Polyandry in Tibet

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Polyandry in Tibet" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on the
Anthropology of kinship
Basic concepts Family Lineage Affinity Consanguinity Marriage Incest taboo Endogamy Exogamy Moiety Monogamy Polygyny Polygamy Concubinage Polyandry Bride price Bride service Dowry Parallel / cross cousins Cousin marriage Levirate Sororate Posthumous marriage Joking relationship Clan Cohabitation Fictive / Milk / Nurture kinship Descent Cognatic / Bilateral Matrilateral Lineal Collateral House society Avunculate Linealities Ambilineality Unilineality Matrilineality Patrilineality Household forms and residence Extended Matrifocal Matrilocal Neolocal Nuclear Patrilocal
Terminology Kinship terminology Classificatory terminologies By group Iroquois Crow Omaha Eskimo (Inuit) Hawaiian Sudanese Dravidian (debated)
Case studies Australian Aboriginal Burmese Chinese Philippine Polyandry in Tibet / in India Feminist Chambri Mosuo Sexuality Coming of Age in Samoa
Major theorists Diane Bell Tom Boellstorff Jack Goody Gilbert Herdt Don Kulick Roger Lancaster Louise Lamphere Eleanor Leacock Claude Lévi-Strauss Bronisław Malinowski Margaret Mead Henrietta Moore Lewis H. Morgan Stephen O. Murray Michelle Rosaldo Gayle Rubin David M. Schneider Marilyn Strathern
Related articles Alliance theory Matrilineal / matrilocal societies Feminist anthropology Sex and Repression in Savage Society Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship "The Traffic in Women"
Social anthropology Cultural anthropology
v t e

Polyandry is a marital arrangement in which a woman has several husbands. In Tibet, those husbands are often brothers; "fraternal polyandry". Concern over which children are fathered by which brother falls on the wife alone. She may or may not say who the father is because she does not wish to create conflict in the family or is unsure who the biological father is.^[1] Historically the social system compelled marriage within a social class.

When the People's Republic of China annexed Tibet, political systems in many regions of Tibet remained unchanged until, between 1959 and 1960, political reforms changed the land ownership and taxation systems.^[2]

Since 1981, the Tibet Autonomous Region government no longer permits new polyandric marriages under family law. Even though it is currently illegal, after collective farming was phased out and the farmed land reverted in the form of long-term leases to individual families, polyandry in Tibet is de facto the norm in rural areas.^{[citation needed]}