Every culture in the world has their own customs and ways they do things. All cultures have different ways of initiating people into their cultural groups. The people that are joined into a particular culture group have family that are in the group already. Although, there are cases where outsiders join into other cultural groups. A way that this occurs is by marriage. Every culture has their own ways of going about a wedding ceremony. This paper will focus on the marriage ceremony of the Maasai community of East Africa and then the Jewish community, a religious group scattered around the world with many located in America. The Maasai are a cattle-keeping society of East Africa. Most of the people of this culture group are focused in the Kenya. Specifically in the Great Rift Valley of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. The current population of the Maasai is around 840,000 people. The Maasai economy is heavily dependent on cattle production, but they also keep goats and sheep. The Maasai hate other occupations and spend their time moving their herds of livestock seasonally in search of good pasture, living in their normal huts which they surround with fences of thorn bushes. Cattle aren’t just a key factor in the Maasai economy, they also play a rather key role in their religious life. From the first initial contact with the Maasai, explorers and researchers collectively noticed the aggressiveness and physical strength of the Maasai. The Maasai were not a passive
The Jewish community has been practicing wedding ceremonies for many years where the preparations and procedures are very tedious, which takes months in order to prepare for this sacred event. When preparing for these ceremonies, it is important to understand that even though there are various types of ceremonies within the Jewish community, they all however, originated from a centralized resource and that is the Bible. Even though the Bible does not mention about wedding ceremonies, it is the iconic events that occur within the Bible that is used as the origins of wedding ceremonies for the Jewish community. In order to establish a correlation between the origins of Jewish marriages to the modern practices of Jewish wedding ceremonies, we must take a look at what a wedding ceremony consist of for the Jewish people.
According to Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian writer who believes in the power of story, if one traps oneself into the narrow world of “single story” about another person or country, that person would risk a crucial misconception. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is considered as the most authentic response to contemporary Western’s literature depiction of Africa, which usually obligates the readers to only look at the “single story” that is written with personal stereotypes under an ethnocentric point of view. As a result, in his famous Things Fall Apart, Achebe contrasts the perspective of the colonized on imperialism with that of the colonizing in order to provide an alternative to the Western literature’s “single story” of Africa.
Marriage is described as two people as partners in a personal relationship. There are two typical ideas of marriage that we know today. The first one that comes to mind is the one we all know, based on love, but there is another one that some may not even know of and its arranged marriages. Arranged marriage is not typically in our culture we know but in different cultures arranged marriages are their normal marriage. Throughout this essay, I will discuss the importance of realizing cultural diversity and how we apply the perspectives we gain from cross-cultural comparison to our own experience using central concepts about marriage to compare and contrast marriage in several cultures.
The inherent personal expression found when one includes culture to a wedding ceremony provides a timeless experience for a bride or groom who see their marriage as a transitional rite of passage. Engaging in heritage can be a personal, frequent pursuit for some, thereby suggesting deeper importance when it is included in a wedding ceremony through venues, specific events, a symbolic activity, and so forth. Our society actively promotes this theory, from media resources meant specifically to appeal to the everyday American to smaller communal hubs like religious circles or family members who instill couples with the distinct values they subsequently carry into marital lives.
In about the year 1400, there were many distinct characteristics within traditional European society and West African society, in which they were both similar, yet different. They were similar in their religious beliefs; however, they had developed different motives within rituals. In addition, they also structured their political system different. Their religious beliefs are also similar to Native American’s beliefs. However, Native Americans structured their political system and kept society in order differently.
Marriage practices vary across cultures. Every culture has its own way of conducting marriage according to their traditions and customs. Most cultures share common customs and practices, while some cultures have unique practices. Marriage refers to a social union agreed upon by the couples to unit as spouses. The union of couples implies sexual relations, permanence in union, and procreation. This research paper focuses on comparing marriage practices in American and Indian culture. There is significant difference between the two cultures in marriage practices.
“Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa” by Charles Piot is a book based on the lives of the people of the remote village called Kabre located in Northern Togo. The author discusses the “vernacular modernity” of the people of Kabre village that has been influenced by a long tradition of encounters with outsiders that included the colonialists. The author provides an in-depth analysis with ethnographic details about the Kabre people as the author discusses a wide range of their culture and history that included houses and the structure of homestead, gender ideology, ritual like initiations, exchange system, and social relations (Piot 178).
Settled in Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai enjoy a simple life with an abundance of culture. With roots in pastoralism, the Maasai live an intriguing life with traditions unlike any in the world. Language, marriage, societal statuses, the economy, religion, and health are fundamental in appreciating all that the Maasai have to offer. The warriors of the savannas’ red clothing signify power, and with that comes a powerful amount of knowledge that is still being learned.
Many cultures have certain traditions that are very important to them. For example, the Hmong culture has a tradition about marriage. When a Hmong man wants to get married and start a family, he has to ask two specific men called “Mekoob”, to go with him to his women’s house and formally ask the parents for their daughter’s hand in marriage. They later talk about the wedding plan and the price for everything. The husband and his family have to pay for all the expenses.
During the age of cross-cultural interactions, regions went through similar changes and continuities. These regions allowed consistent causes and effects to emerge and change their societies. These changes and continuities are evident in the regional societies located within Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas from 600 to 1450 CE, opportunities for women changed, however religion and labor continued to influence society.
but, It is not the most preferred: Monogamy is the ideal and preferred form of marriage in only 81 cultures out of a sample 400cultures.
The Islamic and Hindu religions have an array of similarities and differences regarding their customs and laws in relation to the ‘wedding ceremony’.
Marriage in nearly all cultures is one of the most sacred celebrations and have many different practices. In the Afghani culture, a woman would be expected to be pure and never speak to another single man before marriage. It is also traditional
In the late 1800’s through early 1900’s women and men were did not “tie the knot” like the women and men do in today’s day. In today’s world, women and men get married because they have many things in common, they are in love with each other, and they choose to get married to one another. In many stories written back then, readers can expect to read about how marriages were arranged and how many people were not having the wedded bliss marriage proclaims today.
Marriage is a significant social event in contemporary society. It is a means of building new bonds between two individuals and their subsequent families. The foundations of memorable weddings are built on those that bring often-distant family and friends together for the occasion, while dressed in their most sophisticated attire, surrounded by elegant flowers, a night of dancing, captured through the lens of an exceptional photographer. Although Hinduism and Islam are two extremely distinctive religions, their matrimonial customs do share some comparable elements, like most other cultural wedding ceremonies. In both religions, they are devotedly obedient concerning religious and cultural practices in their marital ceremonies.