What is being paid for in marriage payments?

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Pedagogy - Theory of Science, Anthropology, grade: 2:1, University of Cambridge, language: English, abstract: While the question presupposes that a potential ‘trade’ takes place in marriage payments, I argue in this paper that the preoccupation with the ‘things’ traded in for instance most of the structural-functionalist analysis is mistaken. Much more, marr...