Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T17:18:24.401Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Marriage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2024

Jeremy Koster
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
Brooke Scelza
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Mary K. Shenk
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Get access

Summary

Marriage is an evolutionary puzzle: It is unique to our species and found across human societies, yet also varies widely in form and function. Human marriage likely evolved from ancestral primate patterns of pair bonding and its universality in human societies suggests a deep evolutionary history. Indeed, some have argued that marriage is part of the evolution of a human-specific social structure linking relatives and nonrelatives together into uniquely large and complex social groups. Yet, the many cross-culturally variable aspects of marriage show how marriage systems are shaped by adaptive responses to local subsistence systems and environments through strategic decision-making relevant to reproduction, parental investment, and the acquisition and distribution of resources. Marriage is thus a species-typical adaptation with locally adaptive variation that has coevolved with systems of kinship, family, and inheritance – providing a profound example of the entanglement of human biological and cultural evolution. This chapter explores the evolutionary underpinnings of marriage and how patterns of marriage vary cross-culturally in response to local ecological conditions, focusing on the functions of marriage, when to marry, whom to marry, who makes marriage decisions, how many spouses one should have, where one should live after marriage, and how marriage is bound up in systems of resources, kinship, parental investment, and exchange.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Marriage
  • Edited by Jeremy Koster, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Brooke Scelza, University of California, Los Angeles, Mary K. Shenk, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book: Human Behavioral Ecology
  • Online publication: 07 March 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108377911.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Marriage
  • Edited by Jeremy Koster, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Brooke Scelza, University of California, Los Angeles, Mary K. Shenk, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book: Human Behavioral Ecology
  • Online publication: 07 March 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108377911.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Marriage
  • Edited by Jeremy Koster, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Brooke Scelza, University of California, Los Angeles, Mary K. Shenk, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book: Human Behavioral Ecology
  • Online publication: 07 March 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108377911.011
Available formats
×