Payments between families at the time of marriage existed during the history of most developed countries and are currently pervasive in many areas of the developing world. These payments can be substantial enough to affect the welfare of women and a society's distribution of wealth. Recent estimates document transfers per marriage amounting to six times the annual household income in South Asia (Rao, 1993), and four times in sub-Saharan Africa (Dekker and Hoogeveen, 2002). This paper first establishes some basic facts about the prevalence and magnitude of marriage payments. It then discusses how such patterns vary across countries depending upon economic conditions, societal structures, institutions, and family characteristics. Such payments have also evolved within societies over time. For example, in some periods such payments have risen sharply. In some cases, payments have shifted from the grooms' sides to the brides', and vice versa. Also, property rights over such payments have sometimes shifted between marrying partners and parental generations. Economists, who have only recently begun to work on the topic, have focused on explaining these facts. The second part of the paper addresses this economic literature. Though considerable insight into many of the facts has been gained, many of the existing economic explanations are weakly convincing, and many puzzles remain. One crucial difficulty is that solid data in this field have been extremely rare. The descriptions of marriage payments in this paper are synthesized from a patchwork of studies across periods, places, and even epochs, and there are doubtless numerous cases which remain undocumented. Thus, the paper

/pdf/the-economics-of-dowry-and-brideprice-45qmm2n0te.pdf

The Economics of Dowry and Brideprice

Objective: To compile a global typography of commercial sex work. 

Methods: A Medline search and review of 681 "prostitution" articles was conducted. In addition, the investigators pooled their 20 years of collected papers and monographs, and their observations in more than 15 countries. Arbitrary categories were developed to compile a workable typology of sex work. 

Results: At least 25 types of sex work were identified according to worksite, principal mode of soliciting clients, or sexual practices. These types of work are often grouped under the headings of "direct" and "indirect" prostitution, with the latter group less likely to be perceived or to perceive themselves as sex workers. In general, policing sex work can change its typology and location but its prevalence is rarely affected. The public health implications of sex work vary widely. 

Conclusion: Developing comprehensive sexual health promotion programmes requires a complete understanding of the types of sex work in a particular area. This study provides a checklist for developing appropriate and targeted programmes.

https://sti.bmj.com/content/sextrans/81/3/201.full.pdf

The many faces of sex work.

Social historians and social anthropologists may differ in respect to methodology but they often study the same kinds of problems and ask similar questions of their data. This is particularly true in the field of Chinese studies. Anthropologists who work in Chinese villages, towns or cities cannot help but be aware of historical issues; if they are not their hosts will soon set them straight. Historians, in turn, must become anthropologists of sorts if they hope to understand the complexities of Chinese social institutions.

Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives On Historical Research

Emphasis on descent and kinship in analysis of traditional Chinese corporations, a legacy of structural-functional theory, mistakes the analyst's theoretical categories for native culture. In this paper, the author attempts to sort out some of the resulting conceptual muddles, and he proposes a more rigorous analytical framework for discussing the range of organizational variation in traditional Chinese corporations. Analysis of ten representative cases from Ta-ch'i, Taiwan, reveals greater flexibility of corporate form and function than structural-functional theories would predict. Close attention to the cases also reveals the absence of any compelling reason to treat the “Chinese lineage” as analytically or culturally distinct from the entire range of Chinese formal associations (hui). To understand what is uniquely Chinese in Chinese corporations, past emphasis on differences in formal group-membership requirements must be complemented by attention to the cultural values and norms of operation that transcend such differences.

Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship

The article offers an empirical perspective regarding customary land sales in Cote d'Ivoire, focusing on their socio-political embeddedness as well as on the implications of such processes for the content of the rights and duties transferred. Two interlinked aspects of land transfers, which usually come together in African contexts, are to be taken into account: rights and obligations regarding land access and control ('the land resource dimension'), and rights and obligations regarding group membership, and more generally the socio-political dimensions that condition the social recognition and effectiveness of the transfer of land rights ('the socio-political dimension'). These two dimensions are empirically explored, together with the processes of their connection and possible disconnection/reconnection. We show that the diverging interpretations of land transfers, from emic as well as from etic viewpoints, do not necessarily correspond to mutually exclusive explanatory models, or to a simple transition phase from customary to 'pure' market land transfers. Access to land may become commoditized without extinguishing the socio-political dimension of land transactions. Another point is that the articulation of these two dimensions of land transfers is a specific and always contextualized issue. This has direct consequences on the legitimacy of land transfers as well as on the security of the stranger right holder within the local community and more generally on the politicization of land issue. Resume: L'article offre une perspective empirique des ventes de terres coutumieres en Cote d'Ivoire, en s'interessant a leur enchâssement sociopolitique et aux implications de tels processus pour le contenu des droits et des obligations transferes. Il prend en compte deux aspects interconnectes des transferts de terres, generalement reunis dans des contextes africains : d'une part les droits et les obligations impliques dans l'acces a la terre et son controle (« la dimension ressource fonciere »), et d'autre part les droits et les obligations impliques dans l'appartenance a un groupe, et plus generalement les dimensions sociopolitiques qui conditionnent la reconnaissance sociale et le caractere effectif du transfert des droits fonciers («la dimension sociopolitique»). L'article explore ces deux dimensions de maniere empirique, ainsi que les processus afferents a leur connexion et leur deconnexion/reconnexion possible. Il montre que les interpretations divergentes des transferts de terres, tant du point de vue emique que du point de vue etique , ne correspondent pas necessairement a des modeles explicatifs mutuellement exclusifs, ni a une simple phase de transition d'un transfert coutumier a un transfert de marche « pur ». Une marchandisation de l'acces a la terre peut survenir sans effacer la dimension sociopolitique des transactions foncieres. D'autre part, l'articulation de ces deux dimensions du transfert de terres est un sujet specifique qui s'inscrit toujours dans un contexte. Il en decoule des consequences directes sur la legitimite des transferts de terres, ainsi que sur la securite du titulaire de droit etranger au sein de la communaute locale et, plus generalement, sur la politisation de la question fonciere.

Customary transfers and land sales in côte d'ivoire: revisiting the embeddedness issue

Anthropology and Social Change

Economic analysis is used to examine the institution of bride-price. Supply and demand curves are developed in the context of the marriage market, and some hypotheses about the determinants of bride-price are derived. Using data collected by Granqvist in the Palestinian village of Artas, these hypotheses are tested by means of multiple regression analysis. The main explanatory variables are the productivity of the bride (measured by variables such as expected fertility, marital status, age, and education), the loss experienced by her own family (which depends not only on her productivity, but also on the closeness of the relationship between bride and groom), and the consumption of the wife in the marital home (which depends, among other things, on the personality of her husband). The incorporation into the analysis of uncertainty leads to the conclusion that exchange marriages-often observed in societies in which bride-price is paid-are more likely than others to end in divorce. This hypothesis is also t...

The Role and Determinants of Bride-Price: The Case of a Palestinian Village [and Comments and Reply]

1. Lucy Mair 1 J. DAVIS 2. On some witches and a predicant 7 PIERRE ALEXANDRE 3. Conflict and change: establishment and opposition in Malta 17 JEREMY BOISSEVAIN 4- How they hid the red flag in Pisticci in 1923, and how it was betrayed 44 J. DAVIS 5. The politics of an old state: a view from the Chinese lineage 68 MAURICE FREEDMAN 6. The free women of Kinshasa: prostitution in a city in Zaire 89 7. The progress of Greek nationalism in Cyprus, 1878-1970 114 PETER LOIZOS 8. Aspects of underdevelopment and development in northeast Morocco 134 DAVID SEDDON 9. Land tenure and 'room for manoeuvre' 161 ANNE SHARMAN 10. Cause, knowledge and change: Turkish village revisited 191 PAUL STIRLING 11. Status and the innovator 230 SANDRA WALLMAN

J. Davis

Papers

Anthropology and Social Change

The Role and Determinants of Bride-Price: The Case of a Palestinian Village [and Comments and Reply]

Choice and change : essays in honour of Lucy Mair