Criticism on the Hmong Bride Price

CONTENTS

Discussing: Contemporary Issues

Challenging: Women Issues

Reading: Research Article

Learning: History

Guessing: Proverbs & Riddles

Studying: Literature

Visiting: Photo Gallery

Admiring: Art Gallery

Listening to: Hmong Radios

Enjoying: Tales for Children

Taking: Courses of Cult & Language

Trilingual Website Français English Hmoob Index/Themes Index/Year

TOPICS OF 2005
February 21, 2005
"4 sab phab ntsa": Randy Travis
"4 murs" Randy Travis
4 Walls",Randy Travis

March 9, 2005: Guest writer: Chris Lee
Kev txo yus tus kheej txoj sia: tub ntxhais hluas kev nyuab siab
Essai sur les causes de suicide chez les adolescents hmong
Essay on Hmong teenagers' suicide

March 27, 2005
Kho Hmoob kev tsim karaoke
Critique sur le karaoke hmong
Criticism on Hmong Karaoke

March 28, 2005
Koom Haum Hmoob Thaib
Association de développement chez les Hmong en Thailand
Hmong Association for Developement in Thailand

March 28. 2005
Huab tais Nplog tus Tub Xeeb Ntxwv Kev Npau Suav
Les espoirts du petit-fils du roi du Laos
Laotian Prince Soulivong Savang's Hope

March 28, 2005
Huab Tais tus Tub xeev ntxwv ua "Phibthi" rau cov tub rog tuag
La commémoration des soldats et civils mort durant la guerre secrète au Laos
The Commemoration of deaths during the "Secret War" in Laos

March 29, 2005
Kev toob kas noj mov zaub tseem tseem
Le besoin de manger organic
The need of organic food

April 4, 2005
Ua li cas ib tug zaj thiaj plhis tau mus ua Huab Tais ntxhais nkauj ntxawm
La peur des adolescents: comment un dragon peut-il devenir une princesse?
Teenager's fear: How could a dragon become a princess?

April 9, 2005: Guest writer: Paj Nyiag Xyooj
Nws yog pes tsawg ne ... Hmoob tus me nqi tshoob
Essai sur la problématique du prix de fiancée
Voicing the Bride Price in Hmong Weddings

April 25, 2005
Nkag siab rau lub neej laus nyob teb chaws vam meej
Comprendre le 3ième age chez les Hmong
Understanding the New Old Age in Hmong Community

May 7, 2005
Txheej txheem tshawb fawb
Méthodes de recherche: la contribution des recherches issues du groupe. L'expérience d'un ethnologue d'origine hmong
Research Methods: the contribution of native researchers. The experiences of an Ethnologist of Hmong origin

August 8, 2005
Kev thim xav txog tus nqi tshoob
Critique sur le prix de fiancée
Criticism on the Bride Price

December 18, 2005
Tus tsov: yog tsiaj los sis yog dab.
Le tigre: est-ce un animal ou un mauvais esprit?
The Tiger: is it an animal or a bad spirit?

CONTEMPORY ISSUES
How Much Does a Woman Cost in Hmong Wedding?
Criticism on the Bride Price

Join the Free Discussion Group: "Hmong Women Network"
Mus Koom Qov Chaw Sib Tham Txog: "Poj niam Hmoob Kawm Sib Fim"

Keywords: wedding, bride price, bride wealth, dowry, system of value, education, patriarchal society, gender issues, male domination, social exchange, concept of person, cultural interpretation, social critique, feminist perspective on the bride price.

1. The Bride Price In Its Cultural Context
In a Hmong wedding, the groom has to pay a price for his bride. This pride is called the "Bride Price". To name this price, Hmong people use different native categories:

1."Nqe tshoob" (Wedding price),
2. "Nqe taub hau" (Price of the "Bride's head") or
3. "Nqe mis nqe hno" (Price of milk and food)).

The use of the two irst expressions, "Nqe tshoob" (Wedding price) and Nqe taub hau (the price of the 'Bride's head'), are permutable even if the first expression "nqe tshoob" seems more appropriate in term of language, however it means the material payment of the bride. As for the third expression "nqe mis nqis hno", it distinguishes from the "bride price" as a part of the whole price: it is the payment for the nurturing, for milk and food before being able to produce. Each expression may hold a fragment of the meaning of the bride price. In deduction from these expressions, the bride price's reveals to be a compensation of the bride's breeding until her marriage.

The bride price is different from the "dowry" that Hmong people called with a specific category "khoom phij cuam". The dowry is composed of money and material gifts that parents separately offer to the new couple. The bride price could not and should not be confused with the dowry because these two categories of thinking are totally separe in concept or in practice. Besides, the dowry doesn't compensate the bride pride for the groom's side.

In fact, the symbol of the "bride price" is an intrinsic and fundamental element that defines the social meaning of the Hmong weddings. The dowry is just considered as an accessory: it could be erased from the wedding without losing the social meaning in all weddings or generating social conflict; it doesn't add more social meaning to any weddings, maybe only the materialistic contribution.

As for the bride price, it is the social core of the wedding, in fact a matrix of socio-temporal meanings. Erasing it will lead to annihilation of the social contracts, worse to conflict, disputes, and/or revenge because it symbolizes the social contract where two human beings and two clans acknowledge the pact of the social system of differed exchange in the Hmong society.

In addition, the price bride has another function that parents and relatives used to propose as the mean point of the payment of the bride: it is to protect the daughter. If she is beaten or rejected by the family in law, not only the daughter will be given back to her clan of origin, the bride price will be also and totally reimbursed.

In term of money, the bride price is insignificant; in fact, it is the current preoccupation of all future grooms; theoretically, the sum becomes a burden in marriages because it may reach phenomenal amount from $ 5,000 to $ 25,000 in 2003 in the United States and from 3,000 euros to 15,000 euros in France in 2005.

2. The Symbolic Role of the Bride Price in Social Exchange
The exchange of sisters In many patriarchal cultures, women have been used as "deal" for social exchange. There is no exception for the Hmong culture. However, according to Claude Levi-Strauss, a French Anthropologist, father of the structuralism, the marriage is an institution where people exchange sisters, even it occurs in differed time. This perception of marriage is significant in Hmong culture.

The main stake is to maintain the continuity of the social relationship In the social exchange, perceived as a part of the social communication, the continuity of all relationships. Otherwise, there mustn't be any interruption or discontinuity while dealing transactions between two persons, families or clans. Indeed, the marriage is a tool in the social system of exchange. What is the value or the function of the bride price in it? The bride pride is the surplus orthe gift in the transaction that has the purpose to maintain the continuity of the two groups' social relationship by compensating the loss of an object (daughter) by another object (money). It is too the soldering or the ferment that has a social purpose: it will establish two new social relationships that will grow up together into a stronger household, lineage and clan. In Hmong marriages, there is a step where people acknowledge each other as new relatives and recreate a new social order by extending the clan to a new allied clan. The marriage is the commencement of the world. In more sophisticated interpretation, the bride price is a promise, a symbolic gift to soften the social communication, interaction or exchange where one (bride's clan) has given more so that one (the groom's clan) has to compensate for a transaction in waiting to be able to pay in return, in differed time, another sister.

The bride price has the symbolic function to modify a social reality, e.g. to overcome, the unimaginable of giving a human being away and forever. When a woman gets married, she totally integrates the new clan from the spiritual and materialistic perspectives. This poses a problem at the humane level. Could one give away a sister or a daughter without taking consideration her status as a human being? Othewise, she has the same right as a man. Even living in patrilineal and patriarchal societies, women cannot be perceived as only object of exchange. There is contradiction. How does a culture answer or offer a plausible, coherent interpretation in its system? The received money, e.g. the bride price, has to have a cultural meaning, other than a payment of another human being. Thus the Hmong culture defines the bride price as a symbolic a gift or a debt: as an symbolic object, a social garantee of communication, an abstract thing, a social capital, it overcomes, sweetens, and annihilates the impossible, the unimaginable transaction of human beings where a human being (the groom) pays a price for another human being (the bride)).

In simple term, the social bride pride is to humanize the exchange. Women are not sex slave or economic slave, but daughter, wife or mother of such or such man.

3. Socio-Cultural Criticism
Does the bride pride truly preserve Hmong culture? People look at the bride price as an institution. Some believe that it must change. All need to keep it because it is the foundation of Hmong culture. Famous Hmong women, well known female leaders always advocate for domestic violence, gender equal rights, or lead national organizations. But as we come to the 'pride bride', source of inequality between men and women, most of them accepted it as a custom even if they don't believe in it any more. The higher the education is, the higher the bride price is as well. Female medical doctors costs ten thousand of dollars to husbands. Ironically, one may understand why men are afraid to get married with highly educated women. One of the major reasons that Hmong people propose as a necessity to keep he bride price is that the bride price will preserve the Hmong culture. What is so Hmong culture if half of its members (women) are perceived as objects and depend on the will of the other half's decision (men)?

There is no doubt that Hmong people need to preserve their culture, but they need to adapt their practices to their new country of adoption. Otherwise, certain aspects in Hmong culture have to change, to fit new need, especially gender equality so that every thing will be fair for both genders. Instead considering a culture as a rigid tool, invented once forever, Hmong people need to understand their culture as a product of encountering and of adaptation. For the transmission of their values the most human and capable to preserve the ethnic group, women need education and freedom of action, of thinking and of choice. In this new country of democracy and of equal rights, there is need for the whole Hmong community to re-question to soundness of the "bride price" in term of social practices to maintain the social continuity. If a woman is still kept as a minor, reduced to be the assistant, the drudge, she won't be to be a good mother, good wife, and good professional. The masculine sociality has ceased to be the only strong survival skill in Hmong contemporary history and culture. Women with their feminine sociality are capable to produce social meaning and to perpetuate continuity in social relationship, and to preserve culture face to change, adaptation and renovation.

4. Feminist Perspective
The Hmong cultural perspective and the anthropological theoretical framework propose explanations to capture the functioning of a society. But they do not take in consideration the importance of women's roles and regards on issues. The bride price questions the humanity of both genders. Should one believe that there is only one dominating sex? In the book "The Second Sex", the author, Simone de Beauvoir, analyzed the percepton of women's sexuality that is reduced to an object of pleasure, an erotico-non subject, lacking desire, will and so, women would need society control and protection.
[...] " 'Anatomic destiny' is thus profoundly different in man and woman, and no less different is their moral and social situation. Patriarchal civilization dedicated woman to chastity; it recognized more or less openly the right of the male to sexual freedom, while woman was restricted to marriage. The sexual act, if not sanctified by the code, by a sacrament, is for her a fault, a fall, a defeat, a weakness; she should defend her virtue, her honor; if she 'yields', if she 'falls', she is scorned; whereas any blame visited upon her conqueror is mixed with admiration. From primitive times to our own, intercourse has always been considered a "service" for which the male thanks the women by giving her presents or assuring her maintenance; but to serve is to give oneself a master; there is no reciprocity in this relation. The nature of marriage, as well as the existence of prostitutes, is the proof: woman gives herself, man pays her and takes her. Nothing forbids the male to act the master, to take inferior creatures.[...] Simone de B, "The Second Sex", Vintage Books Ed., p. 374

The humanity of women is also equal to men's humanity: women are subject --and not object or merchandise reimbursable in a differed system of social exchange. The bride price openly demonstrates that women are assimilated to merchandise that men can exchange with other merchandise such as money or women. This shows that men perceive women as eternal minor, incapable of decision and of desire, dangerous with her sexuality. Why do women need protection? Do Hmong women, well educated, lawyers, need protection? Should groom pay such a high price for a highly educated Hmong bride?

Copyrights © 2005 Kao-Ly Yang.
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