A CROSS-CULTURAL REVIEW OF INTERETHNIC MARRIAGE AMONG ETHNIC GROUPS IN ROMANIA AND IN BULGARIA
A CROSS-CULTURAL REVIEW OF INTERETHNIC MARRIAGE AMONG ETHNIC GROUPS IN ROMANIA AND IN BULGARIA

Summary/Abstract: My article is a comparative approach of the marriage-orientation variability in endogamous and exogamous strategies and choices among several homonymous ethnic groups in Romania and in Bulgaria. Interethnic marriage is probably one of the most relevant cross-cultural institutions that expectedly allows for assessing both ongoing “materialization” of ethnicity (beyond any attempt of essentialist definition of it), and circumstantial contextualization of multicultural coexistence. While the practice of endogamy occurs as a customary law arguing on the biological assumptions of ethnicity and, as such, allowing for either ethnic self-identification, kin affinity, economic specialization, or confessional inclusiveness, intermarriage constantly operates as a founding celebration of multiethnicity, and, based on its very ethnographic background, it could contribute to a wider understanding of ethnicity and its contemporary evolution.

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