Milk-Kinship in Arab Society: An Unexplored Problem in the Ethnography of Marriage

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Abstract
Without comparable data from other societies a theoretical understanding of rida''a is very difficult. Concern with infant health and circumstances of domestic living patterns explain the reasons for breast-feeding other women''s children in Arab society. The belief that the nursing woman''s milk is her husband''s milk may explain the prohibition of marriage between relatives by rida''a in analogy to that stipulated by consanguineal relatives. That does not explain the pragmatic functions of this belief. The practice of breast-feeding once broadened the network of kinsmen and relatives from whom assistance and cooperation could be expected. Today the idiom of kinship is no longer the sole model for cooperative interaction. Whereas real kinship still remains important in structuring an individual''s social world, the meaning of rida''s no longer translates into the same set of behavioral expectations. The change from patrilocal to neolocal residence has eliminated the circumstances where such a practice could be expedient to ease the life of women under strict norms of modestry. The norms themselves have become less stringent so that the creation of a milk bond to avoid compulsory veiling has lost its meaning. Using rida''a to prevent a marriage between parallel or cross-cousins may be an ingenious device to preclude customarily preferred marriage arrangements. Rather than ignoring that preference and perhaps inviting discord between consanguineally related families, rida''s makes such expectations taboo. When people resort to rida''a as a conscious strategy in managing interfamily relations, it reconciles individual preference with traditional expectations in a non-offensive manner.

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