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On Preferential/Prescriptive Marriage and the Function of Kinship Systems: The Rukuba Case (Benue‐Plateau State, Nigeria) 1
Author(s) -
MULLER JEANCLAUDE
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1973.75.5.02a00230
Subject(s) - kinship , relevance (law) , state (computer science) , sociology , function (biology) , order (exchange) , genealogy , fictive kinship , history , political science , anthropology , mathematics , law , economics , biology , evolutionary biology , finance , algorithm
This article examines the relevance of the distinction between preferential and prescriptive marriage through a particular case, that of the Rukuba. It will be shown that the Rukuba people have three distinct conceptual models of prescriptive and preferential marriage for uterine sisters, according to their birth order. The conceptual model is prescriptive for the first two girls and, although the model is only said by the Rukuba to be preferential for the third and following sisters, statistical evidence shows that this marriage is also prescriptive. Since the Rukuba prescriptive marriage is not a kinship marriage but a marriage which nevertheless produces a peculiar systematic delayed exchange of women, some of the recent assumptions propounded by Lévi‐Strauss about the function of kinship systems are criticized.