Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Maps
- 1 Introduction: assumptions, procedures, methods
- 2 Kinship, culture and theory
- 3 What is kinship in the West Indies?
- 4 The structure of genealogies
- 5 Marriage in the formation of west Indian society
- 6 Modern marriage and other arrangements
- 7 Sex role differentiation
- 8 Household and family
- 9 Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology
5 - Marriage in the formation of west Indian society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Maps
- 1 Introduction: assumptions, procedures, methods
- 2 Kinship, culture and theory
- 3 What is kinship in the West Indies?
- 4 The structure of genealogies
- 5 Marriage in the formation of west Indian society
- 6 Modern marriage and other arrangements
- 7 Sex role differentiation
- 8 Household and family
- 9 Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology
Summary
To the average normal person, in whatever type of society we find him, attraction by the other sex and the passionate and sentimental episodes which follow are the most significant events in his existence, those most deeply associated with his intimate happiness and with the zest and meaning of life.
Malinowski 1929Few married English women, of rank and character, are at any time induced to make their appearance in these distant edges of the world, to exhibit the fashions of domestic elegance, and teach the graces of moral dignity.
Henry Bolingbroke, 1809It is difficult to know just when marriage became a focus of social concern in the West Indies; probably not until after the abolition of slavery, although some eighteenth-century writers commented on widespread immorality. Preliminary research shows that formal campaigns to stamp out illegitimacy were not begun until the 1880s, and met with little success even then (see pp. 104-6 below and Braithwaite 1953, p. 91). The non-legal union is one of the institutional foundations on which creole society was erected, and as such it reflects accurately the modes of integration, categorization and differentiation within the social order. Marriage was for status equals, concubinage for unequals, and as for those at the bottom of the hierarchy, their familial arrangements were of interest only as they affected the ‘breeding’ of new labourers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Kinship and Class in the West IndiesA Genealogical Study of Jamaica and Guyana, pp. 82 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988