funeral

• British abolished tarawad during colonialism, but women's status remained relatively high
• Today...
  • First Indian state to be 100% literate
  • 90% women in work force
  • Relatively travel-safe state for women

• E.B. Tylor
  • "Belief in spiritual beings"
• Anthony F.C. Wallace
  • "Belief & ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers & forces"

• The beliefs & ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers & forces

Key Points:

• Outside the observable world; not measurable
• Belief of an effect in this world
• Accepted on basis of "faith"

• E.B. Tylor (1871): Animism the earliest form of religion
  • Proposes stages of religious evolution:
    • Animism
    • Polytheism
    • Monotheism

Critique of Tylor

• Even monotheistic religions have animist beliefs
• Polytheistic religions, i.e. Hinduism, persist today
• Religion also encompasses moral/ethical doctrines

Thailand:

Buddhist Society with Animist Beliefs

• Remembering the deceased at Buddhist temple
• Guardian Spirits
  • Of the field 
  • Of the village

Unilineal Cultural Evolutionists

R.R. Marett (1909) Revises Tylor's Stages

• Animatism
• Animism
• Polytheism
• Monotheism

Belief in an impersonal supernatural force that can affect outcomes in the visible, tangible world.

• Mana in Melanesian (south Pacific) religions
• Suggests animatism predates animism in Tylor's stages

• In China...
  • Qi ("chi") concept: energy force in the universe
  • Feng shui: Law of aesthetics that allows one to receive positive qi
  • Hong Kong buildings sited with feng shui principles

Unilineal Cultural Evolutionists

Sir. James George Frazer (1890)

Religion & delopment of human thought

• Magic: controlling the world through rites & spells
  • Imitative magic: performing an activity similar to the desired outcome
  • Contagious magic: contact with sacred can result in desired outcome
• Religion: belief in supernatural beings requiring worship & sacrifices
• Science: systematic knowledge by observing cause-and-effect relationships

• Christian baptism
• Did Archie Griffin's # 45 make Andy Katzenmoyer good?

• William Oxley Thompson bust at Ohio State Universtiy Main Library
• Did short sleeves win games for woody?

• Imitative Magic
  • "Little House": for deceased
• Contagious Magic
  • Healing ritual for monk

• Magic common in societies based on scientific knowledge
• Religion is also a moral/ethical system
• All cultures possess practical, technical knowledge based on trial-&-error & empirical evidence: indigenous knowledge

Sociological View

Emile Durkheim: Religion maintains social order

• "Social solidarity": brings people together for common purpose
• Expresses moral values, collective beliefs
• Durkheim's Concepts
  • The "sacred" 
    • phenomena that inspire respect, awe & reverence; expressed through religious symbols

1.  
   • the "profane"
     • the ordinary, routine & natural phenomena in everyday world

• Relition opresses working class
• Religion diverts peoples' attention from their exploitation; creates subservience, promising rewards in afterlife

Famous sayings:

• "workers of the world, unite!"
• "man makes religion, religion does not make man... It is the opium of the people"

• Catholic Friars' Role in Spanish Colonization
• Bibles used to justify slavery in US South

• Churches take up workers' causes
  • Sister Dorothy Stang (1933-2005)
    • Advocate for Brazil's landless farmers
    • Murdered, 2005
• US abolitionists base anti-slavery movement on Bible

Psychological-- Bronislaw Malinowski

Religion relieves anxiety

• Life is full of uncertainty & uncontrollable events, regardless of technological development
• Religion inspires hope & gives confidence as people face the challenges of living

Malinowski's insight:

Trobrianders' highly skilled fishermen

• They use no magical chants when fishing in calm lagoon waters
•  They use elaborate chants in the dangerous open seas

• Sociological
• Psychological
• Cognitive/Intellectual

• Religion persists because it meets certain human needs: sociological, psychological & cognitive/intellectual
• Religions emerge/change to meet those needs

The blending of one or more cultural traits, many time involving religion, but also art & music

Examples

• Christmas tree 
• Village saints in Latin America
• Haitian Voodoo saints

Syncretism

Haiti: Voodoo

Blend of West African religion & Christianity

• Bondeye: supreme being
• Danbella, "serpent deity" renamed from St. Patrick
• Ogun, soldiers' patron, honored on St. James' feast day

• 750,000 to 850,000 ethnic Chinese in the Philippines
• <1% of national population of 91.1 million
• Originated from Fujian Province, Southwestern China
• Manila census of Chinese (1989)
  • 66.6% Roman Catholic
  • 11.5% Protestant
  • 9% Chinese folk religion & Christianity mixture

Chinese Religion in Philippines

• Western view: excludes other belief systems
• Chinese view: inclusive of many belief systems

• Chinese gods & goddesses
• Daoism (taoism)
• Buddhism
• Confucianism
• Ancestors
• Christianity

• "Lucky" days for weddings
• Display lucky characters on doors
• Employ feng shui in house-building
• Offerings to Tudi Gong (Earth God) at groudbreaking