Dowry and Inheritance

Dowry and Inheritance PDF Author: Srimati Basu
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The practice of dowry in modern India epitomizes the gulf between the ideal and the real. Stridhan or dakshina were gifts traditionally given at marriage to ensure the well-being of the bride in her new home. In its modern form, however, the demand for dowry has led to brides being tortured and even killed. The socialization of young girls into deference to parents-in-law and husband has spawned a 'culture of silence' that leaves them open to harassment. Despite preventive litigation, dowry remains a widespread 'social evil' - a marker of social status - more common, disturbingly, among the educated urban middle classes than among urban poor or rural population. While caste restrictions on the choice of marriage partners seem to have eased, socio-economic factors have gained in significance. Dowry is also making inroads into communities that did not follow the practice traditionally. Understanding the tenacity of dowry is a step towards ending an exploitative practice.

Dowry and Inheritance

Dowry and Inheritance PDF Author: Srimati Basu
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
The practice of dowry in modern India epitomizes the gulf between the ideal and the real. Stridhan or dakshina were gifts traditionally given at marriage to ensure the well-being of the bride in her new home. In its modern form, however, the demand for dowry has led to brides being tortured and even killed. The socialization of young girls into deference to parents-in-law and husband has spawned a 'culture of silence' that leaves them open to harassment. Despite preventive litigation, dowry remains a widespread 'social evil' - a marker of social status - more common, disturbingly, among the educated urban middle classes than among urban poor or rural population. While caste restrictions on the choice of marriage partners seem to have eased, socio-economic factors have gained in significance. Dowry is also making inroads into communities that did not follow the practice traditionally. Understanding the tenacity of dowry is a step towards ending an exploitative practice.

Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family

Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family PDF Author: Richard P. Saller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521599788
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This innovative study of the patriarchy belies the accepted notion of the father figure as tyrannical and exploitative.

A comparative study of the dowry and inheritance

A comparative study of the dowry and inheritance PDF Author: Gillian Webster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description


Disappearance of the Dowry

Disappearance of the Dowry PDF Author: Muriel Nazzari
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804743622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Why did a practice that had been considered a duty stop being a duty, or, conversely, why did daughters lose the right they had previously enjoyed of receiving from their parents the wherewithal to contribute to the support of their marriage? Despite the many historical and anthropological studies about dowry, to the best of my knowledge this is the first analysis of its disappearance. My hypothesis at a general level is that the institution of dowry was among the many fetters to the development of capitalism, such as entail, monopolies, and the privileges of the nobility, of churchmen, and of army officers, that disappeared as the influence of industrial capital spread worldwide. Yet entail, monopolies, and privileges were abolished legally, whereas the dowry was not abolished legally, it disappeared in practice. Thus the question remains: what led individual families to change their customs regarding dowry? And they changed remarkably. I found that, in the seventeenth century, practically all propertied families in São Paulo endowed every one of their daughters, favoring them by giving dowries far exceeding the value of what their brothers would inherit later on. By the early nineteenth century, in contrast, long before the custom of dowry had disappeared, less than a third of the propertied families in São Paulo were endowing their daughters, and those who did gave comparatively smaller dowries, with a very different content, while some families endowed only one or two of several daughters. How to explain this transformation in customs? I will argue throughout this book that the practice of dowry altered because of changes in society, the family, and marriage. Since dowry is a transfer of property between family members, changes in the concept of property, in the way property is acquired and held, or in business practices are relevant to an understanding of change in the institution of dowry, as are changes in the function of the family in society, the way it is integrated into production, and how it supports its members. The changes experienced by Brazilian society that help explain the decline and disappearance of the dowry are many of the same transformations that have been observed in more central regions of the Western world. Through a long process that started in the eighteenth century and continued into the early twentieth century, Brazil changed from a hierarchical, ancien régime type of society in which status, family, and patron-client relations were primary to a more individualistic society in which contract and the market increasingly reigned. A society divided vertically into family clans changed gradually into a society divided horizontally into classes. As the state grew stronger, it took over functions previously performed by the family, which in seventeenth-century São Paulo's frontier society had included municipal government and defense. Between the seventeenth and the late nineteenth centuries, a new concept of private property developed. The family changed from being the locus of both production and consumption to being principally the locus of consumption, while "family" and "business" became formally separate. The power of the larger kin declined and the conjugal family became more important, and marriage was transformed from predominantly a property matter to an avowed "love" relationship, the economic underpinnings of which were no longer made explicit. At the same time there was a change from the strong authority of the patriarch over adult sons and daughters to their greater independence, and from arranged marriages to marriages freely chosen by the bride and groom. These transformations took place in Brazil starting in the eighteenth century and continuing throughout the nineteenth century in a gradual and complex manner so that both old and new characteristics often coexisted at a given time, sometimes even within the same family. As these changes occurred, the

Bridewealth and Dowry

Bridewealth and Dowry PDF Author: Jack Goody
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521201698
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In these insightful 1973 papers two leading authorities make a wide-ranging review of ideas and materials on bridewealth and dowry.

Dowry Murder

Dowry Murder PDF Author: Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195150716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Oldenburg argues that dowry murder is not about dowry per se nor is it rooted in an Indian culture or caste system that encourages violence against women. Rather, dowry murder can be traced directly to the influences of the British colonial era.

She Comes to Take Her Rights

She Comes to Take Her Rights PDF Author: Srimati Basu
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791495922
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Using the contemporary workings of property law in India through the lives and thoughts of middle-class and poor women, this is a study of the ways in which cultural practices, and particularly notions of gender ideology, guide the workings of law. It urges a close reading of decisions by women that appear to be contrary to material interests and that reinforce patriarchal ideologies. Hailed as a radical moment for gender equality, the Hindu Succession Act was passed in India in 1956 theoretically giving Hindu women the right to equal inheritance of their parents' self-acquired property. However, in the years since the act's existence, its provisions have scarcely been utilized. Using interview data drawn from middle-class and poor neighborhoods in Delhi, this book explores the complexity of women's decisions with regard to family property in this context. The book shows that it is not passivity, ignorance of the law, naiveté about wealth, or unthinking adherence to gender prescriptions that guides women's decisions, but rather an intricate negotiation of kinship and an optimization of socioeconomic and emotional needs. An examination of recent legal cases also reveals that the formal legal realm can be hospitable to women's rights-based claims, but judgments are still coded in terms of customary provisions despite legal criteria to the contrary.

Negotiations of Gender and Property Through Legal Regimes (14th-19th Century)

Negotiations of Gender and Property Through Legal Regimes (14th-19th Century) PDF Author: Margareth Lanzinger
Publisher: Legal History Library
ISBN: 9789004454187
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
"This volume explores familial wealth arrangements and gendered property from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries Italian, German and Austrian territories (including Florence, Trento, Tyrol, and Vienna), Nordic countries, Western Pyrenees, and England. Family property as capital in the form of houses, land, movables, financial assets, and rights were of great importance in the past. Arrangements of such property were characterised by a high degree of negotiating competence but likewise they entailed competition between the parties involved and were highly conflict prone. Fourteen contributors from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK address different marital property regimes in relation to the practices and legal regulations of inheritance patterns with consideration to inter-familial negotiation, conflict, and resolution. Contributors are: Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, Laura Casella, Isabelle Chabot, Siglinde Clementi, Simona Feci, Ellinor Forster, Andrea Griesebner, Christian Hagen, Margareth Lanzinger, Janine Maegraith, Silvia Mattivi, Beatrice Moring, Craig Muldrew, Regina Schäfer, and Georg Tschannett"--

Family and Gender in Renaissance Italy, 1300-1600

Family and Gender in Renaissance Italy, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Thomas Kuehn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107008778
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
This book studies family life and gender within Italy through the lens of law and legal disputes.

Women in the Ancient Near East

Women in the Ancient Near East PDF Author: Marten Stol
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 150150021X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
Women in the Ancient Near East offers a lucid account of the daily life of women in Mesopotamia from the third millennium BCE until the beginning of the Hellenistic period. The book systematically presents the lives of women emerging from the available cuneiform material and discusses modern scholarly opinion. Stol’s book is the first full-scale treatment of the history of women in the Ancient Near East.