Polygamy
Polygamy – from the Ancient Greek polys, meaning “many,” and gamos, meaning “marriage” – is the socially sanctioned possibility for spouses to have several marital partners at the same time.
On a global scale, monogamy is not the most widespread socially permitted form of marriage. George Murdock, who conducted a comparative study of 565 different societies, found that polygamy was permitted in 80 percent of them (Giddens, 1999, p. 277).
The following types of polygamy are distinguished:
Group marriage – an early form of marriage in which several women and men are simultaneously in marital relations and maintain a common household. In older sociological literature, this form of marriage was described as having been widespread until relatively recently and as still existing in some places, for example in the Marquesas Islands (Frolov, 2001, pp. 165–166).
Polyandry – from the Ancient Greek poly, meaning “many,” and andros, meaning “man” – is the socially sanctioned possibility for a woman to have several marital partners, or husbands, at the same time. It is a very rare form of marriage. Examples are sometimes found in certain societies of South India and Tibet. In these contexts, it may be considered normal for a woman, upon marrying, to become the wife of all her husband’s brothers, with whom she lives together.
Polyandry in families of South India became more understandable when demographic analysis showed that in these regions the male population significantly exceeded the female population (Frolov, 2001, p. 166). Murdock found that polyandry occurred in only four of the 565 societies he analyzed, that is, in less than one percent of cases.
Polyandry creates a situation that does not occur in polygyny: the biological father of the child is, as a rule, unknown. Thus, in a South Indian culture, men apparently were not interested in establishing biological paternity. Which of the men became the father of the child was determined through a ritual in which one of the men gave the pregnant wife a toy bow and arrow. If another husband later wished to become the father, the ritual was repeated during the next pregnancy. Apparently, polyandry existed only in societies with an extremely low standard of living, where the killing of girls was practiced (Giddens, 1999, p. 277).
Polygyny – the socially sanctioned possibility for a man to have several marital partners, or wives, at the same time; in other words, plural marriage involving one man and several women. Most men in societies where polygyny is permitted in fact have only one wife. Often, the right to have several wives is used only by persons of high social status. Where such restrictions do not exist, the spread of polygyny is limited by economic factors and by the sex ratio. Evidently, there are no societies in which women outnumber men to such an extent that the majority of men could afford to have more than one wife (Giddens, 1999, p. 277).
From the perspective of gender and feminist theory, polygamy is significant because it reveals how marriage systems regulate sexuality, reproduction, inheritance, household labour, and power relations between women and men. Polygyny, in particular, has often been connected with patriarchal authority, unequal access to resources, and the control of women’s reproductive and domestic roles. At the same time, different forms of polygamy should be analyzed in their specific historical, economic, demographic, and cultural contexts, rather than treated as a single universal model.
References:
Frolov, S. S. (2001). Sotsiologiia: Uchebnik [Sociology: A textbook]. Moscow: Gardariki. [in Russian].
Giddens, A. (1999). Sotsiolohiia [Sociology] (V. Shovkun & A. Oliinyk, Trans.). Kyiv: Osnovy. [in Ukrainian].
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