保卫婚姻:农村彩礼支付的功能研究  

Defending Marriage:A Functional Study of Rural Bride Price Payment

作　　者：陈璐[1] CHEN Lu(School of Sociology,Wuhan University,Wuhan 430072,China)

机构地区：[1]武汉大学社会学院,湖北武汉430072

出　　处：《人口与社会》2024年第4期83-93,共11页Population and Society

摘　　要：转型期农村彩礼数额高现象及其治理困境引发了全社会及学界的关注。现有的婚姻偿付理论、代际资助理论和婚姻市场理论均以彩礼支付的即时性和不可逆为前提,忽视了时间维度下对彩礼支付过程的研究。基于对赣中马村的田野调查,考察彩礼支付过程及其内在逻辑。研究发现,彩礼支付规则发生了历史变迁,表现出数额高、条件性转移和归属于小家庭的特征。在择偶、恋爱和成家阶段,彩礼支付依次发挥竞争、保障和资助功能,每一阶段的功能发挥以上一阶段的功能完成为前提,呈现出流动的阶段性功能转换。整体而言,农村彩礼支付的功能在于保卫婚姻,即农民家庭在应对“择偶难”“恋爱难”“守家难”等一系列婚恋风险时,试图通过支付彩礼这一适应性策略来实现婚姻稳定的目标。鉴于此,农村高价彩礼治理的关键在于从根本上帮助农村青年走出结构性婚恋困境,解决农村男青年的婚恋难问题,倡导文明乡风,通过村规民约等帮助农村青年树立健康婚恋观,以应对转型期婚恋风险。The phenomenon of high amount of bride price in rural areas during the transition period and its management predicament have aroused the attention of the whole society and academia.The existing theories of marital repayment,intergenerational funding and marital market are all based on the premise of the immediacy and irreversibility of bride price payment,ignoring the process research on bride price payment in the time dimension.Based on the field investigation of Ma Village in Ganzhong,the process of bride price payment and its internal logic are investigated.It is found that the rules of bride price payment have undergone historical changes,showing the characteristics of high amount,conditional transfer and belonging to small families.In the stages of mate selection,love and family,bride price payment plays the functions of competition,security and funding in turn,and the function of each stage plays the premise of the completion of the function of the previous stage,showing a fluid phased function transformation.On the whole,the function of rural bride price payment is to defend marriage,that is,when rural families deal with a series of marriage and love risk situations in the transition period,such as“difficulty in choosing a mate”“difficulty in falling in love”and“difficulty in keeping the family”,they try to achieve the goal of marital stability through the adaptive strategy of bride price payment.In view of this,the key to the governance of high price bride price in rural areas is to fundamentally help rural youth out of the structural marriage and love dilemma,solve the marriage and love difficulties of rural young men,advocate civilized rural style,and help rural youth establish a healthy marriage and love concept through village rules and conventions,so as to cope with the marriage and love risks during the transition period.

关 键 词：农村彩礼 婚恋困境 婚姻市场 社会文化 乡村治理 

分 类 号：C913[经济管理]