Polygyny

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Polygyny
A Cross Cultural Perspective of Polygyny
As an institution, polygyny, the social arrangement that permits a man to
have more than one wife at the same time, exists in all parts of the world. From
our present knowledge, there are very few primitive tribes in which a man is not
allowed to enter into more than one union. In fact, ethologists now believe that
only one to two percent of all species may be monogamous (Tucker). None of the
simian species are strictly monogamous; our closest relatives, the chimpanzees,
practice a form of group marriage. Among the 849 human societies examined by the
anthropologist Murdock (1957), 75% practiced polygyny. Many peoples have been
said to be monogamous, but it is difficult to infer from the data at our
disposal whether monogamy is the prevalent practice, the moral ideal, or an
institution safeguarded by sanctions (Malinowski 1962). Historically, polygyny
was a feature of the ancient Hebrews, the traditional Chinese, and the
nineteenth-century Mormons in the United States, but the modern practice of
polygyny is concentrated in Africa, the Middle East, India, Thailand, and
Indonesia. The extent to which men are able to acquire multiple wives depends on
many factors, including the economic prosperity of the man’s family, the
prevailing bride price, the differential availability of marriageable females,
the need and desire for additional offspring, and the availability of productive
roles for subsequent wives. Even in societies that permit polygyny, the
conditions of life for the masses make monogamy the most common form of
marriage. The two variations of polygyny are sororal (the cowives are sisters)
and nonsororal (the cowives are not sisters). Some societies also observe the
custom of levirate, making it compulsory for a man to marry his brother’s
widow. It must be remembered that any form of polygyny is never practiced
throughout the entire community: there cannot exist a community in which every
man would have several wives because this would entail a huge surplus of females
over males (Malinowski 1962). Another important point is that in reality it is
not so much a form of marriage fundamentally distinct from monogamy as rather a
multiple monogamy. It is always in fact the repetition of marriage contract,
entered individually with each wife, establishing an individual relationship
between the man and each of his consorts (Benson 1971). Where each wife has her
separate household and the husband visits them i...

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