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7 - The fulcrum of inheritance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2009

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Summary

In Fontelas, all major property transferrals occur at death. This rite of passage is systematically emphasized, and it occupies a central position within the process of inheritance over the generations. Death is of extreme importance here not only because it brings about abrupt changes in affective and residential arrangements between the living, but also because it is only at death (not at marriage) that the transmission of authority and property rights occurs.

As all major property (land, houses, tools, and other movables) is redistributed following a person's death, we might expect that the specific timing of this property transfer has repercussions throughout the social structure (Goody 1976b). This is indeed the case. In this chapter I shall bring together a number of strands of argument already presented in Chapters 5 and 6. First, I briefly describe the event of death and the accompanying vigil and funeral, and secondly the actual division of property occurring after death at the partilha. Finally, I draw some conclusions about the long-term effects of post-mortem inheritance on the hamlet's social hierarchy.

Mortuary ritual

Two deaths that occurred in Fontelas will provide us with some comparative details. At the time of each of these, the respective households involved were in very different situations with regard to inheritance: the contrast between the ritual events following each death was quite pronounced. While the events following the first were standard, those following the second were a dramatic case of an inheritance dispute seeping into the very structure of mortuary ritual.

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Social Inequality in a Portuguese Hamlet
Land, Late Marriage, and Bastardy, 1870–1978
, pp. 306 - 340
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1987

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