David Maybury Lewis Millennium: Strange Relations

In North America, people will argue that love needs to happen before marriage but, historically, this is actually a very new notion. Mr. Smolinsky was in shock when his daughters wanted to marry for love. He asked his wife if they even looked at each other before the engagement and she replied, “’Maybe if I had the sense of my daughters in America, I would have given you a good look over before the wedding’” (76). This implies that if she had the choice, she would have married for love or perhaps a different man at least.

In the tribal villages of eastern Africa the Maasai marriages are arranged by the elders without ever first consulting the bride or the mother of the bride to be. Unlike, that of my own culture in the United States of America, where I am free as a citizen to choose whomever I may choose to marry and when and if I may marry. Polygyny is that of which is practiced in the Maasai culture, as an ideal that is achieved only by that of the elder men of the tribe. Unfortunately, as a result ofthemen being much older at the time of marriage, most women become widows, knowing that it is understood that they should never remarry again.

Marriages are faced with symbolic interactionism. Interactions between spouses involves shared understandings of their arrangement( New edu). Often times husbands and wives have different ways of communicating and social class affects expectations that spouses have of their marriages (New edu). Often times, love is the basis for American marriages but it is not like that is many countries around the world. Polygyny, polyandry, monogamy, and group marriages are types of marriages that are practiced in different parts of the globe.

Love is rarely the motivating reason for marriage, and Stephanie Coontz’s article, “The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love,” discusses this. Coontz brings forth a lot of information and many examples to inform the reader of how the western idea of marriage isn’t really as common as we believe that it is. She starts her article with a quote from George Bernard Shaw, who says that people who marry for love are, “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions…” Many of the cultures that Coontz goes onto talk about later in the article share this viewpoint. The author writes about the history of marriage and touches on societies that have obscure views of it now. She does a great job of organizing the information into a timeline starting with marriage in the ancient times, love in African tribes, adultery throughout history, monogamy, and marriage now in Western society. Most of Western society bases getting married on the idea of “love until death.” Coontz argues that this Western invention is and has often been seen as radical.

Polyamory refers to the participation of somebody being in more than one open romantic relationship at a time, usually without any religious connotations (Buck Jr., 2012). Bigamy is the crime of entering a legal marriage while one already has a living spouse (Buck Jr., 2012). For this paper, when speaking about polygamy we are talking about polygyny unless noted otherwise.

Of course, there are many proverbs about polygamy and co-wives. But proverbs do not have the same weight as myths. Indeed, the former are humans’ sayings, whereas the latter are sacred literatures, so to speak. Numerous African creation myths develop the idea that monogyny was the original practice among creator-gods and among the first human couples. After reading numerous creation myths, I have identified five of them which substantiate this claim. These myths are representative of five geographic areas of sub-Saharan Africa, that is, the northern, southern, eastern, western, and central Africa.

Can you imagine marrying someone just because of your tribe or religion? In Marriage is a Private Affair, Nnaemeka decides to break that tradition and marry someone he loves. Igbo people are strict about their marriages and religious culture, making it hard for one to marry outside of their tribe. In Marriage is a Private Affair, the reader can comprehend that marrying outside of their tribe can be extremely tough for one to accomplish.

One thing that I found over the course of the semester that made something familiar seem strange is marital, social and sexual monogamy in American culture. We are attracted to a person, build a relationship with them, sexually and/or emotionally, and expect to be their only partner. We value loyalty and the concept of love in our culture. If one partner breaks these rules, in most cases, this turns the other off. But as I have learned, in a lot of cultures this isn’t the case. There are several cultures that having multiple marriages, not getting married or only being with someone for reproduction purposes is totally normal. Love is taboo. Like Ongka’s culture, he is able to have many wives and many children among those wives and that is

Unlike Elizabethan marriages, modern day marriages are almost primarily for reasons of love. The reasons behind a couple’s betrothal are much

Anthropological studies on kinship, family and marriage have over the years suffered from the absence of descriptive accounts of fully functioning and extant polyandrous systems (Schuler, 1989). Some of the accounts only provide a partial picture of some moribund or vanished systems. There is some lingering doubt among most anthropologists as to whether polyandry qualifies to be a form of marriage. However, in spite of the definitional problems, the overriding concept in this form of union is that there exist a bond between a woman and several men. This paper looks at the Nyinba community, an endogamous ethnic group, of Nepal and provides an account of their kinship ties, family and marriage. Notably, it looks at their system of fraternal polyandry and how it is related to kinship and family.

Polyandry is the rarest form of marriage and has been observed in only four societies: the Toda, the Marquesans, the Nayar and the Tibetans (Lee,1982). Even in polyandrous populations, most

Focusing on the formation of the family in these two conceptions, the contrasting attitudes regarding collectivity in particular are highlighted. Marriage in the African context is understood as the “marriage

Marriage; what is the first thing that comes to mind? For many its monogamy, but what is monogamy? Monogamy means that an individual has one spouse at a time (Lancy, 2015) however; in many cultures monogamy is not the first thing that comes to mind. There are different types of marriage in fact there are 2 types monogamy as stated earlier and Polygamy. Polygamy has two subsections within it which are polyandry defined as one wife with two or more husbands or polygyny defined as one husband with two or more wives (Lancy, 2015). Within this paper there are three groups being compared and contrasted who all part take in polygynous marriages. The three groups are the Bedouin-Arab men, the Cree and Saulteaux bands, and the Shirazi from the Comoro Islands. Polygyny is quite complex, it is different for every group and there are factors that must be considered to each group before going along with a polygynous marriage.

Love, is an amazing and powerful force, one recognized amongst cultures all across the globe. It remains to be one of the most prominent factors/reasons that americans firmly believe will eventually lead to marriage. Most commonly love can be referred to as a strong form of personal and emotional connection. Love can transcend many emotions as its power to represent human kindness, passion, and affection. It can be seen as a strong virtue that is often believed to be the strong foundation of many relationships. Marriage in the united states is seen to be such a long process, that is usually built and developed over years, from being strangers, formally meeting, going on multiple dates, finally becoming a couple, establishing the relationship label, then being together for many years, the last and final form of the highest commitment level is marriage. Now, imagine having absolutely no chance at finding your “true love”, you could be walking down the street and suddenly before you know it someone is kidnapping you. This may seem absolutely crazy and shocking to most people, however in Kyrgyzstan, this type of behavior is completely normal and the traditional way that they choose their brides. This was thoroughly demonstrated and explained in the film The Kidnapped Bride. This film is a great representation of just how different other cultures are, and how something that may be astonishing or shocking to one culture can be completely normal to another. It helps really break

Love marriage simply allows you to choose who you want, to live the life that you want, and build a family that will always get the chance to enjoy this love. The emergence of the concept of love marriage decreased the boundaries between the cultures and allowed people to enjoy experiencing being with the people they love no matter what their origin is. Arranged marriage formed a lot of successful families in the past and even during the present, but it also had so many difficulties for the couples, especially in the first period of their marriage, which is the period that they spend in knowing and coping with each other’s personalities and