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Intermarriage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Intermarriage normally refers to marriage between people belonging to different religions, tribes, nationalities or ethnic backgrounds. It has also been used to mean the opposite, namely marriage within a small group.
Mixed marriages and relationships have probably been a part of human life, to some degree, ever since there were any divisions in the human species at all. Today with increased globalization and its effect on communication and travel, rates of intermarriage appears to be increasing. In most countries, it is totally acceptable, or even encouraged for various reasons. Some have speculated that at some point in the future, intermarriage will blend the human species into one homogeneous group again, or split it into multiple groups with distinct genes (mutational deterministic hypothesis).
A social norm of "marrying out" is termed exogamy; the opposite ("marrying in") is called endogamy. Some parts of the world are characterized by obligatory intermarriage, for example in northwestern Amazonia among the Tukanoan groups, people are expected to marry outside their own language group (so-called linguistic exogamy). Patterns of exogamy can be characterized as patrilocal or matrilocal, depending on whether the couple normally settle with the people of the husband or the wife.
In racially segregated societies intermarriage may be known by the pejorative term miscegenation.