Defending Marriage:A Functional Study of Rural Bride Price Payment
The phenomenon of high amount of bride price in rural areas during the transition period and its management predicament have aroused the attention of the whole society and academia.The existing theories of marital repayment,intergenerational funding and marital market are all based on the premise of the immedi-acy and irreversibility of bride price payment,ignoring the process research on bride price payment in the time dimension.Based on the field investigation of Ma Village in Ganzhong,the process of bride price payment and its internal logic are investigated.It is found that the rules of bride price payment have undergone historical changes,showing the characteristics of high amount,conditional transfer and belonging to small families.In the stages of mate selection,love and family,bride price payment plays the functions of competition,security and funding in turn,and the function of each stage plays the premise of the completion of the function of the previous stage,showing a fluid phased function transformation.On the whole,the function of rural bride price payment is to defend marriage,that is,when rural families deal with a series of marriage and love risk situa-tions in the transition period,such as"difficulty in choosing a mate""difficulty in falling in love"and"diffi-culty in keeping the family",they try to achieve the goal of marital stability through the adaptive strategy of bride price payment.In view of this,the key to the governance of high price bride price in rural areas is to fundamentally help rural youth out of the structural marriage and love dilemma,solve the marriage and love difficulties of rural young men,advocate civilized rural style,and help rural youth establish a healthy marriage and love concept through village rules and conventions,so as to cope with the marriage and love risks during the transition period.
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