Marriage in Culture: Practice And Meaning Across Diverse Societies

Marriage in Culture: Practice And Meaning Across Diverse Societies

MARRIAGE IN CULTURE is an innovative text that makes accessible to a broad audience the rich insights anthropology provides into the meaning of marriage in different cultures. Marriage practices in the four societies discussed contrast with each other in dramatic ways-from number of spouses to the meaning of postmarital residence arrangements. The author provides compelling ethnographic accounts of the !Kung San (Bushman), Chinese, Iroquois, and Tibetan societies to familiarize students with anthropologists' unique perspective on marriage in culture. Each chapter places marriage within the context of the whole culture, exploring the ways in which different economic, political, family, and gender systems shape the practice and meaning of marriage. The author makes an original contribution by highlighting the importance of postmarital residence in defining different experiences of marriage for husbands and wives in each society. Janice E. Stockard received her PhD in anthropology at Stanford University in 1985. Before her extensive doctoral field research in South China, she worked among Bay Area Native Americans to evaluate a Bureau of Indian Affairs urban relocation program. Maintaining this interest in applied anthropology, she has served as social science advisor to two national organizations dedicated to increasing women�s participation and retention in Information Technology industries. She is currently a Distinguished Practitioner at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. Spanning the globalization of textiles, gender, and technology, effects of technological and economic change on family and marriage, and women in IT industries, her career has many facets. For more than 25 years, Dr. Stockard has enjoyed teaching across the range of educational settings: private research and large state universities as well as small liberal arts colleges and at sea (on the MV Explorer). This broad experience and her emphasis on an ethnographic case-based approach to anthropology have inspired her part in Mapping Cultures across Space and Time.