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Pomak
woman and children. Brednitsa, Bulgaria.
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Contrary to
societies with exogamic moieties where a recipient of a given class A takes
a woman from an opposed complementary class B, while a donor of this class
B receives a woman from the recipient's class A, a society such as the Bulgarian
society of Pirine practices, like its European neighbours, what Claude Lévi-Strauss
and the contemporaneous anthropological tradition call the generalized exchange.
According to this model of exchange the donor which separates from his daughter
is never ensured of receiving in return a daughter-in-law, since the recipient
has no obligation of giving her to him. The donor will revceive her, if
ever, from another exchange partner within the same circle of possible spouses,
after a new transaction unrelated to the fomer. In this system the relation
between taker and donor is thus unbalanced by construction concerning the
object of exchange : the daughter given by the one and taken by the other.
The matrimonial transaction then cannot be concluded without restoring some
balance, as is the case for any transaction. To this end the recipient must
compensate the donor for the equivalent value he received from him or give
a part of his property to the benefit of the future couple and its expected
descendants. The amount of these properties will form what the anthropological
tradition calls the "bride price" when the transfer occurs from the
taker to the donor, the "dowry", when the transfer is made by the donor
to his daughter to garantee the alliance, the "establishment dowry" when
the transfer is made by the recipient to his son to guarantee the economic
autonomy of the future couple. Balkans countries are particularly interesting
in that they present on a very small cultural area extending from Serbia
to Greece and from Albania to Rumania via Bulgaria two different ways of
managing a system of generalized matrimonial exchange that are opposed in
space and time and offer a plurality of variants (...). According to the
first form of generalized matrimonial exchange, that is used by islamized
Albanians, Turks of Bulgaria and Macedonia, and Pomaks who are islamized
Bulgarians, the payment to be made by the recipient is substantial enough
to be considered by the protagonists as a "purchase" (...). The second way
of restoring the balance to the benefit of the donors in a system of generalized
matrimonial exchange consists for the recipients to give up irrevocably
a number of goods, lands, herds, businesses, so as to facilitate the community
life of the young couple and to make possible its future installation when
it will be in a position to establish by itself : this is the "establishment
dowry" which has not to be "paid back" after the parents' death (...) :
this is what occurs in Rumania. In a regime of generalized exchange, to
which extent are these two forms of matrimonial alliance interdependent
respectively of islamic culture and christian culture, or of Turkish culture
and slav culture, or still of an economy in which land is an abundant good,
in which richness therefore depends more on work than on landed property,
and of an economy in which land is a rare good, in which richness therefore
depends more on the appropriation of landed properties than on labour capacities
? Ethnography of Balkanic countries shows that it is hasardous to make generalizations,
so much the political and religious powers have changed in space and time.
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