Bride Kidnapping Research Articles

Preface: #MeToo: Cri de Coeur and Cri de Corps (A Cry from the Heart and Body of a Woman)

#MeTooCri de Coeur and Cri de Corps (A Cry from the Heart and Body of a Woman) Kay Turner (bio) The international era of #MeToo brings powerful narratives of predatory behaviors, deception, abuse, and rape to the daily news across the West, especially in the United States where the movement, founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke, erupted in the fall of 2017, a year after the pussy-grabbing president was elected despite revelations of gross misconduct based in presumptive misogyny. Finally, some men, including Donald Trump, are being named and held accountable. Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Brett Kavanaugh, and Larry Nassar, among many others, stand accused or guilty as charged. What gave them their sense of entitlement and ownership of girls and women in the first place? How did the ideas they used to legitimate their behavior originate? What provided the basis for their relentless coercion? Why did "lock her up" remain the phrase that pays years after the 2016 election put it to such abhorrent use? There are multiple, complex answers to these questions, but one of them lies in folk narrative analysis of the kind found in this special issue of Narrative Culture on women's containment. [End Page 1] The woman seduced me, she was drunk, she asked for it, I pursued her, she refused me, I stalked her, I abducted her, I held her captive in my car, my apartment, my office, our home. I commanded her. I made her do what I wanted her to do. She loved it. She wanted it. She needed it. She said no. She didn't refuse. She hated it. She is better off in her place. The place I make her take. The place I made her want or forced her to want. These are all fragments of recently reported stories, and they are also motifs, not just echoes of personal, individual experience narratives. They are more deeply, and more disturbingly, the refrains heard in the telling of the old stories of our folklore enterprise. In fairy tales, myths, folktales, legends, the narrative culture of women's subjugation and subjection to sexual violence is forged in the ignoble fires of tradition—the insidious carrying on of what has gone before. Telling it like it was … Here's a familiar one. Taken by surprise as she gathers narcissus on a beautiful day, the young goddess Persephone is engulfed by a chasm and thrown into the underworld, where she is forced into marriage with Hades. This exploit, arranged for Hades by his brother Zeus, exemplifies the casual (because established) barter of women for the pleasure of men. Such violent bride capture plays out in prenuptial rituals still practiced in parts of the Mediterranean, acts that raise any groom's hypermasculine profile, at least momentarily, and solidifies his claim on the woman who will be his wife and domestic servant. Ownership by capture, stories made into rites of passage, narratives given social and cultural imprimatur by virtue of being imprinted on the bodies of performers in prescribed ritual acts. Activated by women telling their personal experience narratives of assault by powerful men, #MeToo cracked open one of patriarchy's most cherished vaults, one filled with a precious trove of stories that assume and perpetuate privileges of male over female and men over women, including (but not limited to) sexual, economic, domestic, and political privileges. What individual women had suffered silently as victims of their own histories of domestic violence, stalking, abduction, and rape was now revealed as common cause and effect. Many women told and continue to tell their stories. Thousands came forward to correct a legacy of silence and condemn the well-known chronicle of male sexual advantage largely framed by deeply embedded cultural ideas—pernicious ideals—of conquest and possession. Written on the female body, asserted in the male voice, a multimillennial [End Page 2] Greco-Judeo-Christian mythology of women's ownership by men was implanted in the West so long ago you'll never find it on Ancestry.com. You'll just feel it in your womb of one's own. Quite simply, to interrupt and ultimately discredit the elemental story of male...

Bound to be grooms: the imbrication of economy, ecology, and bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan

This article explores intersections among gender, violence and socio-economic insecurities through examining the practice of women’s abduction for forced marriage in rural Kyrgyzstan. In the post-Soviet period, bride-kidnapping has been discussed as an expression of reviving 'traditional' ethnic culture and as a system of social rules that constrain actors in a variety of ways. Understanding of this practice requires a more nuanced analysis of the links between various forms of vulnerabilities and gender violence it expresses. Previous work has overlooked men's roles within bride abduction process which are not simply men's exertion of authority but are intricate reflections of wider changes taking place in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. Through an analysis of interviews with forty-five men who have been involved in bride kidnappings we build a nuanced account of the broader system of structural and institutional inequalities that comprise ala kachuu and make social actors less agentic. The article links bride-kidnapping to ecological & economic transformations, and the social importance given to marriage - all in the context of neofamilial national state politics where gender violence takes shape as unsanctioned rituals cast as ‘tradition’.

Marriage traditions and investment in education: The case of bride kidnapping

The cultural practice of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan may alter the returns to education for young women in an ambiguous direction due to two competing effects. On the one hand, women facing a risk of kidnapping may reduce education investment due to uncertain returns. Alternatively, since kidnapping is less likely to occur while a woman is in school, women may increase education investment to lower their personal risk of being kidnapped into marriage. Understanding how education is affected by kidnapping risk allows us to better anticipate changes in education when the laws are enforced and the risk declines. We develop a two-period utility model to highlight the effects of kidnapping risk on education and to help identify those girls who are most likely to increase their education when faced with positive regional kidnapping risk and thus most likely to reduce education if the risk is eliminated. We test the implications of the theory empirically using the Life in Kyrgyzstan data. Difference-in-difference regression results point to a negative relationship between regional kidnapping rates and education, suggesting that the elimination of kidnapping is likely to induce higher education rates of women in Kyrgyzstan. The results are informative to the literature at the intersection of marriage traditions, women's bargaining power and education attainment.

Bride Kidnapping: A Deplorable Custom Repressing Women in Kyrgyzstan

Bride kidnapping or 'Ala Kachuu’ is an abhorrent custom repressing the lives of women in Kyrgyzstan. Men kidnap women whom they wish to be their future wives, such is done without their consent. Even though it is treated as a custom, this bride kidnapping custom or tradition has no known roots in the traditions and customs of the Kyrgyz people. Laws have been made, reports submitted, investigations done but much is still the same. Kyrgyzstan is a party to the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

How marriages based on bride capture differ: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

How marriages based on bride capture differ: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Near the Knuckle : How Evolutionary Logic Helps Explain Irish Traveller Bare-Knuckle Contests.

Irish Travellers constitute a pre-demographic-shift population living among a post-demographic-shift one. Their socio-medico profile identifies them as largely on fast life-history trajectories. In addition, they are strongly religious (typically using no contraception), highly sexually behaviorally dimorphic, with strong traditions of male-male competition (bare-knuckle fighting) and quasi-symbolic bride capture ("grabbing"). Their male-male competitions thus allow for the comparative testing of a number of interesting theories pertaining to the nature and function of types of violence in society. As a pilot study, we used expert raters (some naive to the hypotheses) to analyze a number of real-life bare-knuckle competitions in terms of the support said spectacles offered to theories of this sort of violence as reinforcing ideas of antisociality, hierarchical promotion, intersexual signaling, or maintenance of within-group equality. We found good evidence to support theories of within-group, prosocial hierarchical functions for these contests. Limitations and implications for future research, such as direct measurement of fitness, are discussed.

Похищение невесты — обычай или вызов времени?

Похищение невесты — обычай или вызов времени?

Bride kidnapping in post-Soviet Eurasia: a roundtable discussion

ABSTRACTThroughout Eurasia, bride kidnapping continues to be a fairly common way to get married. The practice is becoming increasingly controversial. Some local actors argue the practice is a cultural tradition, while others question its acceptability, particularly when a woman is forced to marry against her will. Many scholars, journalists and non-governmental organization workers view non-consensual variations of bride kidnapping as a form of gender-based violence. In October 2016, an interdisciplinary group of scholars gathered at the annual Central Eurasia Studies Society conference to assess existing scholarship on bride kidnapping in post-Soviet Eurasia. Using an innovative format, this paper offers an edited transcript of that roundtable discussion. The roundtable format provides readers an opportunity to see a diverse range of perspectives and opinions in response to several questions about bride kidnapping. This paper provides a thorough introduction to key issues surrounding bride kidnapping and offers suggestions for areas that need further exploration.

How Forced Marriages Differ: Evidence on Assortative Mating in Kyrgyzstani Marriages

A significant proportion of women in the Kyrgyz Republic marry via ala kachuu, or forced marriage. Little is known about the extent to which this practice is truly involuntary rather than ritualized elopement, or the harm that it may cause. We contribute to the understanding of marriage following bride capture by exploring behavioral similarities of couples in these marriages relative to those in arranged or “love” marriages. We use the 2013 wave of the Life in Kyrgyzstan survey to compute profile similarity indices for couples, and use regression analysis to explore the association between marriage type and similarity in personality, controlling for demographic variables. We find that couples in forced marriages turn out to be far less similar than other couples, especially for those who have only recently married. This greater dissimilarity is inconsistent with staged or ritualized elopement as a characterization of ala kachuu. Couples in marriages following bride capture not know each other nearly as well, and it is implausible that all of these marriages are consensual. This paper provides a novel source of evidence on the non-consensual nature of bride capture in Kyrgyzstan, adding further weight to those arguing that it is forced, and damaging in many aspects to women in such marriages

«ГОРНЫЕ», «ПОЛКОВНИК(ЦА)», «ТЫСЯЦКИЙ», «ПРОСТОНАРОДЬЕ» КАК ЧИНЫ ЮЖНОРУССКОЙ СВАДЬБЫ: ПРОИСХОЖДЕНИЕ НАЗВАНИЙ И ФУНКЦИИ

The article analyzes the names and characteristics of certain ranks of the South Russian wedding ritual. According to the author, the name “gornye”, which is interpreted differently by researchers, is associated with the semantic acme and indicates the high status of these ranks. “Colonel (female colonel)” and “tysiatskii” are the ranks, the existence of which represents the conception of wedding as a militarized action presupposing the bride kidnapping. “Smallfolk” is a rank oppositional to the so called weeding ones, the composition of which was in many ways determined by the terms of the feudal elite.

Understanding ukuthwala: Bride abduction in the rural Eastern Cape, South Africa

ABSTRACTWhile marriage rates in South Africa are exceptionally low, ukuthwala (‘abduction marriage,’ or ‘bride abduction’) appears to be increasing in some rural communities despite declining rates of marriage overall. Moreover, contemporary abductions seem to be increasingly characterised by gendered violence. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a rural Xhosa village, in this article I link the growing incidence and escalating violence of contemporary ukuthwala to the decline of the migrant labour system, and secondarily, to ideological transformations in desired forms of conjugal intimacy. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss contemporary forms of ukuthwala as an outcome of loss of security and status for older women, masculine economic marginalisation, and a growing conviction among young women that marriage should be premised on autonomous spousal choice. In so doing, I show connections between contemporary ukuthwala and broader issues of political economy, domesticity, and gendered and generational sociality. Situating ukuthwala within broader social, economic, and political contexts, as I do in this article, can offer a richer appreciation of the motivations and moral values that scaffold it, and can contribute to broader conversations about violence, social change, gendered and generational struggles in South Africa today.

Experiences of Gender Based Violence among Refugee Populations in Uganda: Evidence from Four Refugee Camps

In refugee generating situations, flight conditions and actual refugee circumstances, Gender Based Violence take different forms like rape, female genital mutilation, physical, psychological and emotional abuse, defilement and bride kidnapping in the name of ‘early marriage’ and sexual harassment among others. These forms are heightened by the adverse conditions of lack of basic needs, unequal power relations, breakdown of institutions of social control and order, exposure to the dangers of group violence and low capacity of protection agencies both local and international, and the host governments. This study intended to detail refugee experiences of Gender Based Violence among refugees in Uganda as well as the associated factors. We conducted a qualitative study and used content-thematic approach analysis. While there was high GBV awareness; this did not translate into reduced susceptibility. Detection, prevention and response to GBV were curtailed by an intersectionality of unequal power relations, poverty, and a multiplicity of cultures that concealed the nature, extent and reality of GBV. Effective GBV prevention requires an array of interventions and ‘capacities’ especially access to basic needs for individuals and households. Our findings aver that, gender based violence is endemic in peripheral hard to reach, conflict and post-conflict settings than in more stable communities due to under-reporting and concealment that are associated with numerous capacity challenges in access and utilisation of the available services. The extreme conditions that refugees go through during displacement, flight and resettlement tend to exacerbate and sustain GBV. Keywords: Experiences, Gender Based Violence, Refugee Camps

Forced Marriage and Birth Outcomes.

We study the impact of marriages resulting from bride kidnapping on infant birth weight. Bride kidnapping-a form of forced marriage-implies that women are abducted by men and have little choice other than to marry their kidnappers. Given this lack of choice over the spouse, we expect adverse consequences for women in such marriages. Remarkable survey data from the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan enable exploration of differential birth outcomes for women in kidnap-based and other types of marriage using both OLS and IV estimation. We find that children born to mothers in kidnap-based marriages have lower birth weight compared with children born to other mothers. The largest difference is between kidnap-based and arranged marriages: the magnitude of the birth weight loss is in the range of 2% to 6% of average birth weight. Our finding is one of the first statistically sound estimates of the impact of forced marriage and implies not only adverse consequences for the women involved but potentially also for their children.

Mental health consequences of bride kidnapping in the Kyrgyz republic

The consequences of gender-based violence (GBV) in the Kyrgyz Republic have often remained outside of both police officers’ and mental health care specialists’ attention. Statistical data on gender-based violence in the Kyrgyz Republic are underestimated, given that the majority of victims prefer not to seek help at all. One of the types of GBV in the Kyrgyz Republic is bride kidnapping, which is still very popular in rural areas of the state. Brides, that were kidnapped, present common behaviors and symptoms, such as an submissiveness, idealization of a husband, numbing, permanent desire to please a mother-in-law and other relatives of higher status in the family. Problems with the urogenital system, such as signs of urethritis and cystitis, vaginal itching, menstrual irregularities are also very common among daughters-in-law who were brutally kidnapped and had been experiencing violence from members of their families. Authors present an algorithm of dealing with the problem, which has been already implemented as a pilot project in one of the regions of the state.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Islamic Influence on HIV Risk and Protection Among Central Asian Male Migrant Workers in Kazakhstan.

HIV incidence is increasing in Central Asia, where migrant workers experience risks for acquiring sexually transmitted HIV. As a social and structural factor that may influence perceptions and behavior, we examine how Islam shapes HIV risk and protection. Phenomenological qualitative interviews examine religion and contexts of HIV risk among 48 male Central Asian migrant workers residing in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Men described nonvaginal sex, alcohol use, premarital sex, and extramarital sex as forbidden or frowned upon. Religious networks were unlikely to discuss HIV risks, and some men viewed religious affiliation or practices as protective. Marital practices including neke (religious marriage), polygyny, and bride kidnapping may be linked to risk. Findings suggest adhering to Islamic ideals may be protective for some men, but for others, assumptions of protection may enhance risk. HIV prevention strategies among Central Asian migrants may be strengthened by attention to religious and cultural understandings of risk and protection.

Bedamini Male Initiation and Marriage as Transformation Sequences

ABSTRACTThis essay focuses on how certain social relations among the Bedamini in Papua New Guinea are given their form through ritual at selected moments of the life cycle when relational transformations occur. Ritualised moments in Bedamini male initiation and symbolic bride capture are described as a dynamic agency that changes the existential conditions of persons in non-ritual reality. At those important ritual moments, the direct presence of the agents is required, while relations between them are mediated by acts, objects and moods. The effect intended is the formation, or reformation, of a relational field. Male initiation and marriage are consecutive parts of a sequence of transformations beyond its constituent moments, as initiation functions as a prerequisite to marriage.

Rights, violence and the marriage of confusion: re-emerging bride abduction in South Africa

During the last few decades, South(ern) Africa has witnessed a steady decline in marriage. While the paths people take to get married are diversifying due to various challenges — mainly a changing economy and high bride wealth demands — certain formative steps in the marriage process seem to gain importance. In particular, what a marriage is and how it is constituted retains its high cultural value irrespective of the ways in which it changes and declines. Within this context, from more or less the year 2009 onwards, there have been allegations that bride abduction [ukuthwala] practices in South Africa are becoming more popular and violent than its historical counterpart. If these allegations are true, it contradicts the general trend of marriage decline, and questions the institution of marriage as a process of fixed formative steps. By asking the open ended question, “How should we understand ukuthwala-related violence?,” this paper seeks to determine whether ukuthwala conforms to the general marriage trend, or whether it indicates a new development in the evolution of marriage in South(ern) Africa.

Kyz ala kačuu

“Ala kachuu”, literally translated as “take and run off”, is a term used to describe the Middle Asian practice of bride kidnapping that is particularly common in Kyrgyzstan. “Ala kachuu” exists in two possible scenarios: First, the bride elopes with the man she loves while her parents oppose the marriage, or second, the non-consensual kidnapping of the bride by a stranger occurs. Both scenarios adhere to special rules and often involve the groom’s extended family and friends. Among the locals and predominantly in rural areas, “ala kachuu” continues to be part of traditional culture with roots in ancient history, as depicted in the national epic “Manas”, despite of the fact that “ala kachuu” is a criminal act often inflicting physical and psychological harm to the young woman. The following paper presents the accounts of a number of kidnappers’ strategies, provides a historical abstract, as well as giving statistics from research conducted by R. Kleinbach and L. Handrahan, and describes several actual cases of bride kidnapping.

Forced Marriage and Birth Outcomes

We study the impact of bride kidnapping, a peculiar form of marriage practiced in Central Asia, on child birth weight. The search for a suitable mate in a kidnapped marriage is initiated by the groom, and there is typically non-coerced consent only by the male. We expect adverse consequences from such marriages, working through poor spousal matching quality and subsequent psychosocial stress. We analyze survey data from rural Kyrgyzstan. We apply several estimation models, including an IV estimation in which we instrument kidnapping among young women with the district-level prevalence of kidnapping among older women. Our findings indicate that children born to kidnapped mothers are of a substantially lower birth weight than children born to mothers who are not kidnapped. This has important implications for children’s long-term development; it also discredits the ritualized-kidnapping-as-elopement view.

Skewed Sex Ratio in Asia: Consequences and Concerns

Worsening sex ratios is bound to have a devastating effect on the human civilization. It encompasses a wide range of human rights violations, including sexual abuse of children, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, trafficking of women and girls and several harmful traditional practices. The crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, with stories abounding of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution. A study into whether these things were connected concluded that they were, and that higher sex ratios accounted for about one-seventh of the rise in crime. In India, too, there is a correlation between provincial crime rates and sex ratios. There have been reports from the northwest, where the sex-ratio imbalance is worse, of rape and sex crime on the rise. Decades of unchecked sex-selective abortions have made the once fertile States of Punjab and Haryana suffer a drought of brides, making human-trafficking a lucrative and expanding trade. Author in this article explains the consequences and concerns of skewed sex ratio and tries to explore the correlations between skewed sex ratio & reported crimes against women across Asia.