MATRILOCAL RESIDENCE

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2009, Matrilocal Residence, Patrilocal Residence, Matrilineal Descent, Patrilineal Descent

Matrilocal residence is the custom or practice of a new husband moving to his wife's village or household after marriage. Matrilocal residence tends to be found among matrilineal societies.

Matrilocal designates or pertains to a pattern of marriage in which a married couple settles in the wife's home or community.

Matrilocality refers to matrilocal residence. Patrilocality refers to the custom of patrilocal residence. The custom of a newly married couple taking up residence in the groom's family household or village.

Patrilocal designates or pertains to a pattern of marriage in which the couple settles in the husband's home or community.

An Evaluation of Alternative Theories of Matrilocal Versus Patrilocal Residence
Carol R. Ember
Hunter College of the City University of New York
Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 9, No. 2, 135-149 (1974) DOI: 10.1177/106939717400900202
This paper evaluates two alteniative theories of the conditions favoring matrilocality-one proposed by M. Ember and C. R. Ember and the other by Dicale. New cross-cultural evidence relating type of warfare to societal size suggests that warfare is more likely to play a role in determining residence than vice versa, contrary to Dicale's theory. A new model, taking Divale's findings into account, is presented.

Migration, External Warfare, and Matrilocal Residence
William Tulio Divale
York College of the City University of New York
Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 9, No. 2, 75-133 (1974) DOI: 10.1177/106939717400900201
It is suggested that matrilocal (uxorilocal) residence is an adaptive re sponse to the disequilibrium that occurs when a virilocal or patrilocal soci ety migrates into an alrcady inhabited region. The sudden immigration will result in external warfare between the migrating and indigenous so cieties. Most of the world's societics (approximately 70 percent) practice patrilocal residence and are characterized by the presence of fraternal interest groups, which have been shown to be conducive to the frequent feuding and internal warfare that also characterizes these societies. In the face of severe external warfare, the chances of successful adaptation would be increased if these societies could cease their feuding and internal war and instead concentrate all their resources against the other society. Matrilocal residence accomplishes this, because the dishersal of males from their natal villages upon marriage results in the breakup of fraternol interest groups. This theory was tested on a probability sample of forty-three so cieties, using rigorous Narollian techniques and several statistical methods. Test results show that, in contrast to patrilocal societies, matrilocal societies tend to have recently migrated and to practice only external warfare. Com monly held rival theories of matrilocality concerning environment and female predominance in subsistence were also tested and failed to pro duce significant correlations.

Matrilocal residence is ancestral in Austronesian societies
Fiona M. Jordan, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill and Ruth Mace
Abstract: The nature of social life in human prehistory is elusive, yet knowing how kinship systems evolve is critical for understanding population history and cultural diversity. Post-marital residence rules specify sex-specific dispersal and kin association, influencing the pattern of genetic markers across populations. Cultural phylogenetics allows us to practise ‘virtual archaeology’ on these aspects of social life that leave no trace in the archaeological record. Here we show that early Austronesian societies practised matrilocal post-marital residence. Using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo comparative method implemented in a Bayesian phylogenetic framework, we estimated the type of residence at each ancestral node in a sample of Austronesian language trees spanning 135 Pacific societies. Matrilocal residence has been hypothesized for proto-Oceanic society (ca 3500?BP), but we find strong evidence that matrilocality was predominant in earlier Austronesian societies ca 5000–4500?BP, at the root of the language family and its early branches. Our results illuminate the divergent patterns of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers seen in the Pacific. The analysis of present-day cross-cultural data in this way allows us to directly address cultural evolutionary and life-history processes in prehistory.