A Preliminary Survey of Lesser-Known Polyandrous Societies

To challenge the common misconception that there are only four societies in the world that allow polyandry, this paper uses types of polyandry, suggested by Levine and Sangree (1980), to identify polyandrous societies from India, Africa, South America, and North America. Basic issues of these societies are examined within the context of four commonly cited attempts to explain the existence of polyandry. The goal of the paper is a preliminary look at the existence of polyandry around the world and an initial exploration of issues that mayor may not be associated with this form of marriage. George P. Murdock's (1967) Ethnographic Atlas states that polyandry is allowed in only four societies in the world: Tibet, the Sherpa and Toda of India, and the Marquesans in eastern Polynesia. That is not necessarily so. While these four societies may be the principle ones in which polyandry is preferred, many other societies across the world have practiced polyandry. Murdock and others have overlooked, and some have dismissed, the appearance of polyandrous unions in these other societies because they are perhaps not as prominent in the literature, or not as institutionalized in their practice as the four societies listed above. According to Cassidy and Lee (1989), polyandry is the simultaneous marriage of one woman to two or more men. Marriage can take many forms, and depending on how it is defined, can determine whether a society is actually polyandrous or not. George P. Murdock (1965) defined marriage in economic and sexual terms, leaving out legitimization of children, and Kathleen Gough (1959) centered her definition on legitimization of children, based on her experience with the Nayar people. Prince Peter (1963:23) defines marriage as "the union between man and woman in the form recognized by their society entitling them individually to the specific kinship status of husband and wife, jointly to that of spouses with reciprocal rights and obligations, and to the procreation of legitimate children within the union." Levine and Sangree (1980) looked for universal concomitants of marriage and found them to be "legitimation of children born to the wife" (p. 387) and "affinity" (p. 388) between the kin of one married partner and his or her spouse, and occasionally