ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the changing practice of bridewealth in Xiajia village over five decades, examining the active role of the bride and groom in the marriage negotiation. It analyses multiple factors that have contributed to the transformation of bridewealth, situating the role of individual agency in the context of social changes in both the domestic and public spheres, which are closely related to the prevailing state ideology of modernization and the national policies of family reform. In Chinese societies although dowries are often subsidized through the bridewealth paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s family, a complicated practice characterized by Jack Goody as ‘indirect dowry’. The ever-increasing demand for lavish bridewealth often caused conf icts over the redistribution of family property between young women and their in-laws. The Xiajia case calls for a careful reconsideration of most existing anthropological accounts of bridewealth because they overlook the role of the agency of the individual brides and grooms.
