Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER NINE

MARRIAGE

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Page 201

The Range of Marriage : Kinship

I have already discussed the choice of bride from the point of view of the chooser. Let us now look at the results of these choices, that is at the actual marriages which I was able to record. My data are incomplete, but such as they are they are set out in the accompanying tables. For the most part they speak for themselves.

Some interesting conclusions emerge. More than half the marriages are between people with some kinship ties. Marriages with recognised agnates seem to be between one-fifth and one-quarter of all marriages, but actual father's brother's daughter marriages are only about one in ten. Marriages with other cousins are only a little less common, although no preference other than that for father's brother's daughter marriage are ever stated. The noticeably lower figures in both villages for mother's sister's daughter marriages are surprising. They perhaps reflect the frequent physical separation of sisters after marriage, or perhaps more the relative absence of social contact between the husbands. Less strikingly, mother's brother's daughter marriages seem a little more numerous than father's sister's daughter marriages. This difference may be accidental, but there is a possible explanation. People may prefer, if the choice is open, to bring together as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law a woman and her brother's child,, rather than a woman and her husband's sister's child, to whom she is less close and with whom she does not share a common domestic tradition.

Since the two villages were twenty miles apart, and differed in size, wealth and degree of outside contact, the similarity in pattern is striking. My inquiries and discussions in other villages confirm that these tables present an overall picture typical at least of this area.

The Range of Marriage: Distance

Tables 10 and 11 (Appendix A) show for each of the two villages the number of village born wives, and the number who came from or went to other communities. The data was gathered as opportunity offered. On contemporary marriages in Sakaltutan, it is virtually complete, but on women marrying out, some

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