Marriage in the !Kung Compared to Traditional United States Marriages.
Melissa Borek
Introduction to Anthropology
Nisa Reflection / Topic #3
February 19, 2004
Marriage in the !Kung Compared to Traditional United States Marriages
In Marjorie Shostak’s Nisa we are provided with the intimate details of the life of a !Kung woman. Shostak seeks to answer many questions about the !Kung life and culture that she simply was not able to understand with the mere retellings from other anthropologists. She displays a profound commitment to the idea of cultural relativism especially in the area of marriage. The detail given to describe all aspects of marriage from trial marriages to the idea of co-wives helps us to understand how and why the !Kung make the same or different choices from us in the United States. Shostak’s accounts provide us an ample foundation to learn and think about the !Kung culture and formulate our own ideas and reasoning for the choices they make. It is difficult to interpret the !Kung marriage culture and compare it to everyone in the United States. It is much more reasonable to compare it to the most traditional ideas of marriage in our culture as opposed to all possibilities.
Trial marriages mean, in essence, exactly what their title is. It is an arranged marriage between a young girl and a man that could possibly be ten years older than the girl. The !Kung women’s’ first marriages occur before they are old enough to begin menstruation. To be a true adult and be responsible for themselves they must have begun menstruation and be married. For a man to be considered an adult he must be able to provide for a family, usually signified by their killing their first large animal. Girls are not expected to participate sexually in the marriage until they are sexually mature which is marked by their first menstruation. These marriages often do not last long but eventually after enough trials the girl will settle with one husband. In the United States, trial marriage do not exist as something specific that we do as a culture. Comparatively we could liken our courting and dating process to their trial marriages. In our culture it is accepted that even children in grade school have ‘boyfriends’ and most have their first kiss around the same age. Sexual exploration begins around the time of sexual maturity and again is usually experienced with a boyfriend. As we grow older we deepen the relationships by ‘living with’ our boyfriend. At first it might be spending nights in their dorm room in the college setting but then may develop into moving in with one another. It seems as though we engage in a number of ‘trial marriages’ in our culture, a difference only in the semantics. Other differences are present though. In our culture our boyfriends are not arranged or expected to help the girlfriend’s family economically. It is not typical for our relationships to be so diverse in age as the !Kung. Lastly, it is not expected in our culture to find a partner for life until much later. For the !Kung, however, their cultural decisions for marriage make sense for how they live. For them, life expectancy is not great and biologically speaking it is natural for a species to attempt to sustain their survival. So, it seems only natural to facilitate the process by arranging a suitable partner that can provide for the family, to their young children and hopefully become a mate for life.
