Exogamy

Exogamy is a social rule or practice requiring marriage outside a defined group, such as a clan, lineage, or community. The group boundary may be defined by kinship, religion, ethnicity, or locality.

Endogamy: A social rule or practice requiring marriage within a defined group. It imposes the opposite boundary: spouses must come from inside the group.
Descent group: A group whose members trace kinship through a socially recognized line of ancestry. Many exogamy rules require marriage beyond the descent group.
Iroquois kinship: A kinship system historically documented among Haudenosaunee peoples, with distinct terms for relatives and descent-based relations. Its matrilineal clans provide a well-known setting for clan exogamy.
Alliance theory: An anthropological approach explaining kinship through reciprocal relations created by marriage exchange. It treats exogamy as a means of forming durable relations between groups.
Kinship: Social relationships formed through descent, marriage, or other culturally recognized ties. Kinship systems define the relatives and groups from whom marriage may be prohibited.
Patrilineality: A system in which descent and group membership are traced through the father's line. It can define the lineage whose members must seek spouses elsewhere.
Australian Aboriginal kinship: Diverse systems of relatedness among Aboriginal Australian peoples, organizing social identity, obligations, and marriage relations. Some systems prescribe marriage across named sections or moieties.
Social network: A structure of people or groups connected through relationships and interactions. Exogamous marriages create links that extend beyond a person's own group.
Incest taboo: A cultural prohibition on sexual relations or marriage among specified relatives. It marks close-kin unions that exogamous marriage rules commonly exclude.
Matrilineality: A system in which descent and group membership are traced through the mother's line. It can establish a different lineage boundary for exogamous marriage.

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