Bride exchange in the Western Mediterranean, 400-600 C.E.

这个项目比较了在西方罗马帝国遭受反复入侵然后崩溃的时期，精英们为了相互拉拢，使其行为可预测而使用的不同策略。两个主要策略在这里很重要：一方面是外交婚姻，另一方面是交换宗教礼物，特别是遗物。尽管近几十年来人们对婚姻和家庭历史的兴趣越来越大，但前一个领域仍然没有得到充分的探索。后者受到了相对更大的关注，建立在布朗和吉尔里在20世纪80年代的重要工作之上。作者：Florin Curta（在2006年的《窥器》中）提供了一个关于这部作品对毛斯给布迪厄的礼物理论的使用的总结。然而，我们认为，在布迪厄研究交换和价值的人类学家实际上已经发展出一个更有价值的批判框架来评估捐赠者和接受者如何为交换行为赋予价值和意义之后，这是一个被历史学家从早期人类学文献中“借用”而忽视的框架。这种方法的关键是，对一种行为或关系的认识可能是不对称的：交换的双方可能对该行为的重要性或其应有的后续效果存在分歧。还需要注意的是，与原金属或铸造硬币相比，礼物交换物品“承载”叙事的能力更强。无论这些物品是有生命的（如亲属外交中的新娘）、无生命的（珠宝等贵重物品）还是模棱两可的（圣徒的遗物，它们都具有每一类别的特征），这一点都是成立的。这种叙事元素的协商是交换的社会编排的核心，我特别重视这种意义协商的波动动态。第一个是我所说的捐赠者在交换行为中的“计算脆弱性”。由于交换法中的含义不稳定，捐赠者必须提出一个含义，接受者可能会也可能不会确认。这本身就是一种脆弱的姿态，尽管它被以前的作家解释为权力的姿态（类似于凡勃伦的“炫耀性消费”）。捐赠者可能遭受物质损失，特别是在亲属外交的情况下，新娘的角色是敌对血统家庭中的人质。(The中世纪早期的资料中有大量关于父亲失宠的新娘致残和/或被处决的案例。但是，即使交换的对象是安全的，不会受到损害，礼物也可以被拒绝，或者以一种冒犯捐赠者的方式对待，接受礼物的人可以在接受礼物后拒绝在交换中明确隐含的忠诚要求。在西方帝国的最后世纪的动荡背景下，这些关系谈判的动态是不稳定的。在一片混乱的情况下，更多的东西有待争夺。但也有一个令人惊讶的地方：3世纪末和4世纪相对稳固的帝国的发展也发挥了重要作用：特别是戴克里先的行政改革，它破坏了地区精英的社会结构，君士坦丁的保守改革，它使人们有可能避开在缺乏货币流动性的情况下所必需的社会团结技术，以及基督教的兴起。这些发展使得人们更容易拒绝对社会行为的对称承认。就交换而言，这使得捐助国的脆弱性更难以计算。与旧的交换新娘的策略相比，可以将遗物作为交换媒介的兴起理解为试图限制捐赠者的脆弱性，同时加强捐赠者对交换对象的叙述能力的控制（通过通常伴随宗教礼物的文本）。

This project compares different strategies used by elites to co-opt each other into predictable behaviour at a time when the Roman empire in the West was subjected first to repeated invasion and then to collapse.Two main strategies are central here: diplomatic marriage on the one hand, and the exchange of religious gifts, especially relics, on the other. The former area has remained under-explored despite increasing interest in the history of marriage and the household in recent decades. The latter has received comparatively greater attention, building on important work by Brown and Geary in the 1980s. A recent article by Florin Curta (in Speculum of 2006) offers a summary of this work's use of theories of the gift from Mauss to Bourdieu.We suggest, however, that after Bourdieu anthropologists working on exchange and value have in fact developed a more valuable critical framework for assessing how donors and recipients assigned value and meaning to acts of exchange, a framework neglected by historians 'borrowing' from the earlier anthropological literature. Crucial to this approach is the fact that recognition of an act or a relationship can be asymmetrical: the two parties to an exchange can disagree over the act's importance, or about the follow-on effect that it should have.It is important to notice also that by comparison to raw metal or minted coin, objects of gift exchange have an enhanced capacity to 'carry' narrative. This holds true whether the objects are animate (like the brides involved in kinship diplomacy), inanimate (prestige objects such as jewellery), or ambiguous (saints' relics, which partake of the characteristics of each category). Negotiation of this narrative element is central to the social choreography of exchange.I have placed particular importance on the volatile dynamics of this negotiation of meaning. The first is what I call the 'calculated vulnerability' of the donor in the act of exchange. Because of the volatility of meaning in the exchange act, the donor has to propose a meaning which may or may not be confirmed by the recipient. This in itself is a gesture of vulnerability, even though it has been interpreted by previous writers as a gesture of power (similar to Veblen's 'conspicuous consumption'). The donor is open to material damage, especially in the case of kinship diplomacy, where the bride's role is that of a hostage in the household of a rival lineage. (The early medieval sources are rich with cases of maiming and/or execution of brides whose fathers have fallen out of favour.) But even where the object of exchange is safe from damage, the gift can be refused, or treated in a way that humiliates the donor, after accepting a gift the recipient can refuse a claim of loyalty that was clearly implicit in the exchange.These dynamics of relationship negotiation were volatile in the context of the upheavals of the last century of empire in the West. More was up for grabs in a situation of chaos. But there is also a surprise: developments of the comparatively solid empire of the late third and fourth centuries also played an important role: in particular, the administrative reforms of Diocletian, which had undermined the social fabric of regional elites, and the coinage reforms of Constantine, which made it possible to side-step techniques of social solidarity necessary in the absence of monetary liquidity, and the rise of Christianity.These developments made it easier to withhold symmetrical recognition of social acts. In the context of exchange, this made the vulnerability of the donor more difficult to calculate. The rise of relics as an exchange medium can be understood, by comparison to the older strategy of bride exchange, as an attempt to limit the donor's vulnerability, at the same time enhancing the donor's control over the narrative capacity of the exchange object (through the texts that often accompanied religious gifts).