Abstract
The links among family characteristics, pre-marital experiences organized outside the family, and participation in choice of spouse are now well established for historical transformations in a range of social settings. Less examined are the consequences of these changes for subsequent inter-familial relationships in societies where marriage organizes kin alliances and interfamilial labor obligations. Using survey and ethnographic data gathered in Nepal, this paper examines the implications of change in work, living experiences, and the marriage process for subsequent inter-familial relationships exemplified by crosscousin marriage and the provision of brideservice. Hypotheses are developed which consider the impact of community context on these behaviors; these are tested in logistic regression analyses for the first marriages of all 430 ever-married women in the community. Cross-cousin marriage and brideservice are shown to be related to prior familial characteristics, life-course experience, and elements of the marriage process in ways that are significantly conditioned by community history and proximity to urban centers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Acharya, M., and Bennett, L. (1981). The Rural Women of Nepal: An Aggregate Analysis and Summary of 8 Village Studies. Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu.
Ahearn, L. M. (1994). Consent and Coercion: Changing Marriage Practices Among Magars in Nepal. PhD dissertation in Anthropology, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Alexander, J. C. (1988). Action and Its Environments: Toward a New Synthesis. Columbia University Press, New York.
Axinn, W. G. (1992). Family organization and fertility limitation in Nepal. Demography 29(4): 503–521.
Axinn, W. G., and Fricke, T. (1996). Community context, natal kin ties, and demand for children. Rural Sociology 61(2): 249–271.
Axinn, W. G., Fricke, T., and Thornton, A. (1991). The microdemographic community study approach: Improving survey data by integrating the ethnographic method. Sociological Methods and Research 20: 187–217.
Barnard, A., and Good, A. (1984). Research Practices in the Study of Kinship. Academic Press, Orlando.
Caldwell, J. C. (1982). Theory of Fertility Decline. Academic Press, New York.
Caldwell, J. C., Reddy, P. H., and Caldwell, P. (1988). The Causes of Demographic Change: Experimental Research in South India. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Dumont, L. (1983). Affinity as a Value: Marriage Alliance in South India. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Dahal, D. R., Fricke, T., and Thornton, A. (1993). The family contexts of marriage timing in Nepal. Ethnology 32(4): 305–323.
Dyson, T., and Moore, M. (1983). On kinship structure, female autonomy, and demographic behavior in India. Population and Development Review 9: 35–60.
Fricke, T. (1994). Himalayan Households: Tamang Demography and Domestic Processes (Expanded Ed.) Columbia University Press, New York.
Fricke, T., Axinn, W. G., and Thornton, A. (1993). Marriage, social inequality, and women's contact with their natal families in alliance societies: Two Tamang examples. American Anthropologist 95: 395–419.
Fricke, T., and Teachman, J. D. (1993). Writing the names: Marriage style, living arrangements, and family building in a Nepali society. Demography 30(2): 175–188.
Fricke, T., Thornton, A., and Dahal, D. R. (1990). Family organization and the wage labor transition in a Tamang community of Nepal. Human Ecology 18: 283–313.
Goode, W. J. (1970). World Revolution and Family Patterns. The Free Press, New York.
Goody, J., and Tambiah, S. J. (1973). Bridewealth and Dowry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Gray, J. N. (1995). The Householder's World: Purity, Power, and Dominance in a Nepali Village. Oxford University Press, Delhi.
Hajnal, J. (1982). Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system. Population and Development Review 8: 449–494.
Hitchcock, J. T. (1980). A Mountain Village in Nepal. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York.
Höfer, A. (1969). Preliminary report on field research in a Western Tamang group, Nepal. Bulletin of the International Committee on Urgent Anthropological and Ethnological Research 11: 17–31.
Holmberg, D. H. (1989). Structure in Paradox: Myth, Ritual, and Exchange Among Nepal's Tamang. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Jones, R. L., and Jones, S. K. (1976). The Himalayan Woman: A Study of Limbu Women in Marriage and Divorce. Mayfield Publishing Company, Palo Alto.
Leach, E. R. (1961). The structural implications of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. In Leach, E. R.(ed.), Rethinking Anthropology. Athlone, London, pp. 54–104.
Levine, N. E. (1988). The Dynamics of Polyandry: Kinship, Domesticity, and Population on the Tibetan Border. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Lindenbaum, S. (1981). Implications for women of changing marriage transactions in Bangladesh. Studies in Family Planning 12: 294–301.
Macfarlane, A. (1976). Resources and Population: A Study of the Gurungs of Nepal. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Macfarlane, A. (1986). Marriage and Love in England , 1300-1840. Basil Blackwell, London.
McGuire, R., and Netting, R. McC. (1982). Leveling peasants? The maintenance of equality in a Swiss Alpine community. American Ethnologist 9(2): 269–290.
Morgan, S. P., and Teachman, J. D. (1988). Logistic regression: Descriptions, examples, comparisons. Journal of Marriage and the Family 50: 926–936.
Netting, R. McC. (1968). Hill Farmers of Nigeria: Cultural Ecology of the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau. University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Netting, R. McC. (1972). Of men and meadows: Strategies of Alpine land use. Anthropological Quarterly 45(3): 132–144.
Netting, R. McC. (1977). Cultural Ecology. Cummings Publishing Company, Menlo Park, CA.
Netting, R. McC. (1981). Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Netting, R. McC. (1993). Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Netting, R. McC., and Elias, W. S. (1980). Balancing on an alp: Population stability and change ion a Swiss peasant community. In Reining, P. C., and Lenkerd, B. (eds), Village Viability in Contemporary Society. American Association for the Advancement of Science Selected Symposia Series No. 34.
Netting, R. McC., Wilk, R. J., and Arnould, E. J. (eds.) (1984). Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Panter-Brick, C. (1989). Motherhood and subsistence work: The Tamang of rural Nepal. Human Ecology 17(2): 205–228.
Regmi, M. C. (1978). Thatched Huts and Stucco Palaces: Peasants and Landlords in 19th Century Nepal. Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi.
Stevens, S. F. (1993). Claiming the High Ground: Sherpas, Subsistence, and Environmental Change in the Highest Himalaya. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Thornton, A., and Lin, H. S. (1994). Social Change and the Family in Taiwan. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Thornton, A., and Fricke, T. (1987). Social change and the family: Comparative perspectives from the West, China, and South Asia. Sociological Forum 24: 746–779.
Wilk, R. R., and Netting, R. McC. (1984). Households: Changing forms and functions. In Netting, R. McC., Wilk, R. R., and Arnould, E. J. (eds.), Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 1–28.
Zurick, D. N. (1989). Historical links between settlement, ecology, and politics in the mountains of west Nepal. Human Ecology 17(2): 229–255.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fricke, T., Thornton, A. & Dahal, D.R. Netting in Nepal: Social Change, the Life Course, and Brideservice in Sangila. Human Ecology 26, 213–237 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018766806955
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018766806955