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On Bridewealth and Meaning among the Rukuba, Plateau State, Nigeria1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Jean-Claude Muller
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Extract

Much ink has been spilled over the problem of bridewealth, its meaning and its functions. As Gray (1960) has summarized it, the debate first focused on refuting the idea that bridewealth was a kind of payment for the purchase of a wife, and this question still lingers on without having been quite solved. Others have seen in bridewealth a transference of rights and duties over a woman from the woman's group to the husband's group. Leaving aside the economic aspect of the transaction, this view seems particularly valid with regard to societies in which different amounts of bridewealth may be given to obtain different sets of rights and duties over spouses and their offspring (Bohannan 1949; Horton 1969; Williamson 1962). These ideas about bridewealth as a regulator of rights and duties over spouses and children are now generally agreed upon so that Goody (1973: 3), one of the acknowledged experts in these matters, can write that: ‘the relative size of payment is in a general sense linked with the quantum of rights transferred.’ Thus, generally, in societies having several kinds of marriages with a concomitant variation in bridewealth between the kinds of marriages, the rights over the woman and her children will also vary according to the amount paid, more rights being conveyed with a more expensive payment (Goody 1973: 16-17).

Résumé

SUR LE PRIX DE LA FIANCEÉ ET SA SIGNIFICATION CHEZ LES RUKUBA, PLATEAU-STATE, NIGÉRIA

Cet article examine les différents types de manages que lón trouve chez les Rukuba ainsi que les diverses prestations, ou les absences de prestations, qui les accompagnent. Cette dialectique entre prestations et non prestations est un métalangage qui contredit les opinions reçues qui veulent que la quantité de droits transférés varie en proportion directe du prix de la fiancée dans les sociétés qui ont plusieurs formes de mariage car, chez les Rukuba, ce sont les mariages sans prix de la fiancée qui sont investis des droits les plus importants. Le système rukuba est ensuite analysé comme l'actualisation la plus compliquée d'un groupe de transformations combinant un certain nombre de solutions simples—mariage par échange de soeurs sans prix de la fiancée, échange généralisé sans prix de la fiancée, échange généralisé avec prix de la fiancée qu'on trouve dans les sociétés ‘classiques’ africaines ainsi que les mariages secondaires—solutions qui sont employées seules par les sociétés bordant les Rukuba. Ceux-ci ont combiné les diverses formes que l'on trouve à leurs frontières pour leur donner une signification personnelle et sui generis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , April 1978 , pp. 161 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1978

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