Why Do Women Run Away?

Abstract

This chapter examines the way the Yanomami manipulate their kinship and marriage system. Alès demonstrates that the Yanomami do not use only genealogical relationships for the categorization of marriage practices, but rather select from a number of strategies in response to a set of structural variations in order to obtain a desired outcome. Nearly one-third of marriages are between classificatory brothers and sisters if the appropriate genealogical paths are taken, and not between classificatory husbands and wives. The Yanomami employ strategies that bend or break the rules while simultaneously maintaining their ideal conceptual model of the kinship and marriage structure. Alès’ description of parents deciding the relationship terms of their children’s possible spouses is one of many examples. She concludes that affinity is not determined mechanically from birth, but rather, one might say, affinity is “elective.”