9 - Bridewealth

Summary

Bridewealth, coupled with exogamy, has long been viewed as a means of bringing together otherwise unconnected lineage segments or clans. The overall effect of these separate alliances is seen as ‘knitting the whole system together’. Several assumptions are contained in this view. First, it assumes that the political separation of segments in a lineage system is so complete that groups are left virtually isolated. Second, it is only marriage, and the property transfer it entails as bridewealth, that can interlace these groups, by the kinship it creates: in some societies, kinship appears to be so urgent a necessity that even affinity passes for it. Many who would vehemently deny the mystique which, allegedly, Fortes bestows on kinship, ascribe to it in this context, with a curious twist of logic, a binding force which would probably make Fortes himself demur. Third, despite the immediate effect attributed to exogamous marriage, and its extension through delayed transfers of bridewealth, the bond it creates must be short-lived, since each and every marriage must be exogamous and connect otherwise autonomous peoples. The power of the link, that is to say, resides almost exclusively in affinity, and when this becomes transmuted into kinship it ceases. Fourth, to give the link strength the wife must be incorporated into the receiving lineage. Gluckman (1950) attached such importance to this that the stability of marriage in African societies, in his view, was based on the extent to which wives were incorporated, the bridewealth being the main instrument in this, with other forms of marriage (levirate, sororate and so on) serving as corroboration.