Brideservice

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Close relationships

Affinity • Attachment • Bonding • Boyfriend • Casual • Cohabitation • Compersion • Concubinage • Courtship • Divorce • Domestic partnership • Dower, dowry, and bride price • Family • Friendship • Girlfriend • Husband • Infatuation • Intimacy • Jealousy • Limerence • Love • Marriage • Monogamy • Nonmonogamy • Passion • Pederasty • Platonic love • Polyamory • Polyfidelity • Polygamy • Psychology of monogamy • Relationship abuse • Romance • Separation • Sexuality • Serial monogamy • Sexual orientation • Significant other • Wedding • Widowhood • Wife
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Brideservice has traditionally been portrayed in the anthropological literature as the service rendered to the bride’s family by the bridegroom as a brideprice or part of one (see dowry).

Brideservice and bridewealth models frame anthropological discussions of kinship in many regions of the world.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Patterns of uxorilocal post-marital residence, as well as the practice of temporary or prolonged brideservice, have been widely reported for Native Amazonia. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] In Amazonia, brideservice is frequently performed in conjunction with an interval of uxorilocal residence. The length of uxorilocal residence and the duration of brideservice are contingent upon negotiations between the concerned parties, the outcome of which has been characterized as an enduring commitment or permanent debt. [20][21] The power wielded by those who “give” wives over those who “take” them is also said to be a significant part of the political relationships in societies where brideservice obligations are prevalent. [22][23]

Rather than seeing affinity in terms of a "compensation" model whereby individuals are exchanged as objects, Dean’s (1995) research on Amazonian brideservice among the Urarina demonstrates how differentially situated subjects negotiate the politics of marriage. [24]

A famous example of brideservice occurs in the Book of Genesis, when Jacob labors for Laban for fourteen years to win Rachel. Originally the deal was seven years, but Laban tricked Jacob by giving him Leah on their wedding day, so Jacob worked another seven years to obtain the girl he had originally fell in love with, Rachel.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Langenbahn 1989; Fricke
  2. ^ Thornton and Dahal 1998
  3. ^ Hagen 1999
  4. ^ Gose 2000
  5. ^ Helliwell 2000
  6. ^ Jamieson 2003
  7. ^ Arvelo-Jiménez 1971:104
  8. ^ Dumont 1978:75
  9. ^ Harner 1973:79-80
  10. ^ Hill & Moran 1983:124-25
  11. ^ Holmberg 1969:217
  12. ^ Kracke 1976
  13. ^ Maybury-Lewis 1971:384; 1967:97f; 1979:9
  14. ^ Murphy 1956
  15. ^ Rivière 1984:40f
  16. ^ Renshaw 2002:186ff
  17. ^ Siskind 1977:79-81
  18. ^ Turner 1979:159-60
  19. ^ Whitten & Whitten 1984:209
  20. ^ Rosengren 1987:127
  21. ^ Gow 1989a:187-8
  22. ^ Rivière 1977:41
  23. ^ Mentore 1987:511-27
  24. ^ Bartholomew Dean "Forbidden fruit: infidelity, affinity and brideservice among the Urarina of Peruvian Amazonia." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1995