Kinship and
Family (1)
(a
really excellent interactive tutorial on many of the ideas covered here is at http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/tutor/kinmenu.html)
The subject of
kinship, family and marriage has traditionally taken up a large part of analysis
in cultural anthropology. The basic reason for this is that kinship is the
idiom in which all sorts of other kinds of relations – economic, political, even religious - are often expressed. Thus, for example, we
may isolate among the Trobrianders relationships we call "economic"
or "political" but on closer analysis it runs out that in large
measure the Trobrianders themselves think of these at least partially in terms
of what we might call "kinship". In small scale societies kinship is
thus the cement in which all sorts of other social relationships are expressed.
Kinship and
family in US and other industrial societies has been reduced to its bare
minimum. We have stripped the family of
all its functions except the basic practical ones involving nurturance of
offspring, and a vague set of emotional needs in which the family provides “ a haven in a heartless world”. This shift is subtly exemplified in the Dickens Christmas
Carol. Dickens was writing at a time
when Christmas was in the process of being transformed from being primarily a
minor religious ceremony to being a secular quasi religious celebration which
celebration the family. The tragedy of Scrooge is that he is a kinless person.
The basic
statistical realities of kinship are that your ancestors theoretically increase
in a geometric ratio. Assuming an
average generation of 30 years, this means that 300 years ago (less than the
Mayflower) you had 2 to the power of 10 (1024) ancestors (this assumes an infinite gene pool, which
of course is not the case – there is always some back breeding and gene pools
as a practical matter are quite variable in size). 600 years
ago slifhtly over one million, 900 years ago about a
billion. Chances that we are all
related to William the Conquerer (the only difference
between us and Queen Elizabeth is she can prove it).
The
Prohibition Against Incest
The starting
point for any analysis of family and kinship has got to be incest and the
prohibition of incest.
We are talking
here about the universal prohibition against sexual relations (and marriage)
between member of the nuclear family other than the
basic Husband- wife pair. But, in some societies the prohibition is
extended to include other sorts of kinpersons, and it
can also be used to imply not only who one should not marry, but also who one
should marry. These extensions of the prohibition (sometimes called the
"incest taboo") will not initially concern us.
This is a
fascinating topic in social anthropology for two reasons:
1.
The
rule is highly specific and
universal. It is arguably the only such highly specific and universal moral
rule, and thus appears to be "natural". But at the same time it is
also clearly a conscious moral rule, and hence "cultural. So we have
something which is both natural and cultural at the same time -- and this makes
it interesting.
2. Without the prohibition
against incest the universal distinction between affinal
("in laws" in our terminology) and consanguine ("blood" in
our terminology) kinpersons would not be possible.
[
Bear in
mind that the term "blood" is a metaphor which is
conventionally employed in our culture to refer to "biological"
relatives. But it is not just a "dead" metaphor because historically
we sometimes have given it a certain literalness:
1.
Blood
banks and the
2. In 18th century France,
particularly in the aristocratic classes, a married women could with more or less
impunity commit adultery while pregnant because it was sure that the
‘blood" could not then be corrupted (this was important since property and
political office tended to be passed down in the male line.)
Most cultures
have some sorts of prime symbols of kinship. Blood in our culture, but in some
places it is bones, or milk, or semen, etc. Basic symbols of kinship are often
bodily fluids. ]
Kinship is the
Theories of
Incest Prohibition
1.
Most
mammals spontaneously refrain for having sex with parents and siblings. This
makes evolutionary and genetic sense and it can be assumed that it is the same
for humans as well. But, there is a problem, because if the prohibition
is just an expression of some automatic "instinct" then why the
intensity of the rule against that which people presumably would not do anyway?
A further
consideration is that even if there is a scientific biological basis for the
prohibition, it is still the American folk explanation for the rule. That is,
if you survey people walking in
But the incest prohibition serves other social
functions as well. In particular, it prevents the formation of incompatible
sentiments within the family. Thus if father and daughter are involved, father
may lose his authority over his daughter lest she withhold favors, and the
mother and daughter (even subconsciously) become rivals.
1. Many theorists
(particularly Freud) have argued that the prohibition serves to prevent the
formation of socially inappropriate sentiments. Even though
those sentiments might (subconsciously) be psychologically pleasurable.
In
Totem and Taboo (about 1922?) Freud created a scenario in which in some sort of
hypothetical primal horde the father monopolized all the women, including his
daughters, to the annoyance of the sons. The sons banded together to kill the
father and take the women. Afterwards, they felt guilty and atoned for the
guilt by making a rule that from then on there would be no more incest.
It is doubtful
that Freud really thought this actually happened as such. It is a powerful
allegory or moral fable which demonstrates the consequences of incest and the
need to prohibit it. It has to be understood in the context of his theories of
the oedipal urges in which the son is jealous of the father vis a vis the mother.
3. One of the
earliest theory of the incest prohibition was proposed
by E.B Tylor who argued that the prohibition against
incest is really a rule that one must mate and marry outside one’s one nuclear
family. Thus, the prohibition serves to bind together families into larger units
of alliance: "marry out or die out".
4. A somewhat
similar approach has been taken by the French anthropologist Claude Levi
–Strauss who sees in the incest prohibition the most fundamental rules
regarding the sentiment of reciprocity. In order to understand his approach, it
is necessary to suspend ones disbelief in the sheer political incorrectness and
apparent sexism of the theory and try to understand it as an interesting,
elegant, but perhaps too clever approach to the problem.
Women are the
most valuable items men have to exchange, he says. The prohibition against
incest is thus a rule that says to each man that in return for giving up access
to the women under his control (his daughters and sisters),
he will be entitled to a reciprocal gift of a woman from the brother or
daughter of the woman received. Remember this is a kind of very abstract model;
he doesn’t mean that individual men are necessarily conscious of all this. He
distinguishes three kinds of reciprocity in marriage exchange:
1.
symmetrical reciprocity, as in a rule of sister
marriage, in which two brothers exchange sisters(or women who are considered
"like sisters"). There are actually a number of places where this is
the ideal, such as the Tiv of Nigeria, although for
practical reason the ideal cannot always be achieved. The Tiv
are patrilineal and view the sister exchange as part
of an exchange between two lineages (one must marry exogamously
outside one’s lineage).
2. Asymmetrical exchange - in
which there are a number of groups, say A, B, C and D (these are usually
lineages, but they can be any kind of group). A gives to B and receives from D,
B gives to C and receives from A, C gives to D and receives from B, etc. There
are a very few societies (mostly in eastern
3. Generalized exchange – in
which every man puts the women under his control into a kind of collective
"pot", and thereby is entitled to take a woman out of the common pot
at some time. Remember again this is a very abstract model, so don’t take it
literally. Whether correct or not, Levi-Strauss’ approach is highly original
and though provoking.
Levi Strauss once
referred to eating off ones own best china alone as "incestuous".
Why? Because best china is reserved for guests and to be
shared. Eating off it without sharing is, so to speak, like eating one’s
sister – who should be shared]
My own take on
the problem is eclectic. All of these approaches have something to them. It is
precisely because the incest prohibition serves so many necessary functions in
society that the taboo is so strongly enforced. The prohibition against incest
is: 1) biologically useful, 2)contributes to interpersonal harmony with the
family, 3)binds families together into larger units, and 4) is a way of
structuring the patterns of marriage in a society.
In those rare
cases where incest is culturally sanctioned (as in brother-sister marriage
among the Ancient Egyptian aristocracy), it has to be understood in the context
of religion, and the fact that tyrants and powerful political leaders often use
their position to symbolically affirm that they are not subject
to the rules of ordinary society.
The incest
prohibition is often extended outside the nuclear family to other degrees of
relatives. There is great cultural variation here. Americans are usually
divided on whether first cousin marriage is "wrong", but for the
Tausug it is considered an ideal form of marriage (it keeps property within a
close group, and they say that marriages last longer because the parents are
siblings, although I have no evidence that this is in fact the case).
One final point:
one must distinguish between the prohibition against
incestuous sex from the prohibition against marriage. Trobrianders absolutely
cannot marry within their matrilineage, but it is
considered a bit spicy to pull off a sexual liaison with a distant clan member ( although they technically defined it as incest). People
may gossip, but unless there is a public accusation, nothing is done.
Marriage
The word
‘marriage" has been difficult to define satisfactorily in a cross-cultural
manner, precisely because there are so many different kinds of institutions
(sometimes more than one in a given society) which all seem to have some, but
not all, of the characteristics of "marriage" as defined in our
culture.
Marriage can
perform a number of easily identifiable functions:
1) the regulation
and channeling of sexuality, 2) creating the sexual division of labor, 3) the
foundation of the nuclear family, 4) a means to structure economic exchanges
between kin groups and bond these groups together, 5) provide an institution
for the socialization and enculturation of children.
And there are
other functions you might list.
It would be easy
to say the marriage exists in all human societies (it does) because it
performs these useful functions. But this idea would be subtly wrong, I think.
Most (but not
all) cultures take marriage as giving the partners sexual access to each other,
sometimes exclusively. Of course, cheating on your spouse occurs everywhere as
a fact (although with much varying frequency) and the obligation to remain
faithful is much more likely to fall more heavily on the wife than the husband
(again, there’s lots of variability here), So without marriage there would be a
free for all and presumably much fighting, so the argument goes. But the
scarcity of women (or men) is the result of marriage, not necessarily
its cause.
Sexuality in all
societies is very strictly controlled ( do not confuse
social control with "looseness" here). Sex can be used as a reward
for people who conform to cultural norms, But only if
sex is hard to get at, or perhaps it would be better to say societies pretty
universally require people to "jump through hoops" of one sort or
another to get it.
All of the
so-called "functions" of marriage, important as they are, can be
performed by other institutions, and anthropologists can give many examples of
this.
Whatever else
marriage is, it is always based on dissimilarity and complementarily, and
ultimately the principle of reciprocity. One sees this very clearly in
societies which allow same-sex marriage (with or without any presumption of
sexual behavior). In same sex marriage, almost always one of the partners assumes
the legal identity and sometimes social persona of the "usual" sex.
Although many European and American societies have recognized same sex bonds as
having certain identifiable legal and other rights, the possibility of same sex
marriage is quite contentious, not necessarily because it is thought to be
immoral, but because it is often seen as ‘illogical": a bringing together
of that which is already the same: a redundancy which undermines the presumed
dissimilarity and complementarities of marriage.
Your text
discusses the widespread Amerindian institution of the berdache
(this is the name given by French traders in the 17th century) who
were males who could assume female roles and sometimes marry other men.
One classic case of
same-sex marriage is that of the Dahomeans (who are
the major ethnic group in African nation of
Women in West
Africa in general have a rather high position, in part because small marketing
and trading is usually (but not everywhere) in the hands of women, who usually
can personally keep the rewards of their extra-domestic( outside the household)
labor. Women can thus often acquire independent wealth.
The Dahomeans form patrilineal
descent groups, and it might happen that an older woman desires to secure her
place in her own patrilineage (remember that her own
children by her original marriage will be filiated
(attached or assigned to) her husbands lineage). She will marry a younger woman
from another patrilineage, and have children by that
women (via a genitor or biological father usually taken from her own
lineage) The child’s fostering mother and father will usually be the biological
mother and the presumed "biological" genitor (remember that
biological motherhood – the genetrix—is always
a matter of fact, while biological fatherhood is always a matter of cultural
presumption), while the legal father (whom we can call the pater
, using the Latin word) will be the older woman. That is, the child in this
cases receives very important social and legal obligations as well as lineage
position (which are quite important and numerous), from the older woman. The
child belongs to her patrilineage lineage and may
take her position in it for certain legal purposes.
Note here that it
is necessary to distinguish biological parenthood (genitor and genetrix) , fostering
parenthood (fostering father and mother), and legal parenthood (pater and mater). It is important to
make this distinction because the terms "father" and
"mother" are just too ambiguous, even in our own culture where there
is a presumption that these three roles will ideally be held by the same
person.
We can see this
distinction more clearly in the Nuer, also a patrilineal society. (The Nuer are a cattle herding pastoral people in the
All of the
so-called basic functions of marriage can, and in some instances are, performed
by other institutions. Raising children, for example, does not have to occur in
a nuclear family based household. As we shall see, for the traditional
There is the case
of the Nayar of S. India, discussed in your text.
Formerly the Nayar were a militaristic caste of sorts
with younger men off fighting as mercenaries. They have matrilineal descent
groups. A girl is married before menarche to a man who becomes the pater to all children born, but after menache the girl takes lovers who sire her children. The
kids are raised in matri-centered housholds
with close ties to their maternal uncles. The "husband" is pretty
much out of the picture.
Formerly (perhaps
today) in parts of the Arab world a man could take a wife for a specified
period of time (usually the pilgrimage to
A working
definition of marriage: a more or less permanent culturally recognized union between
two opposite gender roles (usually opposite sexes as well) with the expectation
that the children born within the union will be socially acceptable
(legitimate) in certain defined ways. This a vague,
but if you want a definition that works everywhere, you have to put up with
some vagueness.
A
word about marriage as a ceremony. Some cultures such as the
Eskimo would appear to have no ceremonial recognition of marriage at all. Once
a couple haven living together long enough and there is a
community recognition of the union by consensus. In some cultures, (our
own, obviously) there is a definite ceremony, and people are either married or
they are not. But in other cultures is possible for the marriage ceremony to
stretch out over a period of time, with a slow transition between single and
married roles.
Marriage
exchanges.
These
fall
into two distinct types: bridewealth (formerly
called bride price) and dowry.
Bridewealth is a payment by the man
and/or his kin to the woman and/or her kin, It cements
the alliance between two kin groups, and in societies which have wealth
stratification, the amount of the bridewealth is
often a symbol of social status and prestige.
Dowry is much
less common than bridewealth, and seems to be most
prevalent in
Domestic
Groups
Obviously once
married, the couple have to live somewhere, and there
is an older anthropological classification of post marital residence:
Patrilocal or virilocal - residence with or very
near the husbands parents. Matrilocal -
residence near or with the womans parents. Neolocal – living in a new separate household. There
are other types as well. The problem here is whether this classification tells
us anything interesting or useful.
A better analysis
of this would look at households in terms of what the basic dyadic pair which
is considered to be (ideally) the most enduring and least breakable.
In a typical
American household, although there may be all sorts of different kin or (even
non kin) involved (in-laws, unmarried aunts, etc.). If an irreconcilable dispute
arises, say, between a man and his mother-in law, it is the mother in law who
must leave. This the ideal – it doesn’t always work
out that way as you know.
1. Households
based on the husband-wife relationship. This is by far the most common in the world.
Example: The iban-iban of
2. Households
based on the father-son relationship. This is the next most common form, and is
common in patrilineal societies.
Among the Tiv of central
3. Households can
also be founded on the primacy of the mother-daughter relationship, and this is
often seen in societies with matrilineal descent groups. The traditional Hopi
of Arizona are a good example. A man considers his sister’s house his
"real" house and keeps his ritual property (medicine bundles, etc.)
there. He more or less lives in his wife’s household, but if he cannot get on
with his mother-in law, the marriage might be dissolved.
4. Households
formed on the sibling-sibling relationship. The traditional 
http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/tutor/kinmenu.html