Marriage is something that is sacred in all cultures. Everyone gets married in some way or another. In American culture, a man marries one woman, and together, they eventually raise a family. In some places, marriages are arranged. There are other places where people marry their cousins and others where men marry more then one woman. All of these types of marriages are discussed in Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. Many different cultures have many different ways to go about marrying and having families.

In Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Nisa speaks of her many marriages and how they worked out and why they turned out that way. Nisa was married for the first time at a very young age. She had not even menstruated yet. That is the way that it is in her culture. A woman marries an older man when she is very young. Often, the girl is frightened to stay in their new home alone together right away, so a nurse comes and stays with them for a short period of time.

Nisa's marriage ceremony was very differe

The textbook discusses the functions of marriage, and they are the same in basically all cultures. Marriage is a way to divide labor between the sexes, to control sexual competition and to create a family and a set of family relationships, in order to provide for each other. Nisa speaks about how their families share everything with each other. If one person has food, they have to share the extra food with everyone else, rather then save it for themselves. In many instances, a husband or a lover will bring the food to their wife, or mistress.

Divorce is also very different in the !Kung lifestyle. If a man leaves a woman, they are almost immediately considered divorced. That is quite different as opposed to a divorce in America, where there are all sorts of legal repercussions. All that they have to do is go see the headman of the village to get permission to remarry. Nisa had to do this once with her husband Besa, who had left her when she was pregnant in a strange village.

Nisa also had many husbands. Which is normal in her culture. Polygamy is also normal. Men are

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