[
Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER THREE
VILLAGES AND HOUSEHOLDS
previous page
Page 43
implies no more than going to live close to a wife's household, and co-operating with her kin. All migrations of men between villages involved this relationship. In these cases, the dependence of a man on his wife's agnates is obvious. Where marrige takes place within the village, cases of uxorilocal marriage are more difficult to define, because a range of degrees of intimacy with wife's parents is possible. Apart from adoptions, where a young man takes over, through his wife's inheritance, her father's land, I knew of only two cases where a man had actually resided in his wife's natal household. Both were refugees with no kin and no property in the area. The term for a man who marries this way, iç-güvey, 'in son-in-law', has a decided flavour of mockery and scorn.
None of these exceptional cases involve any deviation from the rules which govern the normal cycle of household growth and division. They are simply adaptations to meet unusual circumstances, and all, given normal health and normal reproduction, will turn again into normal, and, if possible, joint households.
The patrilineal joint household is then the ideal at which all are aiming; moreover, most villagers live in such a household for at least one period in their lives, perhaps for two or three different periods. The reasons why such households are in a minority are far more physiological and ecological than social. In a sense the patrilineal joint household is not only the ideal, but also the typical village household.
next page
Contents Page