For my individual project for Introduction to Anthropology I have chosen to review Mating and Marriage, a book edited by Vernon Reynolds and John Kellette. .
[Bibliographical information:.
Kellette, John; Reynolds, Vernon. Mating and Marriage. Oxford University Press: New.
York, 1991. ].
I really did not know what topic to choose for the project, so I went to the library and looked under the Cultural Anthropology section, and discovered a few different books of interest. I chose this book to review because it contains valuable text that is useful for all humans to read. Although the book contains chapters such as "The Evolution of Animal Mating Systems" and "The Biological Basis of Human Patterns of Mating and Marriage" I chose primarily to devote much of the focus of this essay to the latter chapters of the book ("The Social Anthropology of Marriage and Mating" and "Mating, the Family, and Marriage: A Sociological View"). The most interesting parts of the book will be summarized in this essay. I found it out of the ordinary when the text discussed human societies in relevance to mating and marriage and at times failed to discuss the cultural implications of such things. The chapters presented some interesting variations of mating and marriage patterns and meanings in different cultures. Answers to the seemingly simple questions may have unanticipated answers. For example, people in the Trobriand Islands were asked "Who is a child's father?" may be, and the answer was "His mother's brother." Overall the book provided me with a lot of useful information, which I will attempt to convey in the following essay. I was fairly unaware of the expectations for this paper, so I tried my best .
The Essay.
To begin, one must differentiate the verbiage of mating and marriage and realize that a genuine difference exists. Mating is a behavior that exists throughout all bisexual animal species. Mating refers to the process in which eggs and sperm are brought together inside or outside the body of the female, a process used to reproduce.
