Marriage

From the Latin marito, “to marry,” marriage is the social institution making the sexual union of two heterosexuals (and recently in some societies, also of two homosexuals)official, accompanied by an (often religious) ritual. It is one of the most important areas of study in social anthropology, since it is a social event as widely spread across the globe (despite the objections made as to its universality because of its multiple juridical, economic, ethical, and ritual implications) as it is exceptionally important for each society in particular. Because of this, societies, and especially those defined as “hot” by Claude Lévi-Strauss inLa Pensée Sauvage (1962), that is, those characterized by continuous change, have instituted the registry of the event.

The aim of marriage is to have legitimate offspring who have the right to bear their ancestors' name and inherit their wealth. By analogy, the biological, material, and symbolic reproduction and perpetuation of the family (i.e., the group of relatives, with the married couple and their married and/or unmarried children, etc., at its base, with which they cohabit, work, and share goods) and of the lineage (i.e., the wider group of individuals beyond the family who are interconnected through consanguineal kinship either patrilinealy or matrilinealy and who acknowledge a common ancestor) are achieved through marriage. By extension, the biological, material, and symbolic reproduction and perpetuation of the ethnic group (i.e., the group of individuals belonging to the same culture and acknowledging themselves as such) and of the tribe (i.e., a group that owns a territory and is homogeneous and autonomous from a political and social viewpoint)are also achieved through marriage. As a consequence, unmarried individuals and childless couples are marginalized and of low social esteem.

Marriage develops a dense network of rights and duties, starting from the spouses and the members of their close family (parents/children) and extending as well to those of their extended family (husband's or wife's parents and siblings, wife's or husband's parents and siblings) as to their lineages; in some cases, it even extends to the states they originate from. Its aims range from any sort of benefit and strengthening to the resolution of enmities, as can be seen in the following Greek cases: reconciliation of lineages engaged in vendettas in Anogeia in Crete [Page 1537]or belonging to opposed political parties after the civil war (1945–1949) in the village of Didima in the Peloponnese.