EXOGAMY (from Gk. aw, ero, outside --yaafa, from ycfp.os, gyros, marriage ) . Marriage outside of the clan, gens, or tribe, in contradistinction from endogamy, or mating with in the group. In the earlier systematic studies of marriage, IT McLennan, Spencer, and others, exogamy, or intertribal mating, was regarded as marking a relatively advanced stage of culture or social advancement. This view is partially sustained by later researches among Australian, American, and African natives. Among these and other primitive peoples, endogamy and exog amy are found to coexist in those remarkably definite customs out of which the common law and statute of higher sociology are developed. Commonly the elan (or maternal kinship group) or the gens (or patriarchal group) is an ex ogamous group. Marriage within the group is therefore regarded as incestuous and for bidden. At the same time the tribe or larger confederacy is an endogamous group, so that mar riage within it is sanctioned, either generally or between particular clans, and marriage without is prohibited. In Australia, as well as in other
primitive societies, the laws, which are, of course, expressed by custom alone, are of great complex ity. and are crystallized in elaborate ceremonies, which have been described by Spencer and Gillen, Both, and later observers. On the whole, it may he said that while endogamy and exogamy are coexistent and correlative in every stage of human development, the endogamous group is gradually reduced, and the exogamous group enlarged, with social advancement, so that the latter is more especially characteristic of the higher stages of civilization. See :MAN, SCIENCE OF, paragraph on Noeiology.