The Relation between Abnormal Marriages and the Patrilineal Kinship System——Based on Cases in Miaoxi Village,Meng Mount Area,Shandong Province
Since the first half of the 20th century,there has been a total of 20 cases of abnormal marriage in Miaoxi Village,Meng Mount Area,Shandong Province,including 4 child bride marriages,9 zhaonxu marriages(to have the groom move in the bride's house),a zhaofu marriage(to have a man move in a widowed woman's family)and 6 zunei marriages(endogamy).Most child bride marriages were popular only in the Republic of China period,with a few existing in the early 1950s.They disappeared completely after the 1950s,mainly due to prohibition by the marriage law of the new China.The survey results show that the purposes of child bride marriage are to solve the shortage of labor force in the family,and to facilitate the female,namely the male's spouses,to integrate themselves into the new family sooner and better.Zhaoxu marriage has appeared since the 1980s,and it has a continuous relationship with the traditional succession system.In other words,it replaces the mode of adoption,thus realizing the continuation of the paternal line.The emergence of this form of marriage in Miaoxi Village is mainly to cope with the lack of male offspring caused by family planning.Zhaofu marriage is chosen for the purpose of avoiding the outflow of the widowed women by persuading them into remaining in their husbands'family or clan to raise the next generation.Zunei marriages in Miaoxi village can be roughly divided into three categories.The first type is marriage between married women with different surnames and their husbands'Wufu brothers(full brothers,or brothers sharing the same grandfather,great-grandfather,or even great-great-grandfather).The second category is marriage between women and her husbands'brothers who are distant relatives in the same clan).The third type occurs between two heterosexual individuals of the same race and belongs to an incest taboo behavior.The first category is divided into two subcategories.The first is that,in the event of the death or disappearance of a man,his spouse forms a new family with the man's other brothers to complete reproduction,in order to prevent the outflow of women with different surnames.The second is that,brothers compete for spouses to form new families,leading to the breakup of the original family and the destruction of many kinship ties.The second of the larger categories differs from the second subcategory of the first category in that:It occurs in distant branches of the lineage.In this case,different men compete for the same woman,breaking up the original family,and eventually taking the woman away from the settled community,which has the nature of abducting women.The third type of zunei marriage is prone to social death.That is,the niangjia(a married woman's parents'home)of a woman who marries a man of the same lineage will feel humiliated or dishonored,and thus interrupt communication with her new family.The movement of women within the lineage group is very complicated,involving sexual needs,emotional needs and various social conflicts and contradictions.
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