The anthropology of marriage in lowland South America
Subtitle: bending and breaking the rules
By: edited by Paul Valentine, Stephen Beckerman, and Catherine Alès
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780813054315
Subjects: Indians of South America; Marriage customs and rites
Description: "This volume reveals that individuals in Amazonian cultures often disregard or reinterpret the marriage rules of their societies--rules that anthropologists previously thought reflected practice. It is the first book to consider not just what the rules are but how people in these societies negotiate, manipulate, and break them in choosing whom to marry. Using ethnographic case studies that draw on previously unpublished material from well-known indigenous cultures, The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America defies the tendency to focus only on the social structure of kinship and marriage that is so common in kinship studies. Instead, the contributors to this volume examine the people that conform to or deviate from that structure and their reasons for doing so. They look not only at deviations in kinship behavior motivated by gender, economics, politics, history, ecology, and sentimentality but also at how globalization and modernization are changing the ancestral norms and values themselves. This is a richly diverse portrayal of agency and individual choice alongside normative kinship and marriage systems in a region that has long been central to anthropological studies of indigenous life." -- Publisher's description
Notes: Editors Stephen Beckerman and Paul Valentine argue that while Amazonian societies certainly have variations on marriage practices, in reality the rules surrounding them are inconsistently followed. Utilizing methods of cultural and social anthropology and pulling together data from several cultures, contributors demonstrate how individual motives and opportunities--including desire, economics, or residence--result in marriage choices that may negotiate, manipulate, or ignore societal rules.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-289) and index.
Table of contents: title: PART I -- 1.; title: Marriage Matsigenka Style: Some Critical Reflections on Theories of Marriage Practices  -- Dan Rosengren -- 2.; title: Marriages, Norms and Structures: The Dilemma of Finding a Wife among the Piaroa of the Sipapo  -- Alexander Mansutti Rodríguez -- 3.; title: To Be Seen or Not to Be Seen! Marriage Choices among Ese Eja of the Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon  -- Daniela Peluso -- PART II -- 4.; title: Why Did They Marry? A Very Short Tale of a Lasting Wayù (Guajiro) Marriage  -- François-René Picon -- 5.; title: Beyond the Norms: Marriage and Incest among the Ye'kwana  -- Nalúa Rosa Silva Monterrey -- 6.; title: Why Do the Ye'kwana Commit Incest So Frequently? A Discussion of Silva's "Beyond the Norms"  -- Paul Valentine -- 7.; title: Why Do Women Run Away? Matrimonial Strategies among the Yanomami  -- Catherine Alès -- PART III -- 8.; title: "Poor Me, I Have No Cousin": The Pragmatics of Marital Choice in the Northwest Amazon  -- Janet Chernela -- 9.; title: Why Was There a Transition from an Elementary Kinship Structure to a Complex One? A Short Ethnography of an Amazonian Village  -- Paul Valentine and Lionel D. Sims -- 10.; title: Changes in Canela Marriage over 70 Years: From Authorizing to Stealing  -- William H. Crocker -- 11.; title: Waorani Marriage -- Pamela I. Erikson [and 3 others].