Why It Continues To Rise:The Study Of Bride Price In Rural Areas

As a folk custom,the existence of bride price has profound historical,social and cultural reasons.The traditional Chinese culture and the soil of the rural society endow it with rationality.However,with the improvement of rural economic and the living standard of farmers in recent years,the amount of bride price is also increasing year by year.The social problems caused by the growing bride price have become increasingly prominent,especially in the backward rural areas.Therefore,the paper chooses a small village in the eastern Henan province as the research object and taking the folklore fieldwork as the main research method,examining the phenomenon of bride price during the last twenty years after 2000,in order to show the cultural significance and the behavioral logic of the villagers reflected in the delivery process of bride price and to enrich the case study of the folklore about the rural bride price ceremony.This paper is divided into six parts.The introduction mainly describes the origin,significance,relevant research,and the object and method of the research,and points out that the focus of this study is bride price of the young people married in 2000-2017 years.The first chapter mainly introduces the way of living and the scope of marriage in Feng Village.The change about them is deeply influence the trend of bride price which has both cultural significance and economic exchange nature.The second chapter shows the concrete process and the change of the bride price,and compares it with the income of farmers in the same period.The increasing of people's family income is far less than the bride price.The mismatch between them causes the villagers bear greater economic and psychological pressure.Besides,this chapter also explains three situations of bride price belonging to after wedding.The third chapter analyzes the roles of different participants in the bride price delivery process.They have different perceptions and take diverse strategies based on different identities and demands in the marriage relationship.In the fourth chapter,through the analysis of the factors affecting the soaring of bride price from macro and micro levels,it is found that the soaring of bride price is the result of a variety of factors.The part of conclusion emphasizing the bride price is not the bargaining chip of the marriage,but is a necessary etiquette with cultural connotation.It's in the process of balanced bride price delivery that the villagers realize their own sense of satisfaction and responsibility and achieve the remolding of personal identity.