Forms of Polygamy

Polygyny

Polygyny is a form of plural marriage in which a man is permitted more than one wife. Where co-wives are customarily sisters this is called sororal polygyny. The other main form is non-sororal polygyny, where co-wives are not related. Polygynous marriage is generally correlated with those economic and political systems where the most important resources are human resources. Polygyny allows a man to have more children, providing him with a broader productive base, as he controls the labour of his wives and children to a large extent. It also provides him with more affines, permitting him to manipulate factional and/or kin group ties to his advantage. In some societies, polygyny may be the exclusive privilege of leaders or chiefs; an Amazonian Indian leader’s multiple wives are both a sign of his power and an important element in building up and maintaining his power base, for example. Polygyny is often associated with age asymmetry in the marriage relationship, such that older men marry young girls, and younger men are obligated to remain celibate for extended periods, or alternatively marry widows of older men. Polygyny may in such cases be interpreted as part of the age-gender stratification, where older men control human resources and thus control the productive and reproductive resources in a society. Where resources such as land or other forms of private property predominate, like in Western societies, monogamous nuclear family forms tend to be the rule (Seymour-Smith 1986: 228). Polygyny does exist in Western capitalist societies, but then always as a result of religious doctrine. A contemporary example is American Mormons who practise Plural Marriage, a form of polygyny associated with the nineteenth-century Mormon Church and its presentday splinter groups (see Chapter 5).

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Polyandry

Polyandry is a form of plural marriage where a woman has more than one husband. Polyandrous marriage is relatively rare and is concentrated in the Himalayan areas of South Asia. It is sporadically found in Africa, Oceania, America and the Arctic. There are two main forms of polyandry: fraternal or adelphic polyandry, in which a group of brothers share a wife, and non-fraternal polyandry, in which a woman’s husbands are not related. The commonest form is fraternal polyandry where joint husbands are brothers (real or classificatory). For example, Nyinba brothers (ethnic Tibetans now living in Nepal) live together in large households, sharing a common estate and domestic responsibilities, as well as a common wife with which each maintains a sexual relationship. Generally, each child of the marriage is acknowledged by, and develops a special relationship with, one of the possible fathers, even where biological paternity cannot be determined (Levine 1988).

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Group Marriage

Group marriage is a polygamous marriage form in which several men and women have sexual access to one another and consider themselves married to all other members of the group. Group marriage is sometimes termed circle marriage or polygynandry, from a combination of the words polygyny and polyandry. Group marriage may exist in a number of forms, but typically consists of more than one man and more than one woman who together form a single family unit, with all members of the marriage sharing parental responsibility for any children arising from marriage. Group marriage must be contrasted with polyfamilies, which is similar to group marriage but where some members may not considered themselves married to all other members. Group marriage appears to be have been rare in traditional societies: the Kaingang people of Brazil practised group marriage most frequently, but even among them, only 8 per cent of the unions were group marriages (Murdock 1949: 24).

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Poly relationship (from polygamy, polyamory, etc.) refers to forms of interpersonal relations in which some or all participants have multiple marital, sexual and/or romantic partners. Such relationships are also termed non-monogamous. One variant is polyamory, which refers to romantic or sexual relationships involving multiple partners, regardless of whether they involve marriage. Any polygamous relationship is polyamorous, and some polyamorous relationships involve multiple spouses. Polygamy is usually used to refer to multiple marriages, while polyamory implies relationships defined by negotiation between its members rather than marriage. Polyamory can be contrasted with polyfidelity, where participants have multiple partners but restrict sexual activity to within a certain group. Open relationships involve one or both members of a couple who are sexually active with other partners, sometimes in the form of an open marriage. The terms referring to marriage forms involving several spouses or partners (polygyny, polyandry, polyamory, group marriage, etc.) are by nature flexible and difficult to define, not least because practitioners themselves might disagree as to what their relationships entail and where their boundaries are. The term ‘poly relationship’ is generally used only where all participants acknowledge the relationship as non-monogamous, and not applied where one person has multiple partners due to infidelity.