Marriage, Kinship, and Illness

Marriage and Kinship: Some Basic Anthropological Terms

• Kinship boundaries: patrilineal, matrilineal, bilateral

• Residence of wedded couple: patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal

• Exchanges at marriage: bride-price or bride-wealth; dowry

• Types of marriage: monogamy, polyandry, polygyny (James Bucher’s question)

Frequency of Marriage Types Across Cultures from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample of 186 pre-industrial

societies (Murdock and White 1969)

Preferred marriage is to the son or daughter of one’s father’s brother’s (the paternal uncle)

Nadia

Aisha

Jamila

Why is Jamila’s position in her household so tenuous?

Why do people marry someone who is related?

Somatization

• Illness as a way to resist oppression? p. 249, footnote 11

• Nadia on being ill from not working: p. 205

Medical Pluralism

• Western medicine is expensive; doesn’t address the non-medical issues, p. 164-166

• Not all physical problems are medically caused, but caused by social conflicts: spells/witchcraft

• Why might visiting a saint’s shrine help? p. 208

• But social stigma for doing so: Abdul Haqq, p. 165

Back to a big question: how and why cultures change?

• Has globalization (the relocation of multinational factories to Morocco) generated cultural change?

• If so, how is it happening?• If not, why not?