Marriage

==Definitions==
[[Anthropologist]]s have proposed several competing definitions of marriage in an attempt to encompass the wide variety of marital practices observed across cultures.<ref name = "Bell" /> Even within [[Western culture]], "definitions of marriage have careened from one extreme to another and everywhere in between" (as Evan Gerstmann has put it).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gerstmann |first=Evan |url=http://archive.org/details/samesexmarriagec0000gers |title=Same-sex marriage and the Constitution |date=2004 |publisher=Cambridge [England]; New York : Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-81100-2 |page=22 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

===Relation recognized by custom or law===
In ''[[The History of Human Marriage]]'' (1891), [[Edvard Westermarck]] defined marriage as "a more or less durable connection between male and female lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Westermarck |first=Edward |author-link=Edvard Westermarck |url=https://archive.org/details/b2998130x_0001/ |title=History of Human Marriage |date=26 October 2017<!-- scan date --> |publisher=The Allerton Book Company |isbn=978-0-7661-4618-1 |edition=5th |volume=1 |location=New York |publication-date=1922 |page=71 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> In ''The Future of Marriage in Western Civilization'' (1936), he rejected his earlier definition, instead provisionally defining marriage as "a relation of one or more men to one or more women that is recognized by custom or law".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Westermarck |first=Edward |author-link=Edvard Westermarck |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.219197/ |title=The Future of Marriage in Western Civilisation |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] |year=1936 |isbn=978-0-8369-5304-6 |page=3 |language=en |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

===Legitimacy of offspring===
The anthropological handbook ''Notes and Queries'' (1951) defined marriage as "a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners."<ref name="Notes">{{cite book|title=Notes and Queries on Anthropology|publisher=Royal Anthropological Institute|year=1951|page= 110}}</ref> In recognition of a practice by the [[Nuer people]] of Sudan allowing women to act as a husband in certain circumstances (the [[Ghost marriage (Sudanese)|ghost marriage]]), [[Kathleen Gough]] suggested modifying this to "a woman and one or more other persons."<ref name="Gough">{{Cite journal|last=Gough|first=E. Kathleen|title=The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage|journal=Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland|year=1959|pages=23–34|volume=89|issue=1|doi=10.2307/2844434|jstor=2844434}} Nuer female-female marriage is done to keep property within a family that has no sons. It is not a form of lesbianism.</ref>

In an analysis of marriage among the Nayar, a polyandrous society in India, Gough found that the group lacked a husband role in the conventional sense. The husband role, unitary in the west, was instead divided between a non-resident "social father" of the woman's children, and her lovers, who were the actual procreators. None of these men had legal rights to the woman's child. This forced Gough to disregard sexual access as a key element of marriage and to define it in terms of legitimacy of offspring alone: marriage is "a relationship established between a woman and one or more other persons, which provides a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of relationship, is accorded full birth-status rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum."<ref>{{cite book|last=Gough|first=Kathleen|title=Marriage, Family and Residence|year=1968|publisher=Natural History Press|location=New York|page=68|editor=Paul Bohannan & John Middleton|chapter=The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage}}</ref>

Economic anthropologist [[Duran Bell]] has criticized the legitimacy-based definition on the basis that some societies do not require marriage for legitimacy. He argued that a legitimacy-based definition of marriage is circular in societies where illegitimacy has no other legal or social implications for a child other than the mother being unmarried.<ref name = "Bell" />

===Collection of rights===
[[Edmund Leach]] criticized Gough's definition for being too restrictive in terms of recognized legitimate offspring and suggested that marriage be viewed in terms of the different types of rights it serves to establish. In a 1955 article in ''[[Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute|Man]]'', Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all cultures. He offered a list of ten rights associated with marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children, with specific rights differing across cultures. Those rights, according to Leach, included:
# "To establish a legal father of a woman's children.
# To establish a legal mother of a man's children.
# To give the husband a monopoly in the wife's sexuality.
# To give the wife a monopoly in the husband's sexuality.
# To give the husband partial or monopolistic rights to the wife's domestic and other labor services.
# To give the wife partial or monopolistic rights to the husband's domestic and other labor services.
# To give the husband partial or total control over property belonging or potentially accruing to the wife.
# To give the wife partial or total control over property belonging or potentially accruing to the husband.
# To establish a joint fund of property – a partnership – for the benefit of the children of the marriage.
# To establish a socially significant 'relationship of affinity' between the husband and his wife's brothers."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Leach|first=Edmund|title=Polyandry, Inheritance and the Definition of Marriage|journal=Man|date=Dec 1955|volume=55|issue=12|page=183|doi=10.2307/2795331|jstor=2795331}}</ref>

===Right of sexual access===
In a 1997 article in ''[[Current Anthropology]]'', [[Duran Bell]] describes marriage as "a relationship between one or more men (male or female) in severalty to one or more women that provides those men with a demand-right of sexual access within a domestic group and identifies women who bear the obligation of yielding to the demands of those specific men." In referring to "men in severalty", Bell is referring to corporate kin groups such as lineages which, in having paid bride price, retain a right in a woman's offspring even if her husband (a lineage member) deceases ([[Levirate marriage]]). In referring to "men (male or female)", Bell is referring to women within the lineage who may stand in as the "social fathers" of the wife's children born of other lovers. (See Nuer "[[Ghost marriage (Sudanese)|ghost marriage]]".)<ref name="Bell">{{cite journal |last=Bell |first=Duran |author-link=Duran Bell |year=1997 |title=Defining Marriage and Legitimacy |url=http://www.economics.uci.edu/~dbell/marriageandlegit.pdf |journal=[[Current Anthropology]] |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=237–54 |doi=10.1086/204606 |jstor=2744491 |s2cid=144637145 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170524221837/http://www.economics.uci.edu/~dbell/marriageandlegit.pdf |archive-date=24 May 2017 |access-date=6 April 2013}}</ref>