Bride Theft and Raiding for Wives in Cross-Cultural Perspective

This paper presents the rather tentative findings of an exploratory cross-cultural study of bride theft and raiding for wives which was undertaken at the suggestion of one of the organizers of this symposium.3 Its purpose is to provide a comparative perspective on the topic under consideration and to test a number of hypotheses concerning relationships between bride theft and raiding for wives and other aspects of social organization and culture. Tylor (1889), in the first systematic cross-cultural study ever conducted, had reported a number of correlations, or adhesions as he called them, between various forms of marriage by capture and certain other social institutions. As far as I am aware, no one since Tylor has carried out a cross-cultural study of marriage by capture, and the invitation provided a welcome opportunity to re-examine Tylor's earlier findings. For purposes of this study bride theft was defined as the forceable abduction of a woman for the purpose of marriage, without her foreknowledge or consent and without the knowledge or consent of her parents or guardians. In coding the ethnographic materials it was possible to distinguish between bride theft defined in this way and mock bride theft in which the woman, although appearing to resist her captors, has secretly agreed to or even connived in the proceedings. Mock bride theft appears to be a clearly recognized strategy by which a girl may defy the wishes of her parents or kinsmen while giving the appearance of obedience. Mock bride theft was described for six of the 53 societies and in all but two of these genuine