ANTH 2390 A02 Social Organization
Module 3 Kinship and Marriage
We have so far covered a broad overview of basic social institutions and how they fit
together to form broader patterns of socio-cultural integration both in general terms and
in the context of particular societies. Beginning with this module we will turn to
investigating specific institutions in greater detail. Our specific concern in the next units
will focus on kinship, perhaps the most basic of all systems of organizing individuals into
social groups, roles, and categories. Some form of organization based on parentage and
marriage is present in every human society and probably emerged in the earliest phases of
human prehistory. Although contemporary family structures in Western societies have
been weakened by the dominance of the market economy and government social
services, the nuclear family household is still the fundamental institution responsible for
rearing children and organizing consumption. In non-industrial contexts, kinship groups
normally have a much wider array of functions. They often serve as basic units of
production, political representation, and even as religious bodies for the worship of
spiritual beings, who are sometimes also considered to be members of the family. In
recognition of its widespread importance we will chart the differences in kinship
practices that are evident in many cultures around the world and attempt to explain these
wonderful and often curious expressions of our common humanity. We will be
specifically interested in:
1. the formation of groups and relationships based on descent (parentage);
2. the semantic and sociological significance of kinship terms;
3. marriage rules and conjugal relationships; and
4. the structure and dynamics of the household.
Readings
Lee, Richard, Dobe Ju/’hoansi, chapters 5 & 6.
Uchendu, Victor, Igbo, chapters 5-7.
Stirling, Paul, Turkish Village, chapters 5-9.
Figures
There is a large diagram set that accompanies these notes to which references are made in
the relevant part of the text (e.g Figure 9.2). All these illustrations are available in a
companion document that can be downloaded from the course website or from Jump.
Note that the diagrams are in colour, so that the on-screen version will usually contain
information that will be lost in a black and white print-off.
Preliminary definitions, terms, and concepts
Kinship is a fundamental feature of human experience and social organization
that is present in some form or another in all societies. On the basis of patterns in
Western societies, anthropologists generally define kinship as a system of
thought, custom, and behaviour that is based upon people’s ideas of biological
relatedness (parentage and descent) and reproduction (marriage). They are
interested in the comparative study of these institutions for the purposes of
discovering common patterns and variable forms that they assume in specific
societies. They are widely divided over which if any features can be viewed as
universal and why regularities and variations occur. On one extreme,
sociobiologists take a reductionist position and see all family institutions as
conforming to a basic plan that is determined by human biological and
evolutionary necessities. On the other, cultural relativists maintain that kinship
has no intrinsic relationship to biology and is unlimited in its possible forms. I
will assume a middle ground and maintain that kinship is based upon culturally
determined knowledge, beliefs, and values concerning biological relatedness and
reproduction. Accordingly, an underlying framework is present but is
substantially modified by cultural ideologies and social practices. Furthermore,
these variations on common themes are considerably more interesting and
instructive than the more tenuous universals.
Universal features of kinship systems that have been proposed include the following:
1. a lengthy infant maturation period that requires a major commitment from
one and usually both parents to nurture and socialize dependent children;
2. the presence of a marital bond that creates a permanent and ideally exclusive
sexual and economic relationship between two or more people;
3. a division of labor based on gender; and
4. a prohibition on intercourse and marriage between close kin, which creates a
widely articulated network of relationships between individuals related by
birth and marriage.
These postulated universals are subject to extreme ranges of variation that often
challenge the validity of any generalizations. For example the determination of
kinship ties and the binding of individuals into kinship networks assumes a basic
theory of sex and birth. However, cultures have different views about the “facts”
of life and the meaning of marriage and parentage. The Trobriand Islanders
maintain that the sex act has nothing to do with a child’s birth, which they
consider to be the result of impregnation by the mother’s ancestral totemic spirit.
Accordingly, kinship is recognized only according to links through females in a
matrilineal system. Fathers and sons and other people linked through males are
technically not biological relatives at all, although they may assume important
social roles and relationships. Similarly, the Yanomamo arrange people into
localized patrilineages, whose members regularly marry into the same groups
generation after generation. Therefore a man’s wife and mother often belong to
the same familial line, creating a situation where mothers are considered to be inlaws rather than biological kin. An opposite perspective is taken by long standing
Catholic views on consanguinity and affinity. Marriage is seen as a literal union
of the husband and wife, who become “one flesh” as a consequence of the
wedding sacrament. The resulting network of people linked by marriage are
transformed into biological kin, and, according to cannon provisions, are not allowed to
marry. Thus incest prohibitions are applied to a range of a spouse’s relatives,
which has varied over time but once included distant cousins. Beyond this
regulation, the Church also applies standards of kinship to an individual’s
baptismal sponsors, or godparents, who are unrelated to the child by birth or
marriage. Anthropologists term this relationship “fictive kinship”, but this is an
inaccurate designation for Catholic practice. The Church, at one time, prohibited
marriage between godparents and godchildren, between a godparent and a
sponsored child’s parent (i.e., coparents), and even between otherwise unrelated
people who shared the same godparents. A similar system of fictive kinship is
represented in the Ju/’hoansi institution of “namesake kin,” which we will
consider in the second unit in this module.
Kinship diagrams: Basic elements
Before we begin to understand kinship, we need to define some basis symbols
that are used in constructing kinship diagrams, the fundamental tool for defining
concepts and representing case studies.
1. A circle represents a female
2. A triangle represents a male
3. An equal sign represents a marriage
4. A vertical line represents descent or parentage
5. A horizontal line represents a sibling bond.
6. Relationships are traced through a central individual labeled EGO.
These various elements are joined to produce a kinship diagram.
Figure A.1 Kinship Diagramming and Symbols (Kinship Symbols)
Types of kinship relationships
All societies construct their kinship systems and define social groups, roles, and
relationships on the basis of a bilateral network formed through combinations of
marriage and parentage ties. In some societies, the extended bilateral network,
termed a kindred, forms a recognized social group, as in the case of many early
medieval cultures. In contemporary European cultures, bilateral kinship is
dominant, but no recognizable groups are formed. In many non-Western societies
emphasis is placed on exclusive descent through male or female relatives as was
also the case in ancient Israel and Rome. Nevertheless, these unilineal systems,
also recognize kinship relationships that are not incorporated into exclusive male
and female lines.
The following diagram below represents a bilaterally extended kindred which
forms a template for tracing a variety of kinship relationships from an egocentric,
or individually centerd perspective.
Figure A.2 An Egocentric Bilateral Kindred
It charts out a short range of Ego’s consanguineal kin (literally “blood”
relatives), to whom he is related by birth. He will also have important
relationships with affines or affinal relatives (not shown on this diagram) linked
by his own marriage or that of one of his consanguines.
Having outlined a general set of symbols and a template for diagraming, we must
now define and illustrate a few ways of classifying kin appropriate to
anthropological analysis. The terms employed should be understood as “etic”
categories, those used by anthropologists to describe and understand their data.
They differ from “emic” classifications, which are specifically defined within a
cultural context. Etic and emic ways of classifying kin may differ substantially as
demonstrated in the previous discussion of how different cultures distinguish
consanguineal from affinal kin. At this point the definitions and distinctions you
will view are merely intended to provide an general overview of concepts that
will be explained and illustrated more fully as you proceed though the subsequent
sections.
1. Lineal vs. Collateral Kin

Lineal kin are either the direct ancestors or descendants of a particular Ego.

Collateral kin are composed of Ego’s siblings and their descendants and the
siblings his/her lineal kin of ascending generations and their descendants as well.
They can be pictured as side branches off of the main trunk that links a person to
his ancestry and progeny.
Figure A.3 Lineal vs. Collateral Kin
2. Matrilateral vs Patrilateral Kin

Matrilateral kin include all family members related through Ego’s mother

Patrilateral kin include those related through his/her father.
Figure A.4 Matrilateral vs. Patrilateral Kin
In medieval England the bilateral kindred was an important group for many
social and political purposes, as was the division between the matrilateral or
“spindle” kin (all of a person’s mother’s relatives) and the patrilateral or “spear”
kin (all of person’s father’s relatives). This distinction is still evident in our
current term “distaff” to indicate mother’s family members.
(Note that the distinction between matrilateral and patrilateral kin and that
between matrilineal and patrilineal relatives discussed next are quite different)
3. Matrilineal and Patrilineal Kin

Patrilineal , or agnatic, relatives are identified by tracing descent exclusively
through males from a founding male ancestor.

Matrilineal , or uterine, relatives are identified by tracing descent exclusively
through females from a founding female ancestor.
Figure A.5 Matrilineal vs. Patrilineal Kin
Unlike the patrilateral and matrilateral grouping, these unilineal connections are
consistently traced through a series of relatives of the same gender. Accordingly
there are kin on each side, who are neither patrilineal nor matrilineal. These are
known as cross relatives. Among the members of this category, cross cousins
are of particular importance, especially for some marriage systems we shall
discuss. Cross cousins can be identified as the children of opposite sexed siblings
(of a brother and sister) and parallel cousins as the children of same-sexed
siblings (of two brothers or two sisters).
Having defined a number of symbols, conventions, and distinctions used to
describe and analyze kinship relationships, we will now proceed to our first topic
on the reckoning of descent and activation of unilineal kinship ties to form social
groups and define social roles, statuses, and relationships.
Unit 7
Descent Systems
The first critical area of substantive kinship analysis involves the study of
descent systems. This topic is concerned with the rules that people in different
cultures use to determine parenthood, identify ancestry, and assign people to
social categories, groups, and roles on the basis of inherited status.
Descent systems are divided into:
1. unilineal systems, in which descent is traced through parents and ancestors of
only one gender, and
2. cognatic systems, in which descent can be traced through either or both
parents.
Uninlineal systems are further subdivided into patrilineal and matrilineal forms.
Cognatic modes also have two variants: bilateral and ambilineal.
Several ethnographic examples will be covered to illustrate both the formal rules
of kinship involved and the practical management of on-the-ground social
relationships as they are worked out in the different descent systems. The
examples chosen are identified in the following table:
Culture Descent System Location Form of Social
The Akan culture has been added to the case studies to provide an example of a
matrilineal order. The Yanomamo have been included to demonstrate some
additional features of unilineal organization. The Gilbert Islanders are an Oceanic
people with an ambinleal system typical of the area. We will also draw
comparative examples from Western social experience, which is based on a
cognatic-bilateral structure.
Culture
Yanomamo
Igbo
Akan
Turkish
Ju/’hoansi
Gilbertese
Descent System
Patrilineal
Patrilineal
Matrilineal
Patrilineal
Bilateral
Ambilineal
*A decentralized state form
Locatoin
Amazon
West Africa
West Africa
Eurasia
South Africa
Pacific
Social complexity
Tribe
Tribe
Chiefdom*
State
Band
Tribe
Study questions
Identification
Consanguineal relative
Kindred
Clan
Segmentary Lineage
Dual descent
Corporate group
Cannon degree system
Wergeld payment
Affinal relative
Unilineal descent
Moiety
Cognatic descent
Ambilineal descent group
Civil degree system
Cognatic degree system
Umuna
Diagramming
With reference to the numbers in the figure, identify the following relatives of Ego:
1. The members of his patrilineage
2. The members of his matrilineage
3. Relatives who are both patrilineally and matrilineally related to him
4. His cross cousins
5. His parallel cousins
6. His consanguineous relatives
7. His affinal relatives
8. His collateral relatives
Essays
1. Identify the main structural and functional features of unilineal descent
systems and illustrate how they are reflected in the basic kinship group
organization of the Igbo.
2. Identify the main structural and function features of bilateral descent systems
and illustrate how they are reflected in the basic kinship group organization
of the Ju/’hoansi.
3. Compare and contrast women’s roles and importance in the Turkish and Igbo
lineage systems. Explain any similarities and differences that you observe.
4. Compare and contrast the Igbo and Akan lineage systems. Explain any
differences that you observe.
5. Compare and contrast the Ju/’hoansi and Igbo descent systems. Explain any
differences that you observe.
6. Draw a diagram of your kindred and discuss how the kinship connections
you have outlined affect your social life, i.e. what kinds of interactions and
exchanges are defined within your circle of kin.
Study notes
Many societies construct kinship groupings, roles, and relationships by tracing
descent exclusively through the male - patrilineal - or female - matrilineal - line.
The resulting units are called unilineal descent groups, either patrilineages or
matrilineages according to the prevailing descent rule. While people of
European ancestry are more familiar with bilateral systems, over twice the
number of cultures (70 percent in one sample) follow unilineal kinship rules
(Murdock 1949:59). In many of these societies, unilineal descent groups assume
important corporate functions such as land ownership, political representation,
and mutual aid and support.
Patrilineal systems are much more common than matrilineal ones, occurring at
roughly twice the incidence. They may be familiar to you from the Bible (the
“tribes” of Israel and their subdivisions were patrilineages) and from ancient
Greek and Roman family patterns, or contemporary Chinese, East Indian, or
Middle Eastern cultures. Matrilineal forms are nevertheless ethnographically
important and, like patrilineal forms, are represented in every inhabited continent.
The powerful West African Ashanti kingdom developed within a matrilineal
society. Accordingly, the heir to the throne was not the king’s (Asantehene’s)
own child but his sister’s son. Early British emissaries to Ashanti learned about
this family system the hard way during their attempts to win favour with the royal
court. They supported several of the Asantehene’s sons to be educated in England
only to realize that the allies they had so carefully cultivated were not in line to
assume the throne.
Patrilineal descent
Figure 7.1 Patrilineal Descent, Ancestor Focus
Patrilineal relatives can also be charted from an egocentric perspective and are
linked through a continuous series of male ancestors and descendants.
Figure 7.2 Patrilineal Descent, Egocentric, Male Ego
Figure 7.3 Patrilineal Descent, Egocentric, Female Ego
(Note that a woman is included in her father’s patrilineage but that her children
will belong not to her group but to her husband’s.)
Matrilineal descent
Figure 7.4 Matrilineal Descent, Ancestor Focus
Matrilineal relatives can also be charted from an egocentric perspective and are
linked through a continuous series of female ancestors and descendants.
Figure 7.5 Matrilineal Descent, Egocentric, Female Ego
Figure 7.6 Matrilineal Descent, Egocentric, Male Ego
(Note that a man is included in his mother’s matrilineage but that his children
will belong not to his group but to his wife’s.)
Dual descent
In addition to patrilineal and matrilineal principles, some unilineal systems
combine both rules to form a dual descent structure.
Figure 7.7 Dual Descent
In this arrangement ego is a member of two separate and fundamentally distinct
groups: a matrilineal group through his mother and a patrilineal group through his
father. Where dual systems are employed, one type of group will tend to take on
complementary functions in respect to the other. For example, among the Yako
of Nigeria, patrilineages are important for the allocation and inheritance of land,
while matrilineal groups control the ownership of movable property such as
cattle.
Descent group structures
Having outlined the basic methods of tracing unilineal descent relationships, we
must now turn to an investigation of how they are actually applied to the
organization of specific societies. This undertaking will involve a consideration
of the structure and function of groups and social roles based on matrilineal or
patrilineal principles. Social structure covers the division of society in to groups
and roles and the criteria by which individuals are assigned to them. Function
refers to the range of activities that these institutions organize for their members.
Unilineal descent groups come in many different forms and sizes. The ancient
Hebrews had large descent groups, which included tens of thousands of people
and were sub-divided into smaller constituent units on a number of levels. They
also maintained detailed genealogical records to document the statuses that they
held as lineage members. Akan and Igbo groups usually number several hundred
members and are also subdivided into branches. The Turkish villages have much
smaller groups that average 200 members and are not subdivided at all.
Yanomamo groups usually number under a hundred and frequent split up into
small segments that do not retain any interrelationship with one another. These
variant structural features of descent organization are significant for
understanding how they assume meaning and function in the course of social life.
We shall discuss four types of common descent groups:
1. lineages;
2. segments;
3. clans; and
4. moieties
These structural features are represented among our case studies as follows:
Culture
2-4
Akan
Igbo
Yanomamo
Turkish
Minor segment
Moiety
Generation Depth
5-8
8-10
Segment
Maximal lineage
Major segment Maximal lineage
11+
Clan
Lineage
While all unilineal descent groups can be considered lineages in a general sense,
anthropologists give the term a limited technical meaning.
A lineage, is a unilineal descent group whose members trace their descent
from a common ancestor through a documented sequence of known linking
antecedents.
Validation of the genealogical facts of descent can be carried out in a number of
ways. Often each individual will memorize his or her ancestry and recount it to
his or her children. In some cases specialized institutions will arise to maintain
ancestral records. The Malinke people of West Africa developed the role of the
griot, a formally recognized oral historian. He was responsible for memorizing
and recounting the full descent lines of indigenous royalty, nobility and other
people of importance. The Akan developed similar roles for women genealogists,
both as official royal historians and informal family experts. In ancient Israel
written genealogies were maintained as is abundantly indicated in Chronicles I
and II in the Old Testament. These records were consulted to validate or
invalidate peoples’ claims to status. According, the New Testament opens with
the account of a 42 generation genealogy for Jesus, linking him back through a
straight patrilineal line to King David and eventually to Adam. The Yanomamo
represent the other extreme in geneaological reckoning. They are forbidden to
mention the names of dead ancestors, and, accordingly, genealogical connections
are lost with the disappearance of each generation.
Even in the best of circumstances, the accuracy of descent pronouncements is
questionable, even more so when they entail access to position, wealth, and
power. Often the process of “telescoping” will occur, in which one or more actual
ancestors will become forgotten so that “fathers” and “sons” in a genealogy may
have in reality been several generations removed. (As a rule of thumb, any
genealogy over 12 generations will contain such missing links.) At other times
anomalies, such as the incorporation of a woman’s children into a patrilineage,
will be glossed over by changing a female ancestor into a male. More intentional
changes will also be attempted when individuals or factions attempt to establish
membership or change status within the group by fabricating an ancestor or
pedigree. Thus the recounting of particular descent lines must often be
understood as an idiom for documenting, challenging, or authenticating claims
rather than as an accurate historical account.
The biblical story of Noah and his sons provides an example of the mythological
use of genealogy to underwrite political claims. Noah’s third son, alternatively
identified as Canaan and Ham, the father of Canaan, is depicted as abusing his
father after a drinking session. He is accordingly cursed to be a .slave of slaves’,
as are his imputed descendants, the Canaanites, who constituted a servile caste in
ancient Israel. This story was later reinterpreted to identify Africans as sons of
Ham in an attempt to justify slavery in the United States. A final twist was added
in the 19th century by the .hermitic hypothesis’, advanced by racial theorists to
attribute Sub-Saharan historical advancements to Mediterranean invaders.
Segments
Lineages constructed on the basis of formal genealogies occur in various sizes
according to their “generational depth,” ranging from small, shallow lineages
made up of the descendants of a single living father, grandfather or
great-grandfather, spanning two to four generations, to extensive systems with
histories of a dozen or more generations including thousands of members. In
some cases, especially where there is substantial depth, larger units are
subdivided into smaller components through a process of branching or
segmentation. This arrangement involves the successive formation of smaller
groups from parent lineages. Thus there is a single maximal lineage at the highest
level of the system, which is divided into two or more branches or segments,
which may be in turn divided and redivided in a regularly recurring process. The
number of branches at each point of division depends upon the number of sons or
daughters attributed to the previous ancestor. The number of levels is
theoretically unlimited.
Segmentary processes and structures can be illustrated in the following diagrams:
Figure 7.8 Segmentary Descent Systems (no figure title only)
Figure 7.9 Descent Lines
Figure 7.10 Segmentation
Figure 7.11 Group membership
There are several classic ethnographic examples of segmentary lineage systems,
including Evans-Pritchard studies of the Nuer and Paul Bohannon’s Tiv research.
Among our case studies, this form is represented among the Igbo and Akan.
Clans
As with many technical anthropological terms, “clan” is loosely used in common
speech to designate many different kinds of fundamental social units. The
anthropological definition narrows the meaning to a unilineal descent group
whose members do not trace genealogical links to a supposedly historical
founding ancestor. Membership rights are simply derived from a father or
mother. Clans are usually large groups that are associated with mythical
ancestors, who are very often identified as animal species that are considered
sacred to the group. They may occur within a complex structure in which they are
either nested into larger groups or subdivided into smaller ones in the same
fashion as segmentary lineages. Where they are subdivided, the component units
are often lineages, as in the Akan case. Where they are grouped together, the
more inclusive unit is called a phratry, which is in fact a type of clan.
Moieties
The moiety system is a more unusual form of unilineal descent and involves the
occurrence of descent groups in linked pairs that assume complementary
positions and functions. Each moiety (or half) of a pair will almost always be
exogamous and take its husbands and wives exclusively from the matched group.
This system is represented by the Yanomano. Their communities are composed
of small, localized lineages, which settle in villages together with members of a
matched moiety. Marriages are normally arranged between these paired units.
Descent group functions
Having described unilineal descent structures, we must now turn to the central
issue of detailing and analyzing their functions and the importance they assume
for their members and the wider social order in which they are incorporated.
Descent groups, as well as many other kinship structures, function as primary
groups, i.e., institutions that normally recruit personnel by the criterion of
inherited status. In this capacity, the group’s unity and character reflect bonds
formed upon common origin and identity and address the general welfare of the
membership rather than a specific and intentionally defined objective. (This
characteristic of kin groups illustrates Durkeim’s concept of mechanical solidarity).
Accordingly, the range of responsibilities that descent groups organize is extensive,
although the number and type of functions varies cross culturally. These include the
major activities of economic, political, and religious life. In a general sense,
the kinship unit often constitutes a corporate group which becomes a legal entity in
itself and is assigned collective rights on behalf of its members and their estates.
Functional analysis helps to explain the reason for which unilineal descent
systems have played such an important part in the development of social
organization. Two theories for the occurrence, one economic and the other
political in emphasis, have been particularly convincing.
The economic theory focuses on corporate land owning patterns. It maintains that
individual tenure systems cannot allocate farmland in horticultural cultivation
regimes, which depend upon long fallow periods and extensive land reserves.
Since farmers are constantly taking plots out of production and seeking fresh land
for new fields, private ownership is not practical. Their long-term resource needs
are best met by relying on a communal unit to hold land in reserve for the group
as a whole. Lineages provide just the right scale and continuity to co-ordinate
these allocations at optimal efficiency. This argument is consistent with the
analytical principles of cultural ecology.
The political explanation focuses on the need for social order in stateless
societies that lack centralized political systems with formal institutions of law
enforcement. Under these conditions, strong and permanent alliances within and
between large family based organizations are necessary to establish the sanctions
needed to control disruptive behaviour among their members and to assist them
when violence does occur. (This approach is associated with the
structural-functionalist school.)
Case studies
Of the unilineal structures that we will investigate, the Akan and Igbo descent
organization best conforms to the corporate group model, assuming the fullest range
of functions. The Turkish village system exhibits the narrowest.
Territorial
Organization
Land
Ownership
Inheritance
Marriage
Regulation
Social
Control
Political
Represtation
Akan
X
X
X
X
X
X
Igbo
X
X
X
X
X
X
Yanomamo
X
X
X
Cultures
Feud
Support
Turkish
X
X
X
X
The Matrilineal Akan of Ghana
The Akan are best known for their colorful kingdoms, which are located
throughout the forest zone of southern Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. The tropical
environment has supplied them with valuable resources for both commercial
cocoa farming, a recent economic innovation, and gold mining, which in former
times supported regal opulence and pageantry. The Ashanti Empire, the largest
Ritual
Observance
X
and most powerful of the precolonial polities, owes its prominence to its location
within the region’s richest goldfields. The traditional Akan kingdom remains an
important national cultural and political force and is inseparably tied to the
structures and functions of the matrilineal descent system that forms the
foundation for the social order.
The Akan have a multitiered, segmentary structure consisting of matrilineal
clans, and major matrilineages divided into lineage segments. The clans number
eight in total and are not localized. They include members throughout all the
kingdoms. Their origins are attributed to mythical ancestors, and no attempt is
made to trace descent lines to the group’s founders. They assume little
importance in the lives of their members, beyond creating a context for friendship
among fellow clanspeople from distant localities, and, in this sense, they unite
people across basic political divisions. They impose one firm rule: sexual
relations or marriage between members of the same clan is prohibited.
The lineage system is more coherently and complexly structured. At the top of
the system, maximal lineages (abusua) assume the form of localized groups that
make up the Akan town (kuro), a nucleated settlement of sometimes as many as
several thousand inhabitants, which occupies the lowest administrative level of
the indigenous territorial and political system. Each town is composed of 5 to 8
matrilineages, which occupy separate residential quarters within the settlement.
The maximal lineages are established on the basis of common matrilineal descent
from a known female ancestor traced back through approximately 10 generations.
They are subdivided into segments, sometime called “houses,” each of which
stems from a daughter of the founding lineage ancestress.
Figure 7.12 Akan Lineage Organization
Segments are ranked according genealogical seniority, according to the birth
order of these offspring of the founders. As well as forming a coherent
neighborhood, the maximal lineage constitutes a fundamental corporate group
with religious, political, economic, and other social functions.
The lineage organization is defined and sanctioned primarily through the
religious belief and ritual system that centers on ancestor worship. While the
descent groupings are formed according to links through females, ritual
observance focuses on the spirits of deceased male members incarnated in carved
wooden stools. During a man’s assumption of full social maturity, he purchases a
stool, which is considered his exclusive possession and an extension of his
personality. Upon his death, this object is placed in a special room that serves as
a common repository for the lineage as a whole. Every 6 weeks, special adae
ceremonies are held. The family’s stools are removed and offered sacrifices of
liquor, domestic animals, and other foods to propitiate the ancestral spirits, whose
blessings are necessary for the welfare of their progeny. Adae ceremonies and
annual odwira celebrations are also held for the stools of political officials,—
chiefs, kings, and queen mothers—and form major occasions for public religious
worship. The Ashanti have added another element to this ritual system in the
form of the golden stool, which represents the abstract spirit of the whole nation
rather of a particular historical ancestor. Similar observances and sacrifices are
held during funerals, rites of passage at which the living lineage members pass on
to the next stage in a cycle which includes the living, the dead, and the yet-to-be
born, as the deceased will eventually be reincarnated within the same matriline.
The religious belief structure and the concrete representation of matrilineages and
other social groupings as ancestral relics establish the rationale for assigning
important corporate rights in statuses, land, and people.
Lineages also serve as the basic units of political participation and control. Each
town forms the bottom layer of a multilevel administrative hierarchy and is
locally ruled and represented by a chief (ohene) in co-operation with a town
council. Official positions on the municipal governing body are allocated to all
the maximal lineages in the settlement, each of which independently selects one
or sometimes two representatives from among its members. Chiefs and
co-reigning queen mothers are chosen from the royal lineage, which asserts
precedence on the basis of first settlement, but the council is consulted on the
choice of a successor and can institute .destoolings’s, i.e., impeachment
proceedings. There are no fixed rules of succession, but titled political positions
within a lineage’s control are sometimes retained within the senior segment of the
lineage. Among some Akan groups, offices are alternatively rotated among
lineage segments to ensure equitable participation in the political process. (See
Schwimmer 1976 for a discussion of the occurrence of seniority and rotation in
the formation of new settlements.)
In addition to selecting municipal representatives, local matrilineages are also
organized under internal leaders, who manage the considerable assets, activities,
and responsibilities of the group. Each lineage is subject to the authority of a
family elder (abusua panyin), who consults with his peers to make and carry out
decisions affecting economic, political, and ritual matters and to settle internal
disputes. He is assisted by a female counterpart, who has a special responsibility
for the lineage’s women and also acts as an advisor and the official authority on
family history, a critical element in assigning rights and statuses. Succession to
leadership is determined by genealogical seniority within the group and is
assigned to a man or woman who must be:
1. of the oldest generation that has living members,
2. in the senior segment that still has members in generation 1,
3. the eldest person of the appropriate gender in the segment identified in 2.
(This information is based on my own fieldwork among an Akwapim group.
Fortes (1950) maintains, from Ashanti data, that the abusua panyin and oba
panyin are elected from the lineage at large.)
Economic functions of the lineage focus on land ownership, which is invested in
the ancestors and, on their behalf, the abusua panyin as a trustee for the group.
Accordingly, land cannot be sold or otherwise permanently alienated. Actual
distribution of farm plots for agricultural use is assigned to lineage segments,
which are responsible for day-to-day concerns. Individual tenure and farm
management is left to household heads, who are usually men and often work the
soil with the assistance of wives and children. The planted crops and any income
they yield are considered individual property and can be given to household
members whether or not they belong to the lineage that owns the land. (Wives
and children are of course not members of the household head’s matrilineage.) In
the traditional system this multiplicity of rights in land and its products were of
little consequence, since cash incomes were negligible and plots were used only
for two or three years within a long fallow regime. Cocoa farming has
complicated the balance of rights because of the substantial cash value of the
crop and because tree plantations involve permanent land use. Thus the
matrilineage, or “family,” (usually the segment) can claim a cocoa farm located
on its land but the farmer’s wives and children can exert a counter claim because
of the labor they have invested in planting and maintenance. In cases of conflict,
property is usually divided to compensate both sets of interests.
Matrilineal inheritance and succession among the Akan is usually formulated in
terms of the transfer of property and status from mother’s brothers to sister’s
sons. However, generational seniority imposes a complication and dictates that
property must first pass successively through a group of brothers and can descend
to sisters’ sons only after all the males within a generation have died. Sisters
usually cannot inherit a man’s property but can be heir to their sons if they or
their sisters have no other male children. Women’s property, however, is
allocated to other women, i.e., sisters and daughters in that order of precedence,
and is awarded to men only if there are no female heirs. The traditional
inheritance system of course excluded direct transfer of family property to wives
and children. Responsibility for these dependents was assumed by the heir,
usually through levirate marriage. In recent times opportunities for accumulating
savings and property without the assistance of lineage has allowed men to
provide for wives and children through gifts and oral or written wills
The matrilineage exercises corporate rights over its individual members as well
as its property. The most frequent imposition of collective interests in persons
involves the control of marriages and the donation and receipt of bride wealth.
Descent groups are strictly exogamous and all sexual contact between members
is forbidden within the segment, maximal lineage, and wider clan. Among other
implications, these stipulations support arranged marriages that initiate or
perpetuate alliances between descent groups, usually within the town, which is
predominantly endogamous. Lineage leaders manage the alliance system though
both insistence on cross-cousin marriage rules and control of the financial
resources and negotiations involved in bride wealth transactions. (We will
discuss these marital institutions more fully in the next unit.)
The various functions, rights, and responsibilities assigned to matrilineal
structures make their strength and continuity essential for the welfare of their
members and the integrity of the wider social order. Economic and demographic
uncertainties, however, can threaten the stability of the individual descent lines
and of the whole system. Very real problems emerge if a lineage has few
daughters through whom the line can continue. Gender ratio imbalances can be
addressed through a number of social mechanisms involving the simple practice
of adopting new members, which usually occurs within minor segments, and a
more intricate pattern of slave marriage.
In precolonial times the Akan had developed an institutionalized form of slavery,
which may have been in part intensified by their participation in the
transcontinental slave trade. The practice focused on domestic slavery, through
which individual bondsmen became incorporated into their masters= households
and were granted fairly extensive privileges, including inheritance rights and the
right to marry non-slaves. If a woman married a male slave, her children became
incorporated into her lineage through the normal application of the matrilineal
descent rule. If a man married a female slave or otherwise had children by her,
the offspring had no automatic lineage status. However, they could be granted
membership in their father’s lineage. In the event that a man had no entitled heirs
among the free members of his matrilineage, a slave son could inherit matrilineal
property and pass it on to his sister’s children, who would form a new line of
continuity. (Ironically, a man could pass matrilineal property on to a “slave
child,” but not to a son of free status.) Frequent recourse to this practice has
resulted in the presence of several “attached” segments within maximal lineages,
whose origins are usually overlooked to avoid embarrassment. Interestingly, an
exact mirror image of this pattern is described in the Old Testament to deal with
the corresponding problem in patrilineal Hebrew society, the continuity of a line
in which only daughters are born (I Chronicles 2:35).
The Patrilineal Igbo of Nigeria
Igbo descent organization is based on a segmentary patrilineal system, which,
like the Akan system, involves the development of localized corporate lineages.
The core members of a patrilineage, descended from a male ancestor within eight
to ten generations form the basic descent group. They inhabit a single territory
involving a settled village, or in some cases interlinked dispersed farmsteads, and
the adjoining agricultural land. In many cases a single lineage will form the bulk
of the settlement’s inhabitants, but several separate lineages may sometimes join
to form a single local group. Villages are more widely integrated into a larger
territorial unit, the village group through a series of alliances, common
institutions, and joint activities. In some cases, this broader unity is underwritten
by a claim that the component lineages are all descended from a remote common
ancestor.
Figure 7.13 The Igbo Lineage system
Within the village, the lineages are further subdivided into major segments
(Uchendu calls these sublineages), which are in turn subdivided into minor
segments the minimal units of the system. This branching is reflected in the
village’s spatial layout. The major segments occupy contiguous wards within the
village. The minor ones assume the form of compounds, the basic domestic units.
Compounds are also complexly subdivided, but according to patterns of marriage
and residence rather than to those of descent. We shall consider these features in
subsequent chapters.
In effect, the lineage functions are organized at two major levels in a pattern very
similar to the Akan system. The maximal lineage assumes mainly symbolic and
ritual importance. It also plays an important role in the marriage system, insofar
as people of the same lineage, and, accordingly, from the same village, are
forbidden to marry or to engage in any sexual activity. The more important
activities are organized at the major segment and compound level. The major
segment is designated as the umunna, literally a group of people descended from
the same father, but not of the same mother. It occupies a section of the village
and owns common lands, which it allocates to its members for housing and
farming. It is led by a formal lineage, the okpara, who is usually its senior
member, i.e., the oldest male of the oldest branch of the lineage. His office
derives from the ritual importance of his ownership of a sacred staff, the ofo, and
his role as an intermediary for both the group’s ancestral spirits and the earth
goddess. He is also the ummunna’s political leader and its representative to the
village’s governing council. In both instances, the okpara’s power is quite
restricted because collective pronouncements are never fully binding and
decision making and administrative actions must follow democratic principles.
The compound, or ezi, is a branch of the ummunna, and has parallel ritual,
economic, and political functions. The compound head, the obi, makes sacrifices
to more immediate ancestors, allocates land near the compound that is used for
kitchen gardens, and settle disputes among family members. His activities and
decisions must be guided by consultation with his constituents, especially with
the heads of the smaller domestic groups that make up the unit. He receives an
important perk of office through rights to one day per week of work from his
dependents.
According to the rule of patrilineal inheritance, people normally acquire
membership in these various descent groups through their fathers. However, the
Igbo system involves an interesting quirk that sometimes allow for descent to
pass through a woman rather than a man. The kinship status and identity of a
child is established as a consequence of the fact that his or her father has paid a
sizable bride price to his wife’s family during the arrangement of the marriage.
If a child is born out of wedlock, and thus without the appropriate compensation,
then he or she becomes a member of the mother’s patrilineage. Furthermore, in
the Igbo system of “woman marriage,” a woman can pay a bride price and
acquire a wife in her own account. In this case, the female “husband” will be
considered the sociological father of any children that her “wife” gives birth to
and they will thus belong to the “husband’s” patrilineage. The biological father,
who has not provided any marriage payment, will have no formal status in
relation to his offspring.
In addition to group membership, patrilineal descent controls the course of
succession and inheritance. When a man who holds an office, such as okpara or
obi dies, his status is passed on to his most senior relative within the relevant
subdivision, usually a brother or cousin rather than a son. The heir will not only
take on the title of the deceased, but will also assume access to or control over
any corporate property, such as land, that was associated with the deceased. He
will also be entitled to inherit the dead man’s widows, who he may decide to
marry or allocate to other members of the patrilineage. Other than the transfer of
family assets, inheritance of personally acquired property, such as crops in the
field or trading wealth, will pass on from father to son, usually to the eldest son,
who will also assume responsibility for caring for his younger brothers. If
siblings cannot co-operate under fraternal leadership, the inheritance can be
subdivided. In this case sharing usually is carried out according to number of
wives a man has; each group of full brothers receives an equal amount, which is
initially placed under the control of the oldest brother in each group. Women do
not normally inherit within their families of origin or from their husbands, except
to the extent that they can expect to be maintained by their husbands’ heirs. They
can acquire wealth and assets in their own right, which, as personal property, will
go to their children. If they are childless, they have the option of produce heirs
through “woman marriages.” If they do not follow this option, their husbands will
inherit.
While the umunna constitutes the major field for social identification and
participation in Igbo society, other institutions also form essential elements in the
social order. Some of these, such as the age and title associations are not kinship
based and will be discussed in the next module. Others, such as a person’s
relations with his or her mother’s relatives, the umunne, are closely integrated
into the kinship system. In spite of a patrilineal emphasis, the Igbo have
developed a special set of relationships with maternal kin that is sometime called
“complementary filiation.” Through this institution, patrilineally organized
people are considered to have special rights in their mothers’ families of origin,
including several that they do not receive in their own descent groups. Thus, the
course of an Igbo’s life is marked by continual visits with his or her mother’s kin,
who, because of the rule of lineage and village exogamy, must always reside in a
different settlement. Short stays may be organized for a variety of reasons.
Longer ones, lasting for several years, will occur because of a commission of a
crime or involvement in a serious dispute in a person’s natal village. During such
visits, the guest expects to receive warm hospitality and affectionate and
indulgent treatment. He or she will also engage in relaxed interactions, which can
involve practical jokes and ribald discussions that would be quite inappropriate in
normal contexts. Such joking relationships and the designation of joking kin
have been observed in many societies, and we shall investigate a similar,
although differently patterned, custom among the Ju/’hoansi later in this unit. The
specific focus on maternal kin for the Igbo has generally been observed in other
patrilineal societies. This practice has been labeled the avunculate and has been
explained as a way of counterbalancing the heavy weight of formal and
sometimes highly stressful relationships among agnatic kin (Radcliffe-Brown
1954). Note that this institution does not indicate an element of matrilineality,
which is in fact present in a few Igbo groups. The mother’s relatives in this
instance are members of a person’s mother’s patrilineage and do not form a
matrilineal group in any sense.
In general we have emphasized a very close connection between the formation of
patrilineal groups and delimited territories. We should note, however, that this
arrangement is relevant mainly to male participation. Because of the rule of local
exogamy most adult women will live away from their natal groups among other
members of their sex from a diverse set of patrilineages. In some cases, however,
they will form a complex set of complementary groups based on both locality and
descent.
On the basis of locality, all of the married women within a village will often form
a group with well defined and important functions that include religious rites,
judicial deliberations, and entertainment, mostly in the form of dancing. They
may also organize to represent their specific gender interests. For example, in a
ground breaking study of Igbo women, Margaret Green, observed that gender
conflict was regularly instigated when domestic animals, usually owned by men,
foraged on crops in the field, usually planted and tended by women. Often the
woman would successfully organize and petition for the establishment of local
laws that would permit the confiscation (and consumption) of errant goats or
pigs. Their major weapon was a collective boycott on domestic tasks and
responsibilities (Green 1964:178-216).
Aside from village-based groups, women also organize on a patrilineal basis, and
as such according to their villages of origin. Green recorded a highly formalized
arrangement for set of communities in which wives married away from home
formed a spatially defuse organization of women from the same place of origin.
These groups were called mikiri after the English word meeting and were loosely
based on urban “improvement unions” that migrant Igbo’s formed in many of
Nigeria’s large cities. Their members would set up visits on a monthly basis that
would occur in a circuit of villages in which the mikiri’s members had married.
Functions focused on mutual sociability and aid. Authority and other
prerogatives, such as sharing, were generally allocated on the basis of the relative
seniority of the lineage segments of the participating women (Green 1964:217232).
While gender organization on the village and inter-village level seems somewhat
modest, it indicates a substantial importance of collective identity, mobilization,
and action that has had a wider impact on Nigerian politics. Igbo women assumed
a major role in the colonial history of Nigeria, when they mounted the Woman’s
War of 1929. This mass movement involved major boycotts and demonstrations
on a regional front to resist British attempts to include women in a census that
was considered to be a preparatory step to demanding that they pay head taxes.
The Yanomamo of the Amazon Forest
Like the Igbo, the Yanomamo are organized into named localized lineage
groupings on the basis of patrilineal descent. However, lineage groups are quite
shallow, seldom extending beyond two adult generations, and small, seldom
reaching as many as 100 members. Group dimensions are limited by the frequent
segmentation and territorial relocation of lineage branches because of internal
conflicts, usually over women. Genealogical connections between separate
segments are not normally recognized, a pattern which is maintained by a social
taboo on recounting the names of the dead. Neighboring settlements form
alliances involving various exchanges and co-operative activities in warfare,
which was endemic in traditional society. These consolidations are often short
lived and divided into warring factions that are continually seeking out new
allies. As such, no permanent unit beyond the village, such as the Igbo village
group, is present, and settlements as such possess limited stability and continuity.
Beside fostering mutual co-operation and support among their members,
Yanomamo lineages function as territorial units, inhabiting a common settlement,
and as elements of a marriage exchange and alliance system. They are
exogamous and also consult jointly in the selection of marriage partners for their
male and female members. The marriage system also acts to construct regular
relationships between pairs of lineages who regularly intermarry through a
system of exchange marriage that we will examine more fully in unit 3 of this
module. Intermarrying units tend to pair off and exclusively occupy the same
village, thereby generating a moiety system.
Figure 7.14 Yanomao Moiety System
Members from other lineages may also reside in the village and marry within it,
but the two dominant interlinked moieties will usually dominate the settlement
both numerically and socially. Lineages in Yanomamo society do not take on
substantial corporate functions, such as land ownership, that they frequently
assume in other patrilineal systems, except to the extend that they involve control
over women. The men in a group share the responsibility for arranging marriages
for their sisters and daughters in return for which they acquire brides from the
groups in which their women have married.
Turkish Village
As in the two previous cases, family organization in rural Turkey is also based on
patrilineal descent and has important ramifications for the wider social order.
Domestic units are patrilocal and involve the development of small patrilineages
seldom exceeding three generations. These households are in turn organized into
larger lineages, called kabile, which go back approximately six generations. They
bear the names of ancestral founders, usually the grandfathers of the oldest living
members. Households of fellow lineage members are usually located close to one
another, and such clusters tend to form wards within the settlement, as indicated
in the village of Sakaltutan.
Figure 7.15 Sakaltutan Village Map
During the period of the research, upon which this account is based, the village
contained 10 well-defined lineages ranging in size from 4 to 20 households and
averaging 50 people. These magnitudes are relatively small in comparison to
lineage sizes in many tribal societies, such as the Igbo, and assumed fewer
functions. As Stirling observes (1965: 158), their lesser importance is typical of
peasant societies.
Figure 7.16 A Sakaltutan Lineage
The group originates seven generations back from its youngest children to a
founding ancestor, although branching is not evident until the fourth generation
down. The founder’s single grandson had three sons, each of whom established a
branch or lineage segment.
These in turn are divided into a total of nine branches derived from the founder’s
great-great grandsons, one of whom (A) was still alive at the time of research.
Within the subsequent generations, the segments constitute a total of 19
households. (V’s households are coded in red on the village map.) Three of these
(A, B, C) include three generations of patrilineally related males, constituting
extended patrilocal families. Three others include childless married sons and
daughters-in-law of the household head. The remainder contain simpler units of
nuclear families, childless couples and single men.
Two branches of the lineage in question are anomalous, as they are not linked to
the core group by clearly delineated partilineal ties. The segment originating with
household D is actually attached though a uterine link. The male household head
married in from another village and, as such, has no agnatic kin in the village. He
was therefore dependent upon his wife’s lineage for family co-operation, and his
children looked to their mother’s relatives for agnatic support. The same situation
may have applied to household E in the past. In this case the uterine link has
probably been forgotten. Over time this situation will be regularized through the
invention of patrilineal descent links. Unilineally organized societies frequently
bypass rigid descent rules and recast genealogical histories in this way to deal
with anomalies.
As well as being comparatively small, Turkish peasant lineages have relatively
few effective functions. They do not own productive resources or other assets in
common. Neither membership nor participation is automatically binding, and
several households take no interest in lineage activities at all. As such, Turkish
partilineal organization assumes the form of occasional rather than corporate
groupings. It provides an open social field within which members may choose to
draw for aid and support, but they are not bound to participate. Nevertheless,
patrilineages are prominent features of the village social landscape and form
definitive foci of social interaction and political mobilization. Agnates are usually
immediate neighbors and frequently visit and assist each other with domestic and
agricultural tasks. Visiting is regularly organized in the guest rooms, which the
more prominent village men maintain as major hubs of social activity. Agnates
normally form the core of regulars who frequent these gatherings, especially in
the winters, when outdoor activities are curtailed (Stirling 1965:238).
Patrilineal ties, reinforced by neighborly contacts and guest room sessions,
assume a more important function in the village disputes and feuds. While
Turkish law and jural authority is officially endorsed in the villages, the actual
legal process is almost entirely left to informal leaders and customary regulations.
Since there is no firm central authority, many disputes go unresolved, and
restitution remains in the hands of the aggrieved parties. Accordingly, villagers
frequently take recourse to self-help, vendetta, and feud, which can erupt in
violence and sometime murder. In this less than perfect social order, lineages
assume primary importance as sources of protection and armed support, and
fellow agnates emerge as the only allies who can be firmly relied upon in a crisis.
Conflicts between individuals therefore tend to be transposed to their lineage
groups, which sometimes engage in long standing feuds as a result (Stirling 1965:
Chapter 11).
Cognatic kinship and descent
Unilineal kinship makes a direct and simple assignment of social statuses, rights,
and duties by confining transmission to a single descent line. By contrast,
nonunilineal, or cognatic, systems allow for the construction of social groups and
categories through any or all of an individual’s acknowledged relatives beginning
with both his/her father and mother. The open nature of cognatic organization
leads to greater complexities and wider variations than are normally apparent in
patrilineal or matrilineal forms.
Cognatic kinship structures can be classified into two basic systems: bilateral
and ambilineal.
1. Bilateral systems involve the inclusion of all of an individual’s relatives
within a given range. They are usually ego focused and are formed by tracing
relationships from both parents throughout an ever widening network of
kinship called a kindred. A less common variant form, a stock, or bilateral
descent group, is based on tracing descent lines back to founding ancestors.
Figure 7.17 Bilateral Kinship Network (Kindred)
2. Ambilineal systems involve an exclusive selection of membership in a
father’s or mother’s group, usually upon adulthood. (Alternative forms are
based on a choice of living with a husband’s or wife’s family after marriage.)
They are ancestor focused and become organized by tracing descent from
either father or mother, but not both, and back through a similarly restricted
string of forebears.
Figure 7.18 Ambilineal Kinship Group (Rampage)
Bilateral Kinship
Bilateral kinship organization presents something of a classification problem as
all societies recognize and interact with a variety of paternal and maternal kin on
a regular basis. Thus, while members of unilineal societies rely exclusively on
agnatic or uterine kin in certain formal situations, they also maintain both
structured and informal relationships with other relatives and form bilateral
kindreds for a variety of purposes.
The universal occurrence of bilateral kinship, often in conjunction with unilineal
institutions, has led to a variety of controversies as to whether bilateral structures
exist as general forms or whether a specific society is unilineal or bilateral. Such
debates have arisen about historical Anglo-Saxon society, ancient Roman
practices, and modern Yoruba institutions. However, widespread evidence can be
cited to support the existence of formal bilateral structures within several
traditions, especially European ones, in the form of rules and understandings that
define specific ranges of cognatic kin and assign rights and duties to them.
Formally, bilaterally kinship systems involve two separate forms:
1. Bilateral descent groups, also know as stocks, a relatively rare institution
according to which a society is organized on the basis of bilateral descent
from recognized ancestors.
2. Kindreds, ego focused networks that extend through both of an individual’s
parents and their bilateral kin.
Bilateral descent groups (stocks)
Bilateral kinship systems are usually based on defining circles of relationship, or
kindreds, according to an individual’s personal network. However, a few
incorporate an alternative form of determining fixed groups on the basis of
common ancestry from identified founders. Unlike unilineal forms, these bilateral
descent groups, more commonly know as stocks, trace decent from an ancestor
through both his/her sons and daughters and their sons and daughters in turn.
Figure 21 depicts a stock extending through four generations of descendants of an
ancestral married couple. (Sometimes only the male founding ancestor is
specifically recognized.)
Figure 7.19 Bilateral Descent Group (Stock)
Although somewhat similar to unilineal descent groups, bilateral forms present a
marked structural and functional difference. Matrilineal and patrilineal systems
incorporate people into discrete and exclusive groups. Stocks establish a system
of multiple membership, since individuals belong to more than one group,
minimally in both their mother’s and father’s groups and maximally in as many
as their have traceable ancestors in any line. Each stock to which a person
belongs has a different membership composition from the others. Because people
can belong to more than one stock and group memberships overlap, it is
impossible to assign exclusive rights such as residence within a bilateral descent
system.
Figure 7.20 Overlapping Stocks
Stocks were present in some form in many historical European kinship systems
and are especially well exemplified by the Scottish clan system. These groups
originated with a named male ancestor and traced their membership through his
sons and daughters, grandson and granddaughters, and subsequent descendants of
both genders. Membership in the group involved marked identities through the
use of names and insignia, such as tartan patterns. It provided people with
political support and a limited range of territorial rights. Stocks have also been
described for Oceania, including a complex system in the Gilbert Islands
discussed below.
Kindreds
Personal kindreds are widely observed in bilateral systems and are prevalent in
Western European societies, where they can be traced back to early Germanic
institutions. They are structured on the basis of egocentric, or ego focused,
networks, which individuals construct through both parents to all of their
grandparents and their descendants and to more distant ancestors and descendants
in an ever-widening circle.
Figure 7.21 Kindred
Ranges of bilateral kinship
In contemporary Western societies the definition and extent of the kindred is
usually unspecified. Individuals are able to personally decide on the range of kin
they wish to recognize and the individual relatives with whom they will develop
contacts. In general, the range of kinship recognition is quite narrow and is
confined to first or second cousins. However, civil and canon law systems within
European traditions specify fixed kindred ranges in their provisions concerning
inheritance rights, marriage prohibitions, and other kinship matters. For instance,
the current (post Vatican II) Catholic canon law asserts that relatives within four
degrees of consanguinity, calculated according to the Roman (civil) degree
system, cannot get married without special dispensations. (Simply put, first
cousins are forbidden to marry.) Relatives within this range are also considered
too close to hear one another’s cases in Church tribunals or to inherit
ecclesiastical property from one another.
Figure 7.22 Impediments to Marriage
The Church previously imposed a wider range of exogamy of three degrees
according to the Germanic (canon) degree system. (This range is actually more
inclusive that four Roman degrees and includes second cousins.)
The practice of formally specifying a kindred range is documented in other
societies which are organized on a bilateral basis. The Iban, a Malasian group,
recognize kinship obligations within a kindred of second cousin range but are
fairly flexible in their inclusions of relatives, since they do not maintain
genealogies (Freeman 1960). Third cousin ranges are recorded for several
societies in the Pacific and Europe and were probably in force in medieval
Germanic societies, although some interpretations of medieval texts suggest the
imposition of a sixth cousin range.
Within a specified kinship range, distinctions of degrees of relationship may be
important for assigning responsibilities to different kin. For example, among the
ancient Franks, the compensation payment, or wergeld, awarded to a murdered
man’s family was paid by the guilty party’s kin on a sliding scale in relation to
kinship degree. Anglo-Saxon custom was similar but added another complication
by allocating responsibility to patrilateral and matrilateral relatives in a 2:1 ratio.
Kinship degree, basic numbers and formulae
Most bilateral kinship systems and some unilineal ones make essential
distinctions between relatives on the basis of kinship distance for purposes of
assigning group membership, determining inheritance and succession rights, and
organizing other important social events and interactions. In many cases these
distances are assigned whole numbers known as “degrees of kinship.” While a
single self-evident system for assessing these quantities might be desirable,
several different measures have been developed. For example, Western kinship
degree calculations have varied historically and geographically between the
Germanic or canon system and the Roman or civil system, which is currently the
standard in both Catholic church regulations and English common law.
Jurists, anthropologists, and geneticists have proposed as many as six separate
kinship degree calculations. All are ultimately based on simple systems of
counting links between relatives through their nearest common ancestor.
Frequently circles of kinship are defined in terms of the ambiguous measure of
“cousin range.” We will consider three of the most common formal measures:
1. civil degree;
2. canon degree; and
3. collateral degree.
The civil degree system was devised by the Romans and used as a formal basis
for establishing customary and legal regulations on such matters as property
inheritance or incest prohibitions. The Roman/civil system was continued in
some European settings after the fall of the empire and is still used in some
contemporary Western legal and social systems. The Catholic Church changed its
kinship degree calculation from the canon to the civil system as part of the
Vatican II reforms.
In the civil system, kinship degrees are simply calculated by adding the number
of links from one of the relatives in question, Ego, to the common ancestor, and
those that connect the ancestor to the other relative, Alter.
Figure 7.23 Counting Kin According to the Civil Degree System
This system of counting generates a regular system of distinguishing relatives
according to civil degree.
Figure 7.24 Civil Degree System
The civil system has an important advantage insofar as it is equivalent to a
genetic measure, the inbreeding coefficient, which predicts the probabilities that
two intermarrying relatives will pass on the same allele (variant form of a gene),
inherited from a common ancestor to one of their children, making him/her
homozygous for the trait.
Canon degree, also know as the Germanic system, is based on early German
modes of determining kinship categories and organizing relationships. It is
associated with a system of counting kinship distances by using the joints that
extend from the top of the head to the tips of the fingers. The system is of both
contemporary as well as historical importance, since it is enshrined in British
common law and was used in Catholic canon law prior to Vatican II reforms.
The canon degree system assigns kinship on the sole basis of the larger of the
number of links that either Ego or Alter can count back to their most recent
common ancestor.
Figure 7.25 Counting Kin According to the Canon Degree System
Canon degree numbers are applied to specific relationships in a regular pattern.
Figure 7.26 Canon Degree System
While the canon degree measure may seem less intuitively obvious than that of
the civil system, it incorporates several features that are particularly appropriate
to traditional European social organization. Firstly, it places all nuclear family
members in the same range, first order or primary kin, reflecting the salience of
this inner social circle in Western traditions. Secondly, it maps out, beyond the
nuclear family, a nested series of stocks or bilateral descent groups stemming
from Ego’s ancestors at various degrees of removal and extending to relatives
within Ego’s own generation. Stocks have been recorded as significant social
units in Celtic and Germanic Europe.
The system of collateral degree involves the least number of calculations and
focuses on identifying genealogical relationships in reference to a core ancestral
line and its collateral offshoots. It can be formally defined as the lesser of the
number of links that each of two relatives (Ego and Alter) traces to his/her most
recent common ancestor.
Figure 7.27 Counting Kin According to the Collateral Degree System
Collateral degree numbers are applied to specific relationships in a regular
pattern
Figure 7.28 Collateral Degree System
Collateral degree calculation is inherent in the English differentiation of cousin
types, i.e., first cousins are all of the second collateral degree, second cousins of
the third degree, ... nth cousin of the (n+1)th degree. Degrees of removal (once
removed, twice removed, etc.) refer to generation differences. Thus a first cousin
of Ego’s father’s generation would be Ego’s first cousin once removed.
Figure 7.29 Counting Cousins
Group dynamics in bilateral kinship
Before proceeding to a discussion of the functions of the kindred in different
contexts, we must first analyze how these bilateral groups are integrated to form a
larger social fabric, especially in consideration of the major structural differences
between unilineal and cognatic processes.
The salient feature of the kindred is that, no matter what its extent, it can never
form a unique and exclusive group within a larger system. This limitation is a
consequence of the fact that, since it is ego focused, each network of kin is
associated solely with a particular individual. Thus Ego’s kindred will be
different from those of all of the relatives who are included in his group, except
for his full brothers and sisters. For example, Ego’s first cousin (Alter) is counted
within his kindred but forms the focal point for the determination of a separate
unit. Both groups share some members, but each includes kin who do not belong
to the other.
Figure 7.30 Overlapping Kindreds
In this situation of overlapping membership, group structure is relatively defined
by specific individuals and contexts. Furthermore, no continuity over time is
possible, since Ego’s kindred ceases to exist after he and his siblings have died.
(Ego’s children become the focal point for a new kindred, which include their
mother’s kin, who are not in Ego’s group.) Accordingly, kindreds cannot function
as corporate groups with exclusive membership and rights in personnel and land.
On the other hand, kindreds and other bilateral forms have advantages which
lineal systems lack. Overlapping membership frequently provides a simple
mechanism for forming alliances and reducing conflicts. Thus if Alter gets into a
disagreement with an unrelated individual (A in the diagram), Ego can serve as a
intermediary to settle matters before a serious dispute occurs.
Bilateral kinship and social functions
Since, bilateral networks and groupings, such as kindreds, cannot be assigned
corporate functions, they usually occur in contexts where groups structures per se
are not very important. They are also frequently present in unilineal societies,
where they form to organize social situations and activities that are not covered
within the responsibilities of descent groups.
Nevertheless, they have taken on interesting and varied forms and functions in
different societies and have been essential in the development of European family
institutions.
In contemporary North American society, the kindred constitutes the basic form
of kinship organization outside of the nuclear family household. The unit is
usually called a “family,” a term which used ambiguously for both the household
and the wider kinship network. It often is restricted to the first cousin range
(children of the same grandparents) and seldom extends beyond second cousins
(from the same great-grandparents). Actual membership and participation is left
to the decisions and preferences of individuals, some of who may reduce their
effective kinship network to a minimal size of parents, siblings, and children. The
main activities in which the members of the kindred co-operate are the validation
and financing life cycle ceremonies, such as births, weddings, and funerals, in
which kith (friends) as well as kin participate.
The importance of bilateral organization in contemporary situations is fairly
modest. However, other times and places provide evidence for more a substantial
role of kindreds and similar groupings include the development of institutions
related to marriage, inheritance, alliance and feuding.
Marriage prohibitions and preferences
Anthropologists differ over the importance of bilateral groupings for the
determination of endogamous and exogamous regulations. G.P. Murdock, a
major figure in comparative kinship studies, understood the kindred as analogous
to a unilineal descent group, and maintained that it would be inherently
exogamous, in order to avoid isolation and form exchanges and alliances with
complementary groups (Murdock 1949). J.D. Freeman, who conducted an
landmark study of the Iban, a bilateral society in Malasia, observed that marriage
within the kindred to first and second cousins occurred with great frequency, over
75 percent of the total (Freeman 1960). He concluded that bilateral organization
involved a different dynamic from unilineal forms because of their multistranded
and overlapping membership structures. Inmarriage was beneficial because it
kept social relations within the kinship network from becoming too broadly
diffused. Exogamy was not particularly essential, because the kindred structure
ensured wider social integration without the need for marriage exchanges.
Freeman’s argument is based on better data than Murdock’s and is more
convincing. However it leaves open a significant issue, the taboos on cousin
marriage in bilateral European societies. While some variation is apparent,
Western cultural attitudes towards cousin marriage are generally negative and
expressed in terms of dire moral and medical concerns in spite of the very low
genetic risks involved. These taboos were not always prevalent. The basic
Germanic institutions, from which contemporary bilateral patterns have
developed, allowed and even showed a preference for close marriages. The
changes in attitudes are difficult to document or trace, but are due in part to the
influence of the Church, which during the early Middle Ages, instituted a ban on
marriages within seven Germanic degrees of consanguinity, or sixth cousin range
(Goody 1983:56). In this legislation, the Church does not seem to have be
following or enforcing traditional European custom and practice. Violations of
the rules and requests for dispensations abounded, especially since most people
did not maintain the detailed genealogies that would have been needed to identify
distant relatives. (They would have had to trace all of the descendants of 64 pairs
of great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.) The Church itself justified its
policy on the basis of scripture, in the form of a questionable interpretation of
chapter 18 in Leviticus. Its real motivation may have been to discourage the
consolidation of wealth and power supported by endogamy within the upper
levels of the nobility (Goody 1983:134-146).
Inheritance
The determination of the succession to social status and the inheritance of
property is a primary function of kinship structures in bilateral societies,
including contemporary Western nations. The transfer of these important rights
and obligations is of course an issue in all social systems. However, the open and
flexible nature of kindreds and other bilateral groupings involves numerous
ambiguities and has engendered complex customary and legal institutions for
settling counterclaims and disputes.
Inheritance rules in unilineal systems specify that status and property are passed
exclusively through male or female descent lines, usually in the context of
corporate group control of collectively owned land and other assets. Bilateral
institutions differ from lineal transmission insofar as property can be claimed
from either or both parents and is normally subject to individual rather than group
tenure. These conditions result in a common trend toward partible inheritance, or
the equal division of a man’s and woman’s assets among all their sons and
daughters, which was the standard inheritance practice in early European
societies, as it is today. This institution is often tied to the practice of
testamentary inheritance, in which a person can will his/her property to selected
relatives or even unrelated friends. (Note that wills and testaments can also be
present in unilineal societies as in ancient Rome and in the Akan example
developed for this tutorial).
While the principle of partible inheritance is simply stated in theory, structural
and practical concerns have created some interesting accommodations in specific
cultural traditions as represented in European social history.
The Salic laws of the Frankish state form the earliest inheritance legislation
subsequent to the Roman period. They contain some interesting provisions that
reflect the importance and structure of the kindred, the extended kinship circle
that counterbalanced the dominance of the nuclear family that is so salient in
contemporary institutions. Property was classified into two types: inherited
family estates (allods) and self acquired personal assets (acquests). Inherited
property was transferred along lines set within the structure of the kindred.
Surviving brothers assumed precedence over spouses or children. Sons and
daughters inherited subsequently. If a man or woman died without children or
siblings, family property was to pass to the closest kin within their father’s or
mother’s kindred depending upon its origin. Self acquired property was divided
between a surviving spouse and children, depending upon their ages. Boys were
given precedence over girls, who were not allowed to inherit land but were
otherwise awarded access to property through marriage settlements in the form of
dowry and endowment. If a person died without a spouse or children, his/her
acquests were reallocated in the following order: parents, siblings, father’s
sibling, mother’s sibling, closest extended kin on father’s side (Murray
1983:117-212).
The complex divisions of different property types eventually caused problems in
the course of European history. Population increases and the ever increasing
concentration of assets within the upper nobility and the Church led to highly
uneconomic subdivisions of land within the wider population. Families resorted
to a new practice of primogeniture, formally known as “permanent entail,” that
introduced a patrilineal element into the family and inheritance forms (Gies and
Gies 1987:125). In this system, estates and statuses passed undivided to eldest
sons, permanently dispossessing junior brothers, who were often left with the
only alternatives of joining the clergy, becoming wandering knights, or marrying
heiresses. (In the absence of sons, the eldest daughter would inherit.) This late
medieval institution has been assigned to a specific category, the “stem family,”
which persisted up unto the time of the Industrial Revolution. Among other
implications the disappearance of the older inheritance system weakened the
kindred and other extended kinship institutions, which have not reemerged with
the development of partible inheritance in the radically different circumstances of
contemporary society.
Feuding and alliance
While kindred and kinship degrees are commonly important for defining
endogamous and exogamous preferences and regulating the transfer of property
and status, bilateral structures seldom influence the broader economic and
political integration of society. However, there are some dramatic examples of
their strategic importance organizing and settling conflicts between families in
the context of weak or absent mechanisms for social control, as in the
rough-and-ready world of medieval Europe.
We have already documented the importance of the kindred for incest
prohibitions and inheritance laws of various Germanic groups before the social
transformations of the High Middle Ages. However, this social form assumed its
greatest relevance within the context of the endemic feuding that emerged in the
context of weak central authorities.
Medieval feuds erupted for same reasons that they do in many other societies,
conflicts over women, land, and livestock that cannot be resolved through a
formal legal process. (See the previous discussion of the Turkish village) In these
situations, opponents seldom settle their differences on a one to one basis but call
on the support of kin, who consider an assault on one of their number a challenge
to all. Accordingly, many individuals who do not have a direct interest in the
conflict are set against each other in protracted feuds, which often continue long
after the original causes are forgotten. In the Germanic tradition, the warring
parties were drawn from the kindred of the instigators, according to a formal
expectation that all relatives within a third cousin range were obligated to
participate. (Murray 1983:135-155).
The incidence of feuds was tempered by the interconnections between
overlapping kindreds, which often included potential intermediaries within the
circles of both warring factions. More formal mechanisms of conflict resolution
were available through the institution of monetary compensation, whereby one
party could buy peace by paying the wergeld of one of their victims to his or her
kindred.
Wergeld, literally “man money,” was a sum attached to each individual in
medieval society according to his or her age, gender, and social status. In cases of
murder, injury, and sexual assault, all or part of the total was assessed in
accordance with the severity of the crime. Upon payment, any dispute between
the aggressor’s and the victim’s kindred was forestalled. The funds paid were
collected and distributed according to the bilateral kinship structure. Members of
the guilty person’s kindred to the third cousin range had to contribute an amount
proportional to the nearness of their relationship. Correspondingly, the award was
shared among the victim’s kin with decreasing shares going to more distant
relatives.
Figure 7.31 Wergeld Distribution According to Frankish law
In addition to compensation payment, the transfer of individual responsibility to
the kindred was apparent in other quasilegal matters including oaths, guarantees,
and ordeals. The weak public authority could do little more in these areas than
draw up codes to enshrine these customary practices.
The political importance of kindreds is also apparent in another bilateral example,
the Iban of Melasia. In a society which has few formal institutions, the
mobilization of overlapping ego focused kindreds enables the organization of
numerous activities including long distance trading expeditions, headhunting, and
intertribal warfare. In this last instance the Iban were able to launch fighting
forces of up to 40,000 combatants on the basis of kinship networking which
connected small circles of relatives into a vast interlocking complex (Freeman
1960).
Case study: The Ju/’hoansi
Like many other foraging societies the Ju/’hoansi have developed a bilateral
kinship system that allows for optimal flexibility in population distribution. We
have discussed the basic aspects their settlement forms and social order in the
previous module. Here we will focus on the importance of kinship in the
structure, dynamics and functioning of their basic groups and relationships.
The basic Ju/’hoansi social unit is the “camp,” a group which lives together
during a single season and often remains intact through at least several
movements in the annual nomadic cycle. It members cluster together in adjacent
huts that are arranged around a central “plaza,” an open area where people
organize and perform the most of their daily activities. Membership varies from
just a few people to over 30, with an average of approximately 20. Members of
the camp have open access to a stretch of land that the group exploits and over
which it assumes nominal ownership rights. They hunt and gather the wild
resources that this territory provides and are bound to share what they have
obtained with everyone in the local group. They also provide regular mutual
support and aid generally expected among kin and close friends. Neighboring
camps are usually interconnected by kinship and marriage, as marriage within the
group is uncommon. They frequently use each other’s resources but only if
permission is requested. They will also exchange visits, which may last for a
week or two. During the dry season, several related groups will often form a join
encampment that can contain over 100 people.
Membership in the camp is determined according to bilateral kinship ties that
build upon individual egocentric links and networks and thereby form a kindred
rather than a stock or other ancestrally focused group. Lee gives an example of a
typical group diagrammed on the next page.
Figure 7.32 Composition of a Ju/’hoansi camp
Camp formation centers on a core group, usually composed of siblings, in this
case a brother and sister (1 and 2), who have established a presence in a
particular territory through a long period of stable residence. They are joined by
their spouses, who form a second ring of members. This group in turn may bring
in relatives in a third ring, who may in turn bring in their relatives, and so on. The
membership rules involved are quite numerous and flexible. Children inherit
rights in both their mothers’ and fathers’ camps and may change from one to the
other in the course of their lifetimes. A married couple may live with either
spouse’s relatives, although a preference for the wife’s group is created by the
practice of bride service. (In the example above, eight of ten married couples are
living with the husband’s relatives, i.e., virilocally, but this prominence is
atypical.) In general, members of the inner circles tend to remain in the group on
a fairly permanent basis, but the more peripheral residents often leave and join
other camps if local resources become scarce. As such the group’s size fluctuates
according to the availability of food, water, and other basic necessities.
Aside from the general principles of sharing and mutual sociability and
assistance, Ju/’hoansi kinship patterns are marked by contrasting joking and
avoidance relationships. We have already noted the presence of special joking
relationships in Igbo society involving interactions between people and their
maternal relatives. In the bilateral system of Ju/’hoansi social organization the
distinction in descent lines is replaced by one of generational alteration. In
general, members of the same generation, e.g., brothers, as well as of alternate
generations, e.g., grandparents and grandchildren, maintain cordial and
affectionate relationships and demonstrate their intimacy by extensive joking
involving insults, mock threats, and ribald remarks. On the other hand,
interactions between members of adjacent generations, e.g., parents and children
are marked by formality, reserved and respectful behaviour. Sometimes, as in the
case of a mother-in-law and son-in-law, the parties involved must avoid each
other completely and are not even supposed to talk. Joking and avoidance
between more remote generations, theoretically follow the alternation principle,
so that a person’s great-grand parents would be avoidance kin and his/her greatgreat- grand parents would be joking kin. Avoidance status is also extended to
two relationships within a single generation: those between brothers and sisters
and between brothers-in-law.
A final twist in the Ju/’hoansi kinship system is introduced by “namesake” kin, a
form of fictive kinship. All people who have the same name are considered to be
descended from a common ancestor. As such they are expected to extend
hospitality and otherwise treat each other as kin. The character of the relationship
is determined by extending specific kinship obligations on the basis of common
names. Thus people with the same name are considered to be brothers and thus to be
joking kin. Alternative any women who bear the same name as a man’s mother or sister
become avoidance kin and are forbidden to marry.
Ambilineal kinship systems
Bilateral systems of cognatic kinship establish a open network for building
groups and relationships through both parents and extended kin of either gender.
In contrast, ambilineal systems involve claims to group membership, property,
and status through only one parent, although the choice between a paternal or
maternal connection is open. Ambilineal structures are, therefore, similar to
unilineal forms and result in the construction of ancestor focused groups with
discrete and exclusive memberships often occupying distinct territories. Unlike
partilineal or matrilineal groups, however, chains of descent regularly involve
cross sex links.
Figure 7.33 Ambilineal Descent Groupings
Ambilineal descent groups, also termed ramages, are similar to unilineal forms
since they involve the formation of discrete and exclusive units. However, they
also allow for individuals to chose group membership at least one point in their
lives. Reasons for assuming membership in one group or another usually depend
on the availability of corporately owned lands but will of course also be
influenced by political factors and personal friendships among kin.
Membership decisions are further complicated by additional options presented at
marriage. An individual can choose to join a husband’s or wife’s group rather
than one of those traced through his/her natal family, thus raising four possible
alternative ramages: ego’s father’s, ego’s mother’s, ego’s wife’s father’s, and
ego’s wife’s mother’s. This complication is reduced in many instances by
assigning children to one of their parents’ ramages at birth, leaving a single
choice of whether a couple resides with the husband’s or wife’s group upon
marriage.
The structural features of ambilineal descent systems offer the advantages of
supporting coherent and permanent groups with fixed assets and territories as
well as a flexible arrangement for distributing populations to match land
availabilities. Accordingly, ambilineal groups are very often found in island
settings, especially in Oceania, where the arable land base is restricted.
Case study: Bilateral and ambilineal kinship in the Gilbert Islands
The Gilbert Islanders of the South Pacific have developed a complex social
organization based upon a system of nested bilateral and ambilineal groupings.
Ward Goodenough, has carried our a detailed study of their institutions
(Goodenough 1960), which provides clear examples of several forms of cognatic
kinship. The salient groups identified include:
1. the ooi, a bilateral descent group, or stock, which includes all of the
descendants of an common ancestor and functions to assign inheritance rights
in land;
2. the bwoti, an ambilineal descent group, or ramage, to which political
authority is assigned;
3. the kainga, a localized ramage, based on parental residence choice.
The ooi is a bilateral descent groups composed of all of the descendants of an
recognized ancestor traced through successive generations of sons and daughters.
Figure 7.34 Bilateral Descent Group
All of the members of the group inherit rights to some of the group’s land
through mothers or fathers. The maternal share is usually small, since men are
awarded larger allocations than women. However, a woman’s share, and
consequently her children’s inheritance, can be substantial if she has no brothers.
An ooi’s membership is not exclusive, since an individual will belong to as many
stocks as he/she has recognized ancestors. In the simplest case, an individual will
belong to and received rights to land through his father’s and mother’s groups. In
actual practice, an person can belong to anywhere from 4 to 16 ooi traced to
grandparents and more distance ancestors, depending upon the genealogical
record and the incidence of endogamy.
The bwoti is political council that meets over important community concerns.
Membership is confined to males and is based on ownership of designated plots
within an ooi. It thereby constitutes a subgroup and, in fact, a segment of an ooi.
Land rights involve only potential bwoti membership. Individuals have an option
to join many groups in which they inherit ooi privileges but can belong to only
one. They must choose among the available descent lines, as situation that is
typical of ambilineal descent group formation.
Figure 7.35 The Bwoti
The kainga, as the bwoti, forms a ramage, but imposes a more restrictive
membership rule. It functions as a localized group established at marriage. A
couple decides whether to reside among the husband’s or wife’s group and this
choice determines their descent group membership. Individuals living with their
spouse family retain rights in their natal kainga, but can not transfer them to their
children. Both the kainga and the bwoti can be diagramed in the same way,
except for the inclusion of female members within the kainga. Two people can
potentially belong to the same bwoti and separate kainga, but their groups
memberships do tend to be identical, since both groups are tied to specific
territories.
Unit 8
Kin Terms
Kin terms constitute a culture’s kinship vocabulary, a catalogue of the names that
are assigned to relatives, e.g., father, mother, uncle, grandson. They provide not
only convenient labels but also assist in the identification of important social
categories and principles. Proceeding on a superficial level, we can note that
different societies use different labels to designate their kin; “uncle” is “oncle” in
French, “tio” in Spanish, and “tsu” in Ju/’hoansi. However, more significant
differences in classification occur, as cultures frequently go beyond mere labeling
differences to group relatives in completely different ways. For example, the
Turks have two terms for different types of uncles, dayi (mother’s brother) and
emme (father’s brother) where English has only one. Akan also has only one
term, wofa, but it applies only to mother’s brother. A person’s father’s brother is
classified in the same category as his/her father, agya.
Figure 8.1 Differences in Kinship Terms and Categories
Often the particular system of categorization gives clues to a culture’s principles
of social organization and social role definition. In this unit we will investigate
several general and specific systems to add an addition dimension to our
understanding of descent, marriage, and residence patterns.
Study questions
Identification
Kin term
Kin type
Bifurcate merging
Collateral Merging
Diagramming
Using the numbers in the diagram above indicate the following:
1. The kintype that describes the relationship between ego and 28.
2. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 16 in a
Sudanese system.
3. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 15 in a
Sudanese system.
4. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 24 in a
Sudanese system.
5. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 16 in an
Eskimo system.
6. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 15 in an
Eskimo system.
7. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 24 in an
Eskimo system.
8. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 16 in a
Hawaiian system.
9. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 15 in a
Hawaiian system.
10. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 24 in a
Hawaiian system.
11. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 16 in an
Iroquois system.
12. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 15 in an
Iroquois system.
13. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 24 in an
Iroquois system.
14. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 16 in an
Omaha system.
15. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 15 in an
Omaha system.
16. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 24 in an
Omaha system.
17. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 16 in a
Crow system.
18. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 15 in a
Crow system.
19. The relatives who would be classified in the same category as 24 in a
Crow system.
Essay question
Discuss the relationship of kin terminology and social organization and illustrate
your point with three examples from the material in this unit.
Study notes
The investigation of kinship terminology begins with a distinction between kin
types and kin terms. Kin types refer to the basic uncategorized relationships that
anthropologist use to describe the actual components of kinship categories, i.e.,
which specific biological relationships are involved. They are supposedly culture
free, or etic, components. Kin terms are the labels for categories of kin that
include one or more kin types. They are emic structures particular to a particular
classification system and vary from culture to culture.
Kin types
A kin type is a designation that is assigned to each individual relationship, such
as a mother, father, mother’s brother, mother’s sister, mother’s brother’s
daughter, and so on. Each relationship is described by a sequence of primary
components, which are strung together to indicate genealogical connections.
Single letter abbreviations are used to indicate the primary terms.
Primary Components
Strings
Mother
Father
Brother
Sister
Son
Daughter
Husband
Wife
Mother’s Sister
Mother’s sister’s daughter
Sister’s son
Father’s father’s sister’s son
M
F
B
Z
S
D
H
W
MZ
MZD
ZS
FFZS
Figure 8.2 Kin Types
Kin terms
Kin types are culturally neutral. An anthropologist uses them to begin a
description and analysis of any kinship system prior to a consideration of the
main principles of classification. On the other hand, kin terms, the set of names
that people actually use to designate and address their relatives, are specific to
each culture. The terms uncle, cousin, grandfather, peculiar to English
terminology, are not kin types but categories which include more than one
relationship and therefore more than one kin type as:
Kin term
Kin type
Father
Uncle
Brother
Cousin
Son
Nephew
F
FB, MB
B
FBS, FBD, FZS, FZD MBS, MBD, MZS, MZD, FFBSS, Etc.
S
BS, ZS
Kinship terminologies
Since kin terms are fundamentally arbitrary categories, different cultures can
potentially group their relatives into a widely varying, indefinite number of
classifications. Curiously, anthropologists have observed that almost every
culture has constructed a system of terms that conforms to one of six widely
occurring basic patterns. The basic terminological systems are customarily
designated as follows:
1. Sudanese
2. Eskimo
3. Hawaiian
4. Iroquois
5. Omaha
6. Crow
Sudanese
The Sudanese system of classification is completely descriptive and assigns a
different kin term to each kin type, i.e., each distinct relative. The main
characteristic is that Ego distinguishes between his father, his father’s brother,
and his mother’s brother and in a similar fashion between his mother, mother’s
sister and father’s sister. There are potentially eight different cousin terms.
Figure 8.3 Sudanese Kin Terms
Sudanese terminologies are difficult to relate to specific social institutions, since
they do no involve any actual categorization. They are generally correlated with
societies that have substantial class divisions. Examples of Sudanese systems
include those of modern Turkey, early medieval England, and ancient Rome.
The Sudanese pattern is fairly well illustrated in the modern Turkish system of
classification.
Figure 8.4 Turkish Kin Terms
Father (baba), father’s brother (emme), and mother’s brother (dayi) each gets a
separate term, as is the case for mother, mother’s sister and father’s sister. There
are four cousin terms descriptively designated as children of the distinct parents
concerned. For example dayi usaki means dayi’s child. There is, however, one
more comprehensive term that includes both brother’s and sister’s children,
yiken, which translates directly to the English term niece or nephew.
A comparison of Turkish and English kin terms
(Male relatives only)
Kin term
Kin type English Term
Baba
F
Father
Kardesh
B
Brother
Okul
S
Son
Emme
FB
Dayi
MB
Uncle
Emme Okul FBS
Dayi Okul
MBS
Cousin
Amme Okul FZS
Halla Okul
MZS
Yiken
BS
ZS
Nephew
Stirling’s analysis of the Turkish system suggests that, in this instance, there is no
clear connection between the pattern of categorization and the kinship and social
order of the peasant community. The villages have adopted the standard national
linguistic usages that are current in both rural and urban communities in the
country.
A second example of a Sudanese system comes from an unexpected source: Old
English. Prior to the adoption of French terms after the Norman Conquest,
English terms were substantially different from those of the present day.
According to this system, every possible relationship received a separate term.
Not enough is known about the system to reconstruct it completely, but it’s
highly descriptive character is clearly represented in the parental generation
where there are six separate terms that distinguish between father (faeder),
father’s brother (faedera), and mother’s brother (eam), and between mother
(modor), mother’s sister (modriga), and father’s sister (fathu).
The logic of the Old English system and the reasons for its replacement are
difficult to interpret in the absence of detailed historical information. Aside from
the possibility that it somehow reflected the modest degree of stratification in
Anglo-Saxon society, the pattern may have emphasized the importance of
extended bilateral relationships and the formation of kindreds in which
significant distinctions between relatives on the father’s and mother’s side had to
be made for purposes of inheritance and other legal processes such as wergeld
payment. Changes in the system may have come about in the wake of the
weakening of extended kinship ties and the emphasis on the nuclear family that
occurred in the course of the Medieval period.
Eskimo terminology
Unlike the Sudanese system the Eskimo system involves the creation of
categories of kin. It is marked by a bilateral emphasis (no distinction is made
between patrilineal and matrilineal relatives) and by a recognition of differences
in collateral distance (close relatives are distinguished from more distant ones).
Another feature of Eskimo terminology is that nuclear family members are
assigned unique labels that are not extended to any other relatives, whereas more
distant relatives are grouped together on the basis of collateral distance. (This
process is called collateral merging).
Figure 8.5 Eskimo Kin Terms
Because of predominant marking of immediate family members, Eskimo terms
usually occur in societies which place a strong emphasis on the nuclear family
rather than extended kin or larger kinship groups.
Modern English kin terms exemplify the principles of Eskimo terminology:
1. The system is bilateral (no distinctions between father’s and mother’s
relatives).
2. Distinctions mark differences in gender, generation, and collateral kinship
distance.
3. Each nuclear family relationship receives a distinct term; more distant
relatives are grouped into general categories.
Figure 8.6 English Kin Terms
The significance of kinship distance within English terminology can be
represented spatially as a set of concentric circles, radiating out from Ego.
Figure 8.7 English Kin Terms and Kinship Distance
The Ju/’hoansi provide another example of an Eskimo terminology and is quite
similar to English as indicated in the following diagram.
Figure 8.8 Ju/’hoansi (Kung San) Kin Terms
Nuclear family members (shaded in green) are assigned unique terms, and
extended family members are grouped into categories on a bilateral basis without
any distinction between father’s and mother’s side. Thus we could provide an
exact English gloss for any of the terms above: tsu = uncle, ga = aunt, kuna/tun
= cousin, tsuma = nephew/niece.
The Ju/’hoansi pattern is typical for foraging societies in respect to two essential
conditions:
1. nuclear families assume an important identity as units which sometimes
separate and rejoin in the basic pattern of seasonal nomadic movements, and
2. bilateral kinship ties develop in response the need for flexible band
composition (See Ju/’hoansi descent organization).
Beyond these obvious features, however, this specific example has some
peculiarities, which point out aspects of kinship terminology that are not covered
by the standard six-fold division. The gender of the speaker becomes a significant
factor in the term given to nieces and nephews. Males use the term tsuma, as
indicated in the diagram, but females use the term gama, a reflection of the fact
that they are reciprocals of tsu and ga. The relative age of the speaker is also
significant. The first diagram in Figure 2.2.8 gives the terms for older siblings
and cousins. Younger relatives receive a different designation as indicated in the
second diagram. While the speaker’s gender is perhaps a minor feature of the
system, relative age is quite significant and must be appreciated in terms of a
broader structural feature that becomes apparent only when we extend the
terminology to consider more distant generations as in the following six
generation diagram.
Figure 8.9 Ju/’hoansi Kin Terms - Equivalence of Alternating Generations
The main feature that can now be observed is that the terms for older cousin
(kuna/tun) are the same as the terms for grandparents, representing a general
principle of the “equivalence of alternate generations.” The same pattern is
evident in the use of the same terms for: uncle and great-grandfather (tsu), aunt
and great-grandmother (ga), and niece/nephew and great grandchild
(tsuma/gama). The same patterning is reflected in the identification of younger
cousins (kuma/tuma) with grandchildren.
The relative age and alternate generation identities in the Juhoansi terminology
are not mere oddities and complications. They reflect two central features of San
social structure:
1. joking and avoidance relationships between alternate generations, and
2. namesake relationships.
The Ju/’hoansi kinship system recognizes two types of relationship, which might
be distinguished in Western terms as biological and fictive kin. Biological
relatedness follows standard genealogical considerations, which are given careful
attention. Name relationships take no account of genealogy and create kin ties
solely on the basis of people’s names and those of their consanguineal and affinal
relatives. However, a close interconnection between the two systems occurs
insofar as:
1. The rules for giving people personal names are based upon genealogical
relationships and add a special connotation to important kin terms and
interactions.
2. People with the same names assume specific kinship obligations to each other
and to each other’s relatives.
The Ju/’hoansi have a fixed system of personal naming.
• A first-born son is named after his father’s father.
• A second son is named after his mother’s father.
• Additional sons are named after father’s brothers and then mother’s brothers.
• A similar set of rules applies to girls, according to their female relatives.
The implications of this system are worked out (for males) in the following
hypothetical genealogy to which names have been applied according to the rules
specified above. (Note that birth order declines from left to right).
Figure 8.10 Ju/’hoansi Naming Conventions
An important implication is immediately observable. The reoccurrence of a
personal name (at least for first and second sons and daughters) mirrors the
pattern of the identification of alternating generations as an automatic
consequence of the naming custom, i.e., Twi occurs in the odd numbered
generations, and Toma occurs in the even ones. In addition, several cousins in the
same generation will have the same name, because of a shared grandparent.
Accordingly, members of the same and alternate generations are brought together
both by the use of common kin terms and their reciprocals—kuna/kuma—and by
shared names. In fact the apparent kin terms are actually naming terms. Kuna
means “old(er) name(sake),” and kuma means “small (younger) name(sake).”
This double system of identification strengthens the affectionate and joking
relationships that occur among cousins and between grandparents and
grandchildren. It similarly reinforces avoidance relationships between members
of adjacent generations. It also serves as a shorthand way of recognizing a
relationship without the need for detailed genealogical tracing.
The other side to the linking of personal names and kinship ties is the tendency of
names in themselves to connote a kin relationship, the basis of the San “name
relationship” system. If two people have the same name they can assume a
(kuna/kuma relationship) according to their relative ages. This tie institutes a
friendship that follows the customs of a joking relationship and can also involve
the assignment of kinship rights and obligations. It can lead to an invitation to
camp in the settlement of a “namesake.” Furthermore, the kuna/kuma status
results in the establishment of the appropriate ties to each other’s immediate kin.
A man will develop an reserved relationship with a namesake’s avoidance kin
and will be forbidden to marry a mother or sister of a namesake or a woman with
his mother or sister’s name. He will accordingly develop joking relationships
with people that have the same names as his joking kin. Thus namesake
relationships are not substantially different from genealogical ones. They add an
important element of flexibility to the Ju/’hoansi social order by widening the
scope of kinship to people who have no traceable biological connection.
While the double system of classification often involves a reinforcement of ties,
it may also create contradictions insofar as the kin and name relationships that
link two people may specify different and sometimes opposed sets of obligations.
This situation regularly occurs as a consequence of naming third and subsequent
sons and daughters after brothers and sisters, which occurs approximately 20
percent of the time. For example the Bos of the third and fourth generations in the
diagram are biologically related as tsu/tsuna (uncle and nephew) but because of
their common name are also kuna/kuma. The former is an avoidance relationship,
and the latter is a joking one. In this instance there is no specific rule to determine
which set of behaviours to follow. Lee suggests that in general the older member
of the pair has the power to decide which of the two alternatives to follow.
Raymond Firth, commenting on a similar situation in the Pacific island of
Tikopia, maintains that choices in ambiguous kin term situations are governed by
strategic interests such as economic and political gain or sometimes by just a
simple desire to reduce confusion (Firth 1964:88-122)
Hawaiian terminology
The Hawaiian system is the least descriptive and lumps or merges together many
different relatives in a few categories. Ego distinguishes between relatives only
on the basis of gender and generation. Thus there is no separate uncle term.
(Mother’s and father’s brothers are included in the same category as father). All
cousins are classified in the same group as brothers and sisters.
Figure 8.11 Hawaiian Kin Terms
Lewis Henry Morgan, a 19th century pioneer in kinship studies, surmised that
this system of terms resulted from a situation of unrestricted sexual access or
“primitive promiscuity” in which children called all members of their parental
generation “father” and “mother” because paternity was impossible to assign.
Anthropologists now know that there is no history of such practices in any of the
cultures using this terminology and that people in these societies make
behavioural, if not linguistic, distinctions between their actual parents and other
individuals grouped in the same category. Morgan’s thesis was based on an
ethnocentric assumption that the term for relatives in ego’s parents’ generation
had the same meanings that father and mother have in English.
Hawaiian terminologies are found in cognatic systems, especially ambilineal
ones, and are common in Oceania. The following diagram and table exemplify
“Hawaiian” terminology as it is represented in the actual Hawaiian language.
Figure 8.12 Hawaiian Kin Terms (Actual Usage)
Note that the main distinctions are of generation and gender, with no marking of
collateral vs. lineal or patrilateral vs. matrilateral distinctions. In this particular
case the terminology includes two additional complications: relative gender and
relative age of siblings as follows:
1. Both males and females give same gendered siblings the same term: kaikuaana for an
older brother or sister and kaikaina for a younger one.
2. A male calls his sister kaikuahine, whether she is older or younger.
3. A female calls her brother kaikuane, whether he is older or younger.
Hawaiian kinterms
Kin term
Kin types
English terms
F
FB
MB
Father
Makuakane
Mother
Makuahini
M
MZ
FZ
Uncle
Aunt
Male Ego:





Kaikua'ana
B
FBS
FZS
MBS
MZS
Female Ego:





Kaikuane
B
FBS
FZS
MBS
MZS
Male Ego





Kaikuahine
Keikikane
S
BS
ZS
D
Keikamahini BD
ZD
Z
FBD
FZD
MBD
MZD
Female Ego:





Brother/Sister
Cousin
Z
FBD
FZD
MBD
MZD
Brother
Cousin
Sister
Cousin
Son
Nephew
Daughter
Niece
Iroquois terminology
The Iroquois system is based a principle of bifurcate merging. Ego
distinguishes between relatives on his mother’s side of the family and those on
his father’s side (bifurcation) and lumps or merges father with father’s brother
and mother with mother’s sister. Accordingly, father’s brother’s children and
mother sister’s children (parallel cousins) are merged with brother and sister.
This terminology occurs in societies that are organized on the basis of unilineal
descent, where distinctions between father’s kin and mother’s kin are important.
Figure 8.13 Iroquois Kin Terms
Yanomamo kin terms conform to the Iroquois pattern, which is consistent with
other features of their social structure, including an emphasis on unilineal
(patrilineal) descent and bilateral cross cousin marriage.
Figure 8.14 Yanomamo Kin Terms
The major features of this system include:
1. the application of a bifurcate merging rule through which father’s brother
and father are merged in a single term, haya, and distinguished from mother’s
brother, soaya, and mother’s sister is merged with mother, naya, and
distinguished from father’s sister, yesiya.
2. the merging of parallel cousins and siblings, eiwa and amiwa, accompanied
by a distinctive terms for cross cousins, soriwa and suaboya.
In this case, as in other Iroquois terminologies, bifurcate merging is related to a
unilineal descent system, where distinctions between father’s and mother’s sides
of the family are important for social relations. The distinction between different
kinds of cousins reflects this division between descent lines but also marks a
second important difference: parallel cousins, like brothers and sisters, are
prohibited from marrying; cross cousins are not and may often be chosen as
preferential marriage partners within a cross cousin marriage system.
The Yanomamo in fact do practice a system of cross cousin marriage. They mark
this marriage system through an additional denotation of the cross-cousin terms.
A man’s term for his female cross-cousin, suaboya, is also the term for wife,
which should probably be considered as its primary meaning. The term for male
cross-cousin, soriwa, also denotes brother-in-law, in both senses of the term,
since ego’s wife’s brother will normally be married to ego’s sister. In a similar
manner, women classify male cross cousins and husbands within one category,
heroya, and female cross cousins and sisters-in-law within another natohiya.
A comparison between Yanomamo and English terms (male ego).
Kin Term
Haya
Soaya
Kin Type
F
FB
MB
B
Eiwa
FZS
Tataya
Uncle
Brother
Cousin
MBS
WB
ZH
Teeya
Father
FBS
MZS
Soriwa
English Term
S
BS
ZS
Brother-in-Law
Son
Nephew
Crow terminology
The Crow system is similar to the Iroquois and is in fact a bifurcate merging
system. Ego uses the same categorizations for father, father’s brother and
mother’s brother that he would in an Iroquois terminology. However, there is a
significant difference in cousin terminology. Parallel cousins are merged with
siblings, but cross-cousin terms are quite peculiar and cut across generational
divisions. Ego uses the same terms for his father’s sister’s son as he does for his
father and the same term for his father’s sister and her daughter. This lumping of
generations is referred to as the skewing rule. This pattern has the effect of
stressing common membership of relatives in matrilineal lines; Ego’s “father” is
defined as a male member of his father’s matrilineage, and Ego’s “father’s sister”
as a female member of this group. As such, Crow terminologies are associated
with societies that have a strong matrilineal emphasis in their social organization.
Figure 8.15 Crow Terms
The Akan system of classification employs a basic Crow terminology with a
major complication. It uses both Iroquois and Crow terms as variants.
Figure 8.16 Akan Terms
The basic system is Iroquois, with a slight difference from the Yanomamo
example: matrilateral and patrilateral cross cousins are distinguished. However,
cross cousin terms become changed upon a situation of death and succession.
When a man dies he is succeeded by his sister’s son. This individual was
formerly an agywaba to the deceased’s children, but now become agya insofar as
he assumes their father’s position and a certain degree of paternal responsibility
to them. The other implication of this process is that a man’s wofaba becomes his
ba. As such the Akan actual apply the skewing rule by moving one set of cross
cousins up a generation and the other set down.
Omaha
The Omaha system is a mirror image of the Crow. Ego employs a bifurcate
merging system equivalent to the Iroquois pattern in which father and father’s
brother are lumped together as are mother and mother’s sister. However, it also
applies a skewing rule to group relatives within his mother’s patrilineage into
single categories regardless of generational differences. Thus mother’s brother’s
son gets the same term (F) as mother’s brother and mother’s brother’s daughter is
placed in the same category (B) as mother and mother’s sister. This system is
generally found in societies with strong patrilineal kinship emphases.
Figure 8.17 Omaha Terms
The analysis of Igbo kin terms presents several complications, as they do not
easily conform to a standard pattern. They partially exemplify an Omaha system
insofar as they involve the application of a skewing rule that identifies members
of a person’s mother’s partilineage as a special category. However two other
principles are at work: a strong emphasis on generational and seniority
distinctions that reflects a Hawaiian system and a distinction between basic
descent lines that is peculiar to the Igbo terminology. In spite of its complexity,
the Igbo system provides an interesting basis for an understanding of how kin
terms reflect and reveal basic principles of social organization.
The basic feature of the Igbo system (Ardener 1954) that is the most readily
apparent is the Hawaiian generational pattern in which all of Ego’s relatives of
the same generation are placed into a single category. Referring to his parent’s
generation, he uses essentially the same term nna for his father, father’s brother,
and mother’s brother, and similarly classifies his mother, mother’s sister and
father’s sister as nne.
Figure 8.18 Igbo Kin Terms
(The terms nna/nne ukwu are basically variants on the nna/nne theme and can be
glossed as “big father/mother,” thus implying seniority.) The seniority principle
is also applied to younger siblings of Ego’s parents who are actually given
brother/sister terms that tend to emphasize similarities and differences in
chronological age. This reflects a basic emphasis in Igbo social organization that
is incorporated into a formal system of age sets and age grades that we will
investigate in a later module. The generational principle is also apparent in Ego’s
own generation where alternative forms of the basic sibling terms, nwa nna/nwa
nne (father’s child/mother’s child) are applied to a wide range of relatives. Broad
generational identification is further apparent in Ego’s children’s generation in
the application of the nwa (child) term. Seniority is marked in the special terms
for Ego’s oldest son (okpara) and daughter (ada). These designation mark special
age based statuses. The okpara is Ego’s main heir, and both he and the ada
perform leadership functions within the immediate family and the wider descent
group.
A second look at the terms applied in Ego’s own generation indicates the
significance of two other factors (polygamy and complementary filiation), which
in combination create a delineation and contrast of three major descent groups:
1. the children born of a single mother, the umunne, literally mother’s children;
2. Ego’s patrilineage, his umunna (father’s children); and
3. Ego’s mother’s patrilineage, his umune (this term cannot be reduced to
components).
Figure 8.19 Igbo Kin Terms and Basic Groups
The umunne includes Ego and his full brothers and sisters ( individually called
nwa nne), who, as children of a single mother, form a special domestic and social
subunit within the larger patrilineal family. They also comprised the core of an
actual or potential patrilineal segment that will assume increasing importance
over time as membership grows on the basis of patrilineal descent. (Note that
inclusion in this unit is extended only to the children of its male members). The
umunna includes Ego’s half brothers and sisters (individually called nwa nna)
who are born to Ego’s father’s wives other than his mother. He is less close to
them than to his full siblings, and interacts with them in terms of inclusion with a
broader patrilineal group that also incorporates a large group of relatives
descended from an ancestor several generations removed.
The umune comprises the relatives of Ego’s mother’s patrilineage, with whom, as
we have noted in the previous unit, he has an extremely special relationship
involving joking, indulgence, and even protection from punishment within his
own patrilineage. This pattern is partially marked in the terminology by the
extension of the more intimate nwa nne sibling term to cousins in this group.
However, the group is also distinguished from Ego’s more immediate maternal
group, the umunne, in two ways. Firstly, in spite of the fact that Ego uses several
terms to mark different relatives within his mother’s patrilineage, they use only a
single term for him, okele. (You can observe this usage in the application of this
term to all of the children of the women in Ego’s own patrilineage, i.e., his
sisters’ and daughters’ children for whom he is an umune member.) Secondly,
the head of his mother’s patrilineal receives a special term, nna oce, which
originally marks his mother’s father, but which eventually passes on down the
lineage to Ego’s mother’s brother, and then mother’s brother’s son, after their
deaths in much the same way as the agya (father) term is inherited among the
matrilineal Akan.
Figure 8.20 Igbo Kin Terms and Status Succession
Both the succession of the nna oce status and the corresponding use of the okele
term reflect the application of the Omaha skewing rule to accomplish its main
purpose, to identify the members of a person’s mother’s patrilineal group.
Unit 9
Marriage Systems
Marriage is a universal feature of human social organization and probably
developed very early in the course of our evolution as a distinct and unique species.
According to some social theorists, stable sexual bonding may in itself have formed the
basis for all human social orders. Widely occurring functions of marriage can be
regularly associated with several essential social activities including sexual expression,
child-care, social role assignment, and inter-group relations. Yet, in spite of these general
features, different cultures have developed a fascinating array of regulations and customs
concerning marriage preferences, expectations between spouses, and relationships among
in-laws. Prominent variations, such as arranged marriages, polygamy, and same-sexed
unions provide a rich ethnographic base for speculating about why institutions differ.
They also challenge our tolerance of different moral conventions at the most basic level.
We have already considered various marriage practices as they relate to general social
patterns and to the development of descent systems. In this unit we will consider conjugal
institutions and their various patterns in a more focused description and analysis. We will
be concerned with the basic forms and functions that marriage assumes and how and why
they vary so radically from culture to culture.
Study Questions
Identification
Exogamy
Polygyny
Levirate
Bridewealth
Endogamy
Polyandry
Lobola
Dowry
Essay questions
1. Identify and discuss the problems entailed in formulating a cross culturally valid
definition of marriage. Compare Nayar institutions to Western ones and identify the
differences attached to the importance and functions of marriage to illustrate your points.
Relate your discussion to the current issue of the legalization and sanctioning of same-sex
marriages in Canada.
2. Discuss the importance of endogamy for maintaining the social order and the reasons
for its universal occurrence. Give examples of different forms of endogamy and explain
why they occur in specific social context.
3. Discuss the importance of exogamy for maintaining the social order and the
reasons for its universal occurrence. Give examples of different forms of
endogamy and explain why they occur in specific social context.
4. Discuss Yanomamo marriage patterns and how they relate to the formation of
intergroup alliances. What would occur in the society if women made their
own marriage choices?
5. Discuss the different implications of bilateral cross cousin marriage and
matrilateral forms for the formation of alliances among kingroups. Provide
detailed diagrams to illustrate your point
6. Compare and contrast Ju/’hoansi and Igbo marriage patterns. Explain the
similarities and differences that you identify.
7. Compare and contrast Ju/’hoansi and Turkish village marriage patterns.
Explain the similarities and differences that you identify.
8. Compare and contrast Turkish village and Igbo marriage patterns. Explain the
similarities and differences that you identify.
Study notes
Defining marriage
Anthropologists start their consideration of marriage in terms of formulating a
cross-culturally valid definition that will cover numerous variations they have
recorded. In general, Western cultures consider marriage as an exclusive and
permanent bond between a man and a woman that is centrally concerned with
assigning sexual rights in each of the partners involved and establishing parental
responsibility for long term child care and socialization. In its traditional form, it
also organizes parents and children into domestic groups in which basic
responsibilities are allocated according to gender divisions. This specific
institutional pattern has been heavily sanctioned in moral and legal codes and
variations and changes, such as same-sexed marriages, are seen as an affront to a
divinely ordained order. However, other cultures have developed very different
conjugal and domestic arrangements that require a more open appreciation that
many other workable solutions to basic human problems have emerged in
different social contexts and that changes in the Western patterns might not
necessary lead to social and moral decay. As a case in point we will consider an
East Indian system that differs radically from Western practices and has
suggested a broader definition of marriage.
In her classic study of a the rather unique Nayar marriage arrangements, Kathleen
Gough, considers both the general anthropological position that marriage is a
universal and that it carries a similar set of functions in different societies (Gough
1959). The Nayar are an upper caste group, who are organized politically into
small kingdoms and territorially into localized matrilineal descent groups.
Although many of their practices have changed during the imposition of British
colonial rule, a general reconstruction of their traditional system suggests that no
substantial marital institutions were present, at least from a Western perspective.
On reaching puberty, a woman could entertain an indefinite number of lovers,
usually between three and eight, without any concern on anyone’s part over
sexual fidelity or paternal responsibility, the two most basic features of marriage
in European societies. Women would assume the basic responsibility for raising
children within matrilineally constructed households, in which mothers and
daughters and sisters formed the basic cooperative group. The domestic group
also included male members of the matrilineage, i.e., the women’s brothers.
However, since their main activities were intensively devoted to warfare, all but
the eldest men were usually absent during the better part of the year.
Gough observed that, in spite of the apparently casual attitudes towards sex and
fatherhood, a number of rules were strictly applied and that failure to observe
them could lead to severest punishments available: ostracism and death. The most
important focused on two ritual acts: the tying of the tali and the payment of the
midwife’s fees. In the tali ritual, girls and boys from allied lineages collectively
performed a symbolic wedding ceremony in which each “groom” tied a gold
ornament on his “brides” neck. In the successive rites the couple was secluded
and may or may not have engaged in sexual activity (usually the girl was too
young). At the conclusion of the ritual no specific rights or obligations between
the couple were established, other than the expectation that the “wife” and her
children would make special mourning observances when her “husband” died.
However, without the tying of the tali, a woman could not engage in any sexual
activity and if she gave birth her child would be considered to be illegitimate.
After the ceremony, she could start receiving lovers provided that they came
from the same hereditary caste and subcaste as she did. When the woman bore
children, one of the lovers was expected to acknowledge his paternity by
presenting gifts to the midwife who assisted in the delivery. While this, like the
tali tying, was an almost exclusively symbolic act and incurred no subsequent
responsibility, it was considered essential to both the legitimacy and the status of
the child insofar as it provided an assurance that it was not the product of a
relationship between its mother and a lower caste man.
The Nayar case imposes a sever test on the understanding of marriage as it
completely dispenses with the child-care functions so strongly emphasized in
Western understandings and radically differs in its concepts of sexual
exclusiveness and propriety. It does however impose an important set of rules
and fulfills functions that are quite understandable in the context of a lineage and
caste based society. The rites and regulations assume the following significance
appropriate the broader Nayar social order:
1. It reflects and enforces a morality that permits free and open sexual relations
provided that they are contracted within the strict limits of caste membership
uphold standards of hereditary purity.
2. It contributes to the focusing of social relationships within the caste.
3. It represents and underscores long term alliances among localized
matrilineages, which along with caste groups constitute the core components
of the society.
4. It underwrites the legitimacy and social statuses of newly born children.
According to these observations, along with a consideration of other variations
such as woman-woman marriage, Gough suggests a broadened definition of
marriage as follows:
Marriage is a relationship established between a woman and one or more other
persons, which provides that a child born to the woman under circumstances not
prohibited by the rules of the relationship, is accorded full birth-status rights
common to normal members of his society or social stratum. Nayar (Gough 1959)
Although her example and definition have attracted a good deal of criticism (Bell
1997), they at least point to the range of variation that marital forms and
functions have assumed and the problem of a cross-culturally valid designation.
Basic regulations: Rules of exogamy and endogamy
As the Nayar case suggests, the basic constants and variations in marital
institutions and the affinal relationships that are based on it must first be
understood in terms of the patterns of exogamy (out-marriage) and endogamy
(in-marriage). These institutions establish categories of kin and other social
identities among whom marriage is prohibited, allowed, preferred, or prescribed.
All societies have rules of exogamy, closely related to incest taboos, which
specify the ranges and categories of relatives who are considered forbidden
marriage and sexual partners. These are always the most closely related
biological kin, and prohibitions on sexual relations and marriage between parents
and children and brothers and sisters are universally applied. Most societies also
extend these restrictions to other close relatives, but the ranges and categories
included vary among them. Among other functions, basic features and extensions
of incest taboos and exogamous regulations force people to expand their circle of
contact, cooperation and alliance beyond their immediate circle to link small kin
groups into wider social constellations.
Societies are not only concerned with restricting marriages among closely related
kin but also on specifying rules of endogamy that channel individuals into
marriages within particular groups or categories. Even in contemporary Western
societies, individuals are encouraged and sometimes compelled to marry within
ethnic and religious groups and consistently express preferences for mates from
similar class and educational backgrounds, in spite of a pervasive emphasis on
romantic love and individual choice.
According to considerations of exogamy and endogamy, we can represent
marriage patterns as determined by a society’s concept of social distance. People
who are considered very close are prohibited from marrying. Distant people are
considered outsiders and less than desirable mates. Marital relations are unique
constructed within an intermediate zone where a range of common identities and
interests form a potential basis for exchange and alliance but cannot be mobilized
without the added force of affinal rights and responsibilities.
Figure 9.1 Ranges of Exogamy and Endogamy
We can illustrate the relation of exogamy and endogamy with an Yanomamo
example. Yanomamo social process is predominantly concerned with the
formation of groups and the regulation of intergroup relations through alliance
and warfare. These states both depend on a single concern: the exchange of
women among the groups involved either through recognized marriages or
violent seizure. These central institutions can best be depicted as standing at
opposite ends of a social distance continuum that extends from close alliances
and on one pole to bitter conflicts at the other. These conditions are mediated
through the institutions of trading and feasting.
Figure 9.2 Marriage and Social Ranges among the Yanomamo
Groups and group relations can best understood from the perspective of
gradations of social distance as follows:
A. The Localized Partilineal Moiety
A group composed of the members of a shallow patrilineage, seldom exceeding
more than two adult generations, whose members inhabit the same village.
Fellow lineage members are considered to be close relatives and identify each
other as brothers and sisters. Accordingly, localized lineages are exogamous and
sexual relations among members is viewed as incestuous. There is a gradation of
social distance within patrilineages, and less closely related “brothers” may
develop hostile relationships because of competition over women. Such
hostilities can result in a segmentation of the village, after which the divisions of
a lineage form new, often hostile, settlements.
B. The Village Settlement
A single nucleated settlement is composed of paired patrilineages that regularly
intermarry. Members of one lineage are individually and collectively tied to
members of an opposite one through both affinal and matrilateral ties. (If a
village is composed of two patrilineages, A and B, a man from A will marry a
women from B and his father will have done the same, so his mother will be a
member of moiety B as well.) Members of paired groups refer to one another as
in-laws, a term which covers spouse, brother/sister-in-law, and cross cousin.
Relations between male in-laws are often more cordial than between “brothers,”
since their placement in different lineages excludes competition over women.
Accordingly, when villages divide each patrilineal segment establishes a new
settlement in cooperation with their closest affines, with whose families they
continue to intermarry.
C. Marriage alliances
To the extent that marriage exchanges are confined to family lines within a
settlement, a pattern of village endogamy is generated. However, several forces
can lead to marriage ties between settlements. The most common is the need for
military allies. Smaller groups are under constant threat and are often forced to
enlist supporters by giving wives to outsiders. Ideally, the wife givers will
receive women in exchange at a later time, but stronger groups often choose to
renege on their obligations.
D. Feasting alliances
Settlements that are neither linked through marriage nor divided by war often
strive to maintain peaceful relations by inviting each other to elaborate feasts,
which will also include contributions of valuable trade items from hosts to guests.
Allies who exchange feasts and gifts, will refrain from attacking each other and
may join forces against enemies. This relationship can further develop into
marriage exchanges but can also deteriorate into hostilities.
E. Trading alliances
A more distant form of alliance will take place among groups who are at peace
with one another and regularly exchange valuable items. Special craft products,
such as pottery, arrow points, and hammocks, are exclusively supplied by
villages that specialize in their production to the exclusion of other items. They
must, therefore, exchange them with each other, even though the groups involved
may not maintain cordial enough relations to feast together or intermarry. The
Yanomamo may have developed specialized production of trade items not
because of any economic benefits but to provide a reason to contain hostilities.
Villages could easily maintain self-sufficiency by producing for their own needs.
F. Enemies
Groups that fall outside of regular trading, feasting, and marriage alliances
maintain a constant and violent state of war usually associated with seizure of
each other’s women. War can thus be viewed as an inverse to marriage or a
negative system of exchanging women among exogamous groups. The
relationship between social distance and social interaction described above is
complex. To some extent, established degrees of social distance determine the
ways in which groups treat their neighbors and set conditions for the perpetuation
of such relationships. For example affines are expected to arrange marriages
between their children and thus maintain the continuity of their alliance through
subsequent generations. However, the stability of relationships is frequently
challenged by ruptures and rearrangements in existing alliances. Thus the
character of exchange, whether it is hostile or benevolent and whether it involves
trade goods, feasts, or women, often influences the rearrangement of social
distance and alliance. On the whole, intergroup relations tend to shift through
stages of hostility, trading, mutual feasting, marriage exchange, and cosettlement.
Reversal can occur at any point in this sequence and set both parties
back towards a path to war.
Exogamy and incest prohibitions
Exogamy or outmarriage and associated sexual restrictions are basic to all
marriage systems. Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the
universality of these prohibitions. Some social thinkers, notably the 19th century
anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, have suggested that rules limiting mating
between close relatives leads to an improvement in a population’s health by
reducing the incidence of some genetic diseases. Sigmund Freud asserted that the
incest taboo was the result of a universal pattern of sexual competition between
fathers and sons. Anthropologists generally prefer sociological explanations to
biological or psychological theories. This perspective results from our emphasis
on social and cultural conditioning of individual behaviour and on detailing and
explaining cultural variation, which can not be account for in either Morgan’s or
Freud’s scheme. Two sociological theories of exogamy are prevalent: role theory
and alliance theory. Role theory was elucidated by Bronislaw Malinowski and
maintains that kinship and marriage systems are important for the assignment of
unambiguously defined and distributed social roles. If close kin were allowed to
intermarry, they would assume an additional set of roles, rights, and
responsibilities to those already in force. The resulting confusion and conflict
over role expectations would undermine the family’s social order. Alliance
theory, championed by Claude Levi-Strauss, maintains that small close-knit
groups must force their members to marry outside of their immediate circle in
order achieve the cultural, political, and economic benefits that a social system
built on extensive interactions and alliances provides.
Universal features of exogamy
Incest prohibitions and exogamy assume a few universal characteristics. In his
classic cross-cultural study, Social Structure (1949), G.P. Murdock observed that
every society within the sample of 250 he investigated based its marriage system
on prohibiting marriage and sexual relations within the nuclear family, i.e.,
between parents and children or brothers and sisters.
Figure 9.3 Universal Incest/Marriage Prohibitions
At least a few societies permit marriage or sexual relations with other close kin.
Uncle-niece and/or aunt nephew marriages are apparent is several societies and
cousin marriages of various kinds are quite widely tolerated. Murdock also
observed that no society prohibits sexual relations between nuclear family
members only. All cases in the sample applied prohibitions to relatives in other
categories. However, the range and type of prohibitions vary considerably.
Cultural variations
Societies vary in the range and definition of relatives who are considered
prohibited sex and marriage partners. Many Western societies define exogamous
categories on the basis bilateral kinship degree. Prohibitions thus reflect
approximate biological relatedness and vary from group to group from less to
more inclusive definitions. For example, England and Canada prohibit marriages
between uncles and nieces and aunts and nephews but allow first cousins to
marry. Some U.S. states follow the same pattern, but others have made first
cousin marriage illegal. Other societies have even more extensive bilateral
restrictions. The Ju/’hoansi prohibit both first and second cousin marriages.
Figure 9.4 Marriage Prohibitions Ranges
Other societies, particularly unilineally organized cases, apply a different logic,
frequently banning marriage between members of the same descent group,
regardless of the biological degree of relatedness, or prohibiting parallel cousin
marriage while permitting or even encouraging unions between cross cousins.
Figure 9.5 Parallel Cousin Marriage Prohibitions
The ban on marriages within descent groups reinforces the identification of group
members since they are all considered “too close” to marry. The cross cousin
marriage preference encourages a pattern of consistent alliances among lineages
to form a larger social constellation.
Ancient Hebrew society formulated a completely different set of marriage
restrictions from either the bilateral extensions of European systems or the cousin
marriage dynamics of lineage group alliances. The incest prohibitions listed in
Leviticus 18 suggest a very narrow range of prohibitions within the extended
biological family and an elaboration of restrictions on certain categories of
affines. Restrictions on marriage within the Hebrew family were extended
primarily to nuclear family members. Cousin marriages of any type were
allowed, and in fact there was a preference for unions between the children of
two brothers, in some circumstances. (This arrangement involved marriage
within a patrilineal group and indicates that descent groups in this instance were
not exogamous.) Moreover, there was no explicit rule against sexual relations or
marriages between uncles and nieces, although aunt/nephew prohibitions are
specified.
Figure 9.6 Prohibitions from Leviticus 18
While prohibitions of marriage between biological kin were generally less
extensive than those of contemporary Western societies, affinal restrictions were
more comprehensive. Above and beyond the drastic penalties for adultery,
condemnations of incest were applied to sex or marriage between a man and his
son’s wife, brother’s wife, stepmother, father’s brother’s wife, wife’s mother, or
wife’s sister. In these cases prohibitions were in force only during the lifetime of
the male relative. Other marriage provisions within the Old Testament favour
levirate marriage to a brother’s widow, thus lifting the affinal ban after a
brother’s death. The pattern of affinal prohibitions reveals an asymmetry in the
system related to lineage membership. While relations with a father’s brother’s
wife are not allowed, there is no converse restriction concerning mother’s
brother’s wife. Accordingly, we can understand some of the extensive in-law
prohibitions as supporting cooperation among close patrilineal kin by reducing
the possibility of competition over women.
These biblical prohibitions have of course had an influence on Western marriage
institutions. However, in the course of applying scriptural principles to the
realities of social life, many reinterpretations, additions, deletions, and
controversies have occurred because of the different cultural contexts and social
orders of the societies that adopted the Judaic tradition. References to Leviticus
in the formulation European marriage regulations include only part of the body of
original restrictions and never incorporate the lineal asymmetry, thus revealing
the different logics of Hebrew and Western models. Furthermore, affinal
restrictions so dominant in the biblical text have been continually balanced
against a European concern over cousin marriage that originated with Catholic
canon law in the early Middle Ages. This complexity is expressed in the curious
patchwork of marriage prohibitions currently in force in the United States.
The enactment of American laws regulating marriage is a state responsibility and
differences in legislation are widespread. In general, variation falls into two
geographically and ideologically distinct patterns that have been distinguished as
biblical and western≅ (Farber 1968: 25-45). While most states conform
exclusively to one alternative or the other, a few have combined both policies and
several have no restrictions other than upon marriages between nuclear family
members, and uncles and nieces and aunts and nephews.
Figure 9.7 Variations in U.S. Marriage Prohibitions
1. The Biblical model is based on the incest prohibitions listed in the 18th
chapter of Leviticus, which are noteworthy for their extensive restrictions on
affinal relatives and the absence of bans on cousin marriage. Specific state
codes derive their origin from Church of England canon law that was applied
in most of the original American colonies. They represent an abridged version
of the biblical prohibitions and focus on banning marriages within the nuclear
family and between a marriage partner and his/her spouse’s parents or
children, specifically between sons-in-law and mothers-in-law, daughters-inlaw
and fathers-in-law, and stepparents and stepchildren. The Anglican
regulations, and those of many Protestant churches, explicitly excluded any
restrictions on cousin marriage, which were critically perceived as a Catholic
misinterpretation of scripture. They also once included a ban on marriage
between a man and his brother’s wife or wife’s sister, even after a brother’s or
wife’s death. However, no states currently include this prohibition, nor does
the Church of England. The states whose legislation conforms to the limited
biblical affinal restrictions are clustered in the eastern part of the country,
especially in New England and the South. South Dakota, Oklahoma and
Georgia prohibit marriages between stepparents and stepchildren only.
2. The Western model contrasts with the biblical model in that shifts its focus
from affinal restrictions to consanguineal ones. In-laws of any kind are
allowed to marry, but first cousins are not. The states in this group are located
primarily in the mid-west and west. Most of them entered the Union and
formulated their marriage legislation after the Civil War (Ottenheimer 1996).
A recent study (Ottenheimer 1996) has advanced an interesting theory of the
reasons for this complex and puzzling difference among the states. The author
observes that the different models of incest prohibition reflect a marked social
change in 19th century America. The biblical model represents a carryover of
older, pre-industrial attitude towards family life. It focuses on adherence to
scriptural authority and on the maintenance of social order within the family,
through the elimination of possible occasions for role conflicts and personal
antagonisms among closely related people. The western model represents a
change to a recent conceptualization of the family as instrumental reproductive
unit geared to producing optimally healthy offspring. This view owes its origin to
Victorian era physicians and anthropologists, including Morgan, who believed
that cousin marriages led to the production of mentally and physically deformed
children. It was also supported by the evolutionist position that attributed the
biological and moral advance of the human species to the imposition of broader
restrictions on kin marriage.
Endogamy
While all societies have rules of exogamy that specify relatives to whom
marriage is forbidden, they also have those of endogamy, which require that
marriages be restricted to particular social groups, ranges, or relationships. Such
practices help to highlight community identity and uniqueness in opposition to
external groups, with whom marriages are discouraged. Endogamy is often
applied on a society-wide level and assists in setting of group boundaries. In is
sometimes applied to sub-divisions within in a larger society often to reinforce
their ability to maintain restrictive access to property, power, and status. Three
types of intra-society divisions have been widely observed: caste endogamy,
village endogamy, and lineage endogamy.
Caste endogamy
Castes are hereditary social divisions that are distinguished from one another by
economic and occupational activity, political position, and, often, ritual status.
Men and women are normally bound to marry within their castes of birth to
maintain the “purity” of hereditary lines and to enclose affinal alliances and
exchanges within group boundaries. The standard model of caste is taken from
traditional East Indian society, where membership in heredity groups strictly
determined occupation and ritual purity. The Nayar case discussed in a previous
section provides an example of such a group. They hold a high rank in their local
caste system according to their ownership of agricultural land and their
traditional status and occupation as warriors. They are economical served by
lower caste members and, as we have seen, are forbidden to engage in sexual
relations with them. Their marriage ceremonies are almost exclusively devoted to
symbolically uniting males and females within the caste. Nayar women,
particularly those in higher sub-castes, do form liaisons with even higher caste
Brahmins. However, the latter do not consider these affairs as marriages and do
not accept responsibility for any children that may result. They may undertake
the relevant midwife payments, but, unlike the Nayar, they don’t consider this
custom to be an actual acknowledgement of paternity. Other examples of caste
endogamy include medieval Europe, where nobles were prohibited from
marrying commoners, and apartheid South Africa, where racial miscegenation
was illegal.
Village endogamy
Physical distance has an obvious effect of the range of possible marriage
partners, and we can expect that people will often marry the “girl next door”
because of the ease and frequency of personal contact. However, some societies
reinforce this tendency to transform geographically boundaries to less permeable
social ones, by encouraging or requiring marriage within a village or other
territorial unit. The Yanomamo of Amazonia practice a marked endogamous
system by forming settlements composed of paired localized lineages, which are
bound to exchange women according to a specific cross-cousin marriage rule that
we will consider later. Exceptions occur only when villages have less than
optimal populations and must contract outside marriages to acquire allies. A less
rigid but still pronounced pattern of endogamy is evident in Turkish villages.
Village endogamy, though widespread is far from universal. The Igbo,
for example, follow the opposite tradition of village exogamy, according to
which inhabitants of the same settlement, who are usually patrilineally related
kin, are forbidden to marry.
Lineage endogamy
While unilineal descent structures often entail the specification of lineages as
exogamous units, there are a few marked cases of preferential marriages between
fellow members of the same lineage. This is normally organized though the
practice of parallel cousin marriage, usually between the children of two brothers,
who are both members of their fathers’ patrilineage.
Figure 9.8 Parallel Cousin Marriage
This practice is usually associated with the need to maintain property within the
family line and avoids dissipation of assets through affinal exchanges or female
inheritance. Lineage endogamy is most frequently found in pastoral communities,
in which the continuity of domestic herds forms a primary concern. It is also
found as a common culture pattern in Middle Eastern societies including those of
contemporary Arab communities and ancient Hebrew society. The Bible offers an
extensive demonstration of lineage endogamy among the generations of the
Hebrew patriarchs. Isaac, Jacob, and Esau are purported to have married parallel
cousins within their lineage and the text alludes to a half-sibling relationship
between Abraham and his wife, Sarah.
Figure 9.9 Genealogy of the Hebrew Patriarchs and Matriarchs
It also stresses the need for parallel cousin marriage to preserve the patrilineal
inheritance of property in general situations in which a man has only daughters. If
they marry their father’s brother’s sons, their family property can be transmitted
to their son’s and remain within the patrilineal group. (Numbers 36).
Race, religion and class in American marriage patterns
We have been considering endogamy from the perspective of explicit formal
rules that are easily identifiable in many cultures. However, restricting marriages
to mark and enforce the boundaries of fundamental groupings within a society is
present in almost every culture, although the rules and expectations are not
always explicitly spelled out. This observation is particularly supported by many
studies of marriage patterns in American society, which reflect strong, although
unacknowledged, preferences for restricting conjugal relationships on the basis of
ethnicity, race, religion, and class. They also reveal an interesting dynamic of
change over time.
Americans tend to think of their society as deeply respectful of individual
preferences and choices and apply this belief especially to people’s rights to
choose their partners. However, numerous statistical studies have indicated that
many social forces narrowly restrict marriage within the basic strata that mark
American society. To some extent, this pattern follows personal consideration of
compatibility of identity, interest, and experience that husband and wife may
share. However, it is also subject to firm and consistent social pressures of
family, peers, and the wider society, which often looks askance at unions of
couples from disparate backgrounds. It may even impose serious sanctions
against them, extending to the point of ostracism.
The most significant restriction on American marriage has historically been race,
reflecting a primary division of the society between Black and White. At one
time, prohibitions on “miscegenation” were actually enshrined in legal codes,
which imposed annulments and prison sentences on inter-racial couples. Laws of
this type were of course prevalent in the South, but majority of states passed
antimiscegenation laws at one time or another. California had a statue in place that
banned marriages between Whites and Blacks or Asians until 1948, when it was
declared unconstitutional by a state court. Sixteen southern states enforced such
laws until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court made a blanket ruling of
unconstitutionality on the basis of the 14th Amendment and a judgment that open
marital choice was a basic civil right. However, this de jure reversal has not
eliminated a strong de facto discriminatory bias in marriage choice. A study
conducted in the late 1980’s indicated that only 2% of all American marriages
involved couples of different perceived races and that only 20% of these (.4% of
all marriages) were between Whites and Blacks (Lewis et. al. 1997). Accordingly
a “caste-like” pattern of racial division was observed. In general the social barrier
evident is, like the defunct miscegenation laws, predominantly maintained by
discriminatory attitudes and practices within the superordinant White community.
Time series studies have shown that the incidence of interracial marriages is
increasing, but quite slowly.
Religion constitutes a second arena of marital choice and dilemma in American culture in
which a high degree of endogamy is observable both according to established structural
rules and predominant preferences. Many religions,
particularly Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam, have specific regulations that both
partners must subscribe to the appropriate faith in order to contract a recognized
marriage within the faith. Some Protestant groups are more open but nevertheless
stress the importance of a common religious bond for conjugal cooperation and
child socialization. In general levels, of marriage within the faith differ according
to religion and a number of other circumstances. A 1982 Canadian study
estimated a 78% endogamy rate for Jews, 56% for Catholics and 45% for
Protestants. However, the latter groups varied according to sect, from 62% for
Mennonites to 37% for Presbyterians (Ramu 1993:48). Religious endogamy was
more pronounced in the larger cities, in which it was easier to find a partner from
the same background. A study of American interfaith marriages among Christians
in 1988 showed similar results (Leher 1998). The groups involved were classified
into three categories: Catholic, “ecumenical” Protestants, and “exclusionist”
Protestants. In all three cases the in-marriage rate was approximately 50%,
although Catholics were slightly more likely to marry within their faith than
either Protestant category. As in the Canadian study, locations with larger
numbers of coreligionists demonstrated high endogamy rates. More importantly
the study traced changes over time and found that the incidence of interfaith
marriages almost doubled for ecumenicals and Catholics between 1950 and 1988,
but remained constant for exclusionist Protestants. Accordingly, the mainline
religious groups are becoming more open and flexible, on a personal if not
official level. The more exclusionist Christian groups are retaining their inward
looking traditions. This finding is particularly significant insofar as the
fundamentalist and evangelical sects represented in this category have been
showing rapid growth at the expense of the other denominations and are
increasingly molding the North American religious landscape.
The final and most important consideration of American endogamy concerns
socio-economic class. This dimension is difficult to define and to isolate,
especially since it is complexly interrelated to the racial and religious
considerations we have already discussed. Many studies have shown that
Americans tend to marry within general social class boundaries. The pattern is
particularly apparent if educational background, a major component of class
definition, is considered. A major analysis of marriage patterns current in 1988
(Blackwell 1998) revealed a strong tendency for people to seek partners with
equivalent or similar educational attainments, especially at the extreme ends of
the hierarchy. Men with a grade six education or less were more than ten times as
likely to marry wives with an equivalent educational background than were men
with higher education levels (39% as opposed to 3% of the stratum). Moreover,
only about 20% of this group married women who had finished high school, and
less than 1% married college graduates. At the other end of scale, approximately
half the men who had received a university degree were married to other
graduates and an additional 30% had wives who had received some
postsecondary training. Less than 2% were partnered with women who had less
than 12 years of formal education, a proportion exactly equal to the interracial
marriage rate citied previously. Thus education stands as a major social division
that determines and patterns conjugal and in-law relations. More importantly,
while endogamy rates for both race and religion have generally declined, those
for educational status are noticeably increasing. This trend underlines the
reorganization and polarization of North American society according to
education levels that we have already identified as an fundamental attribute the
post-industrial social order.
Marriage and social exchange
While rules of exogamy and endogamy establish the general social parameters of
marriage restriction and choice, a specific understanding of how marriage relates
to social organization looks more fully at how it binds social groups together into
exchange and alliance networks in many societies. Anthropologists have recorded
numerous and diverse marital institutions that follow this pattern. We shall
investigate three important and widely observed forms: cross cousin marriage,
the levirate, and bride payment.
Cross cousin marriage
The presence of elaborate systems for arranging and regulating marriages in
widely different cultures suggests to anthropologists that marriage often serves to
maintain alliances and exchanges between groups. This view has been applied to
explain the prevalence of cross cousin marriage rules. These arrangements
assume three different forms according to whether a man is expected to marry:
1. his matrilateral cross cousin, i.e., his mother’s brother’s daughter,
2. his patrilateral cross cousin, i.e., his father’s sister’s daughter, or
3. his bilateral cross cousin, who is simultaneously his mother’s brother’s
daughter and father’s sister’s daughter.
(Ego’s cross cousins are defined as the children of opposite sexed siblings.
Patrilateral cousins are related to Ego on his father’s side of the family.
Matrilateral cousins are related to ego on his mother’s side.)
Figure 9.10 Basic Cousin Relationships
(The same relationships would apply to a female ego. However, cross cousin marriage
rules are specified from a male perspective. Thus for matrilateral cross cousin marriage, a
man marries his mother’s brother’s daughter, although his wife is marrying patrilaterally,
i.e., to her father’s sister’s daughter. The situation for patrilateral cross cousin marriage is
similar.)
Figure 9.11 Cross cousin marriage from male and female perspectives
While matrilateral and patrilateral cross cousins are present in every social
situation, bilateral cross cousins occur only in special marriage situations, where
two men marry each other’s sisters.
Figure 9.12 Bilateral Cross Cousins
The widespread presence of cross cousin marriage in its various forms has been
of special importance to the structuralist anthropologist Levi-Strauss and his
formulation of alliance theory (Levi-Strauss 1945). He views marriage in general
as a form of exchange that simultaneously expresses differences between groups
and unites them into coherent social networks. His observations focus on the
significance of the three alternative marriage rules for the emergence of different
social dynamics.
1. Bilateral cross cousin marriage results in a system of direct exchange
marriages (also known as restricted exchange) between paired lineages.
2. Matrilateral cross cousin marriage results in a system of indirect exchange
marriage (also termed generalized exchange) among an indefinite number of
descent lines.
3. Patrilineal cross cousin marriage results in a system which can be viewed as a
combination of both of the other systems.
Bilateral cross cousin marriage
The Bilateral cross cousin marriage system is a form of direct exchange marriage
in which two lineages or families establish permanent alliances and exchanges by
marrying each other’s women. In some cases, these exchanges are formed
without an explicit cousin requirement. For example, among the Tiv, a Nigerian
cultural group, when a man marries, he contracts an obligation to provide his inlaw’s
family with a bride from his own. In other instances, such as the
Yanomamo, the continuity of such exchanges is guaranteed by the regular
arrangement of marriages between cousins that fall in to the appropriate category.
Bilateral cross cousin marriage begins with an initial situation of exchange
marriage. Two men marry each other’s sisters to establish a basis for a long-term
alliance.
Figure 9.13 Bilateral Cross Cousin Marriage
The cross cousin marriage rule is applied in the next generation. Ego is expected
to marry his bilateral cross cousin, who is at the same time both his mother’s
brother’s daughter and father’s sister’s daughter, because of the intermarriage
between sets of parents. A repeat of the cousin rule in the third generation
continues the pattern of exchanges in the previous generation.
The regular application of the bilateral cross cousin marriage rule creates a
permanent alliance between a pair of lineages through the continuous
intermarriage between men in each group and women in the opposite one. These
groups are often articulated into dual organizations or moiety systems, in which
basic social units are composed of paired groups linked by marriage
relationships. The Yanomamo provide an example. Their basic social unit is the
village, composed of between 50 and 200 inhabitants. Each such settlement is
composed of two localized patrilineages or, in effect, patrilineal moieties. The
lineages are closely linked by intermarriage through the application of the
bilateral cross cousin rule.
Further elaborations on the bilateral cousin principle have been developed,
including the section systems of Australia. In these situations variant cousin
marriage rules create sections of 4 and sometime 8 units defined and linked by
regular patterns of exchange marriage. (You will be spared any further
consideration of these complex systems).
Matrilateral cross cousin marriage
An exchange system based upon matrilateral cross cousin marriage assumes an
initial arrangement of marriages among members of different lineages.
Figure 9.14 Matrilateral Cross Cousin Marriage
The cross-cousin marriage rule is first applied in the second generation. A man is
expected to marry his mother’s brother’s daughter, his matrilateral cross cousin.
If this rule is applied consistently to everyone, the pattern of lineage
intermarriage established in the previous generation is duplicated exactly. The
application of the same cross-cousin rule in the next generation continues the
circulation of women into the same lineages as in the previous two.
Where a system of bilateral cross cousin marriage results in exchange and
alliances between paired lineages, matrilateral cross cousin marriage can unite
any given number of lineages in a continuous pattern of circular exchanges. The
unity achieved is based on indirect linkages. Although each lineage is tied to only
two other lineages, one in the role of wife giver and the other as wife taker, it is
thereby connected to all the others in the system. Wife givers receive wives from
the previous link in the chain and wife takers in turn provide wives to the next
group in the other direction to eventually form a circle. Because of the cycling of
marriage partners, the system is sometimes termed Αcirculating connubium≅.
Figure 9.15 Circulating connubium
While matrilateral systems are often diagramed on the basis of patrilineal
groupings, they have exactly the same exchange dynamic in matrilineal societies.
Figure 9.16 Matrilateral Cross Cousin Marriage in a Matrilineal System
Matrilateral cross cousin marriage systems are the most widespread of the three
systems we are considering. Why this is so has been the subject of a great deal of
controversy.
Patrilateral cross cousin marriage
Curiously, patrilateral cross cousin marriage creates a different dynamic of
interaction and exchange than the matrilateral form does. The system begins in
exactly the same fashion. Members of any number of lineages intermarry.
Figure 9.17 Patrilateral Cross Cousin Marriage
The actual patrilateral rule is applied in the next generation, specifying that a man
should marry his father’s sister’s daughter, i.e., his patrilateral cross cousin. The
marriage rule in this case creates a pattern of exchanges that differs from that of
the previous generation. While women from the first cohort marry men from one
lineage, women of the next marry into a different one. The application of the
patrilateral rule in the third generation reverses the circulation of women again,
thus reiterating the pattern of the initial one. In the fourth generation, the
circulation would reverse yet again and assume the same form as in the second.
The explanation of partilateral cross cousin marriage within alliance theory is a
bit convoluted and focuses on two separate effects. Lineages are articulated into a
circle as in the matrilateral case. However, the alternating exchanges that reverse
the contacts between lineages in each generation link them as exchanging pairs.
Group A gives a wife to B in the first generation, receives a wife from B in the
second generation, gives a wife to B in the next, and so on. Thus a situation of
direct exchange is present within a larger one of circular flows.
Levirate marriage
The arrangement of marriages to promote exchanges and alliances among lineage
groupings is further illustrated by the institution of the levirate. This practice
specifies that a man’s widow must marry his surviving brother in order to
continue the relationship between their respective groups that was initiated in the
original marriage.
Levirate marriage is mentioned in the Bible as a standard marriage regulation
among the ancient Hebrews. It is represented in many contemporary societies,
including the Igbo and the Akan, and Yanomamo. Among the Akan and
Yanomamo, the levirate is associated with cross cousin marriage regimes and
performs very much the same function. The two groups that create and maintain
an alliance through marriage attempt to preserve the continuity of their
relationship by remarrying a widow to a close relative of the deceased. Among
the Igbo, who specifically prohibit cross cousin marriage, it nevertheless
maintains the continuity of alliance between affinal groups, even though their
association may not be continued in the next generation. However, the Igbo
rationalization of this practice is perhaps better understood in terms of their bride
price system. Since a man’s family has paid a substantial sum to acquire the
reproductive powers of his wife, as well as other economic and social services,
they retain these rights in her even after the death of her husband. They will
usually require that she remarry within the family but can also decide to arrange a
marriage with another family, usually in return for another bride price. Among
the Hebrews, the institution seems to have served a related purpose. Any children
of a levirate marriage were considered to be the descendents of the woman’s
original husband, who was usually an older brother of her current partner.
Thereby, the institution reinforced an emphasis on the inheritance through first
born sons (primogeniture).
Bride payments
The bride price or bride wealth system constitutes a third method of integrating
social groups through intermarriage. This institution specifies that a prospective
husband, and usually his relatives, must provide a substantial sum of money or
valued items to his future wife’s family before a marriage can be contracted. In
some instance the payment is also made for the rights to assign children to their
father’s family rather than their mother’s within a patrilineal society.
Bride payments have been interpreted in numerous ways. In many cases, groups
justify the practice by claiming that the wealth received compensates them for
time and trouble taken to raise a daughter who will be sent off to another group.
In other cases it is viewed as compensation for the bride’s economic
contributions or for the children she adds to her new family. For example, among
the Dani of New Guinea three separate conjugal assets are recognized. A man
must make gifts of valuable items, such as pigs, shells, or special stones to his
wife’s family when:
1. he first contracts a marriage and his bride starts working on his farm,
2. he acquires sexual rights in his wife and consummates the marriage, and
3. his wife bears a child
Among the Igbo, the bride price is more narrowly thought of as a payment to
acquire rights in the children of the marriage and must be returned if a woman is
barren or leaves the marriage before producing children.
Most anthropologists do not view bride payments as an actual purchase of wife akin to
buying a slave. The general interpretation is that the actual funds transferred are less
significant as economic inducements or assets than as counters in a social
exchange system that binds the bride’s and groom’s families together in the
course of the marriage. Thus the exchange of material items (money, cattle, pigs)
as well as of women assume mainly political and symbolic value. Bride payments
also contribute to the stability of the marriage. Since they normally must be
repaid if the marriage is dissolved, a woman’s family has a interest in resolving
any problems between their daughter and her husband to ensure the stability of
the union.
It spite of their obvious integrative importance, the value and relative scarcity of
bride wealth payments does have implications for the accumulation and use of
both physical and social capital. In general the need for bride payment supports
the institution of polygyny, where men marry more than one wife, since it will
take a man a long time to accumulate the necessary marriage wealth. In the
process, older men, who have had more time to acquire the requisite resources,
will be able to marry several woman before their juniors have assembled enough
wealth to begin their own marital career. Their larger families will both attest to
their prestige and social status and provide them with a considerable productive
base to accumulate more wealth.
The institutions of bride wealth and polygyny are present in many societies
including the Igbo, which we will comment on in some detail in a later section.
They involve a variety of wealth forms, in many instances special items that are
used exclusively for marriage payments. In some areas special valuable shells or
stones are used. In others, domestic animals, such as pigs or cattle are prominent.
For example, many South African societies, such as the Zulu or the Swazi,
require bride payments, known as lobola, in the form of cattle, which are
considered to be a special wealth object whose exchange is restricted to a few
special social transactions (Kuper 1982). The marriage cattle are transferred from
the groom or his family to the bride’s father or sometimes to her brother.
However, the recipient of the payment does not fully assume the right to dispose
of the animals he has received. If his daughter fails to bear children or becomes
divorced, he must return them to his former in-laws. He may otherwise use them
to acquire wives for himself or other members of his family. A father is expected
to provide first wives for his sons, although this contribution, as many other
transactions in the system, sets up a debt. A son must hand over the lobola
payment that he receives from his first daughter’s marriage as a repayment to his
father.
In the South African system marriage cattle form the focus of an alliance system
similar to one constructed through cross cousin marriage, except that cattle as
well as women are systematically transferred from family to family. In some
cases lobola and cross cousin marriage are interrelated. Among the Lovedu, a
man holds a special relationship to his “cattle-linked sister,” whose marriage
payment he receives. He will usually use these cattle to acquire a wife of his own,
a benefit for which he becomes indebted to his sister. Accordingly, he is required
to give her the right to determine the marriage of one of his daughters and forgo
any expectation of a bride payment. His sister may marry off her niece to her son,
creating a matrilateral cross cousin marriage.
Figure 9.18 Lovedu Marriage Exchanges
She can also give her to her own husband to obtain a dependent co-wife, or may
even marry her in her own right and become a female husband, within the
Lovedu system of “woman marriage.”
The South African example introduces a curious problem related to the status of
family and lineage groupings. The alliance model suggests that the circulation of
women and cattle binds the groups that make up the society into a system of
reciprocal exchange and cooperation in which all units are equal. However, both
economic and/or demographic conditions can create or support a situation in
which the groups involved assume higher or lower statuses according to the
number of women or the amount of cattle they possess. In the South African
systems economic, political, and social inequalities are actually structural
features of marriage institutions. Selected patrilineages assume the statuses of
royalty and nobility in numerous kingdoms and chiefdoms in the region and
maintain and validate their leadership positions specifically in terms of the lobola
system. They possess larger herds of cattle and exchange them for wives
according to a pattern in which wife givers/cattle recipients are subordinate to
wife takers/cattle givers. This arrangement is term hypergamy, an institution in
which women marry upward rather than in an egalitarian circle. They accumulate
at the top, where the major power holders benefit and enhance their status by
having many wives in return for the redistribution of their cattle to lower ranking
groups. High status occupants includes kings and ranks of subordinate chieftains
and, sometimes, queens and other female power holders, who use their wives and
cattle as political currency in the same way as their male counterparts. For
example the Lovedu rain queen, regularly received wives as tribute from all the
districts of her realm and their numbers may have been as high as a hundred
women (Kuper 1982:72).
Other marriage payments
Marriages entail other modes of property exchange and alliance formation
between families, the most widespread of which is the dowry. As in the bride
payment system, this institution entails a transfer of wealth, sometime a
substantial amount, from one basic social group to another. Dowries are
sometimes considered to be a reverse form of bride wealth payment, since they
are contributed by the bride’s rather than the groom’s family. However the assets
transferred do not go to the affinal group per se, but are vested in the marriage
itself and usually are inherited by the children that result. As such dowries are
common in bilateral inheritance systems. Daughters inherit a share of their
father’s property, which they receive upon marriage rather than upon their
father’s death. The inheritance may be controlled by the daughter’s husband but
is subsequently passed on to her children. Forms of dowry were common in
Europe until the 19th century and are still important in the Islamic world. Quite a
different transfer from a new bride’s family occurs in some East Indian cultures.
Erroneously termed “dowries,” the institution is actually the reverse of a bride
price system, i.e., a “groom price” system. A man’s wife’s family must pay a
substantial sum to his parents, who may choose to utilize this investment on their
own account, very often to finance the marriage of the groom’s sister.
Brideprice and dowry are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In some cultures
both are practiced simultaneously. An example from South Africa is again
appropriate. Among the Xhosa, a girl’s father would receive a lobola payment
from her new husband, but would also be responsible for providing her with
marriage cattle that would be vested in the new household formed. This
arrangement had two implications. Unlike the standard arrangement it did not
create an extensive chain of relationships among several groups, since the father
was left with no stock to contract another marriage for himself or a son.
Moreover, the gift to the new family relieved the father of any formal
responsibilities for his daughter’s welfare after her marriage (Kuper 1982:36).
Another important system of marriage exchange entails a contribution of labor
rather than valuable goods. In the institution of bride-service, a new husband is
required to work for his father-in-law for a lengthy period of time as form of
compensation for various conjugal rights. This arrangement is documented in the
Bible in the life of Jacob, who contributes 14 years in order to marry Leah and
Rachel. It is also present in one form or another in many contemporary cultures,
such and the Yanomamo and the Ju/’hoansi. In both these cases, the practice is
partially understandable in terms of the paucity of material items and
accumulations that might form appropriate sources for marriage payment.
Multiple marriages
Aside from variations in the determination of who people can, cannot, and must
marry, cultural differences are quite apparent in the number of spouses a man or
woman can have. While modern Western societies believe in the sanctity of
monogamy and enshrine it in their legal codes, most social traditions, over 80%,
accept at least some degree of polygamy, the union between a person and more
than one wife (polygyny) or husband (polygamy). This institution is documented
among the ancient Hebrews, as in the case of King Solomon, who is purported to
have had 700 wives and 300 concubines. It is currently, accepted within at least
one derived tradition, Islam, which allows a man it have up to four wives. It has a
history of development within a North American Christian tradition, the
Mormons, and is still advocated by some fundamentalist Mormon sects.
Polygyny
Among the two forms of polygamy, polygyny is by far the most widespread.
Several different schemes have been proposed it explain its incidence. Some
people suspect that a desire for numerous sex partners is built into basic human
biology, a factor that would explain the almost its universal occurrence, but not
the exceptions or variations. Other theories based on population and ecological
factors explain it as a response lengthy periods of sexual abstinence that women
must follow after child birth in some cultures. This practice reduces population
growth, but drives husbands to acquire additional wives to meet unfulfilled
sexual needs. Demographic theory suggests that polygyny may occur because of
a surplus of women that results from a high incidence of male warfare. However,
polygyny occurs in many situations of relatively balanced gender ratios or even,
as in the case of the Yanomamo, where males outnumber females. Accordingly,
some men accumulate two or more wives only at the expense of others who never
marry, or, much more usually, marry at a later age than women do. As such, the
society becomes divided between young bachelors, who may remain single into
their thirties and older polygynists. This arrangement may occur informally or
may become a marked feature of the social structure. For example, in some South
African societies, such as the Zulu, all young men in their twenties were
organized into military “age regiments” and were not allowed to marry until their
term of service ended. As we have already suggested, differences in marital age
are also created by bride price requirements.
The social division between polygynists and bachelors points to another
prevalent theory of polygyny, which is based on social stratification. In societies
where men are not distinguished by differences in access to productive resources,
such as land and capital, e.g., tribal societies, status distinctions are mainly
attained and expressed through direct control over people. This goal is most
obviously attained through incorporating many women into one’s domestic group
and expanding by fathering a large number of children. Traditional South African
marriage structures again provide an appropriate example. Most societies were
divided into commoner, noble, and royal strata. Commoners usually were able to
marry only one wife, nobles supported several, and royals could boast numbers
that reached over a hundred, approaching King Solomon’s mythic magnitude. A
stratificational theory of polygyny also accounts for it greater incidence in
comparison to polyandry, since men tend to occupy higher status than women in
the majority of societies.
Polyandry
Polyandry is a form of polygamy in which one woman is married to several men.
It is very rare and assumes a specific concentration in the Himalayan areas of
South Asia. However, it is sporadically distributed in Africa, Oceania, and Native
America. Two forms have been recorded: fraternal polyandry in which a group of
brothers share a wife, and non-fraternal polyandry in which a woman’s husbands
are not related. The Nayar case we have already discussed represents a nonfraternal
form in the sense that a woman engages in sexual relations and has
children with several different men, any of whom may be called upon to
acknowledge paternity. Fraternal forms are common in the mountainous areas of
Nepal and Tibet. Among the Tibetian Nyinba, brothers live together throughout
their life times in large patrilineally constructed households. They share a
common estate and domestic responsibilities. They also share a common wife
with whom each engages in sexual activity. Generally, each child of the marriage
is acknowledged by and develops a special relationship with one of the potential
fathers even where actually paternity cannot be determined. This arrangement
can partially be understood as a response to a shortage of women due to a lower
survival rate in comparison to men. It also has important economic implications.
Since brothers share a wife, their joint estate remains intact from generation to
generations and is not subject to the fragmentary and inefficient divisions that
might occur if each belonged to a separate conjugal unit.
Polyandry is generally found in areas where difficult physical environments or
high populations impose extreme pressures on agricultural systems. It works to
limit population growth and to ensure the coherence of agricultural estates. Some
theorists suggest that this institutions more often occurs in societies in which
women hold relatively high social status (Stone 1997: 194). However it but does
not reflect the same stratification pattern as polygyny, i.e., a woman’s social
position and prestige are not determined by the number of husbands she can
amass. Female status is more apparently marked in woman-woman marriage
options in polygynous societies.
Case studies
We have been looking close at the various rules that govern marriage but have
devoted little attention to the actual marital experience. Our three case studies
provide an opportunity to look a bit deeper into specific patterns of the
responsibilities, interactions, rewards, and frustrations that mark conjugal
relationships and they differ from culture to culture. We will see that, in spite of
the highly intimate and personalistic nature of husband and wife interrelationship,
much of their awareness and behaviour is patterned by their social values and
traditions.
Ju/’hoansi marriage patterns
Marriage institutions among Ju/’hoansi foragers can initially be understood in
relation to their basic subsistence adaptation and the flexible organization of band
level society. Extensive exogamy dominates the system to foster a multiplicity of
affinal ties among numerous groups. These arrangements allow local camps to
share resources with many other linked groups and to reconstitute their
membership to match fluctuations in food supplies and other resources. People
who have numerous and diversely located in-laws have more opportunities to
receive support and change locations and camp membership in an uncertain
environment. Accordingly, the first notable set of Ju/’hoansi marriage rules
marks out a very broad range of incest and marriage prohibitions that can exclude
up to 75% of the population. A person cannot marry within a bilateral circle of
relatives that extends to his second cousins. He/she is also excluded from
marrying anyone with the same name as his/her parent or sibling and anyone who
is categorized as avoidance kin.
A second feature of the marriage system is that first marriages choices are
generally determined by the couple’s parents. Future husbands and wives are
betrothed in childhood after negotiations and gift exchanges between their
mothers. Usually the bride’s mother is in the controlling position and attempts to
create or continue a relationship with a family that is hospitable, likeable, and
well established in the gift exchange network. The husband’s qualities as a hunter
and provider are also considered. Parental discretion is often modified by a son’s
or daughter’s opinions on the match, and, if a girl makes a substantial enough
fuss, her mother will attempt to find a more acceptable husband.
Marriage will take place several years after the initial betrothal and will also
involve gift exchange. However, no specific bride price or dowry is paid.
Exchange items take the form of consumable goods rather than special valuables
or real property and the reciprocities between the wife’s and husband’s parties
are expected to balance each other out. After marriage, the groom is required to
perform several years of bride-service, during which he lives with his in-laws and
hunts for them.
Ju/’hoansi accept polygyny in principle. However, over 95% of all marriages are
monogamous and those that are not almost always involve men with only two
wives. Such husbands attain some degree of prestige, and tend to be elder men
who are renowned as healers. However, there is no regular gradation or
stratification on the basis of the number of wives a person acquires.
Husbands and wives cohabit with a moderate degree of informality and
cooperation. However, the man is usually substantially older than the woman
and, thereby, exercises greater domestic authority. Tasks are subdivided. Men are
responsible for hunting and for craft manufacture. Women specialize in
gathering, child care, and domestic chores. Divorce is easily obtained and is
common, as are second marriages. When a separation does occur, the children
remain with their mother.
Igbo marriage patterns
Igbo marriage institutions are also marked by extensive prohibitions on unions
between close relatives and the use of marriage obligations to interlink basic
social groups within numerous and widely scattered communities. Men and
women are forbidden to marry within their own patrilineage, and those of their
mother and their father’s mother. This regulation eliminates not only parallel
cousin marriage, but also cross cousins. As such, basic lineage groups do not
become placed into paired or circular exchange systems as they do in many other
societies with basic descent structures similar to the Ibo one. Alliances networks
do develop, but are more diffuse and temporary and tend to center on the pattern
of complementary filiation, in which a child develops special relationships within
his mother’s and father’s mother’s patrilineages. The pattern of lineage outmarriage
is mirrored by one of village exogamy. People must marry outside of
their community of origin, since all of its inhabitants usually belong to a common
patrilineal group. Moreover, in those case where separate lineages occupy the
same village or someone is born and raised in a foreign settlement the local
exogamy restriction still applies. The high ramified nature of the Igbo system is
difficult to explain. It may be related to the facts that in past centuries the
territorial system was highly expansionary and that a related pattern of
internecine warfare necessitated a mechanism for reducing hostilities. However,
Yanomano society has been subject to the same forces but has dealt with them
through community endogamy and paired lineage alliances based on bilateral
cross cousin marriage.
Endogamy is not a salient feature of Igbo marriage institutions, except to the
extent that a special class of ritual slaves, the osu, and people of free status,
dyala, are prohibited from intermarrying. The traditional social order also
included a wider category of domestic slaves, who dyala were allowed to and
frequently did takes as wives and husbands. In addition special statuses are
attributed to the children of men who had acquired prestigious “yam titles.” The
son of such a man is supposed to marry a first wife whose father has also taken a
yam title and may not include any other women of the same status in later
marriages. This in-marriage pattern does not generate a closed group as such. A
son may be given a special status because of his father’s efforts, but he does not
actually inherit the title, and, accordingly, his own son will not be obligated to
marry in a specific way.
Actually marriage choices and arrangements are generally organized by the
couples parents and, as in the Ju/’hoasi case, betrothal was traditionally arranged
when each intended partner was still a child or even at birth. Relations,
exchanges, and alliances between the prospective affines formed the main points
of the marriage decision. Bride wealth payments of substantial value were and
still are necessary features of all recognized marriages and are necessary to
establish any children of the union as their father’s descendants and members of
his patrilineage. Paternity as such derives from this transaction rather than the
biological act of conception. If a woman has children before she is married, they
become members of her group. If she becomes pregnant because of an extramarital
affair, the baby is still considered to be her legal husband’s child.
Similarly, a woman who has paid the bride price for another woman retains the
right of claiming any issue as her own.
Bride payments are made in cash rather than in the form of special valuables, as
they are in many areas of West Africa. A husband will receive help in acquiring
the necessary amount from his father, especially for first marriages. The sum is
determined by negotiations between the two families involved, although a fairly
standard sum is usually approximated. It is divided into instalments. The first is
advanced at betrothal. The second is made when the bride moves into the
husband’s compound, usually under the care of her new mother-in-law. The last
and most substantial payment occurs when the formal marriage ceremony takes
place. However, the full value is never really paid in full, and in-laws may
continue to make monetary and service demands through the life of their son-inlaw.
Among other functions, this aspect of the custom maintains the importance
of affinal relationships.
Upon receipt, the main bride payment is divided between a girl’s mother and
father. The former will usually use the funds to buy household goods to provision
the new household. The latter will use his receipts to acquire an additional wife
for himself or a first wife for a son. Thus, even though it is valued in terms of a
generalized currency, bride wealth tends to circulate within a contained sphere of
transaction. Some provision must be made for the possibility that the fund could
be reimbursed if a daughter became divorced or did not produce children for her
husband. This possibility, of course, gives the bride’s parents a vested interest in
the stability of her marriage and encourages them to help settle any marital
difficulties. If a man dies, his wives are inherited by the brother who succeeds
him. A son may alternatively inherit, but, of course, will not become married to
his own mother.
When a new bride is introduced into her husband’s village, she resides in her
mother-in-law’s hut and is placed under her authority. However, if she is a
second or subsequent wife she may be assigned to a senior co-wife. At the time
that she begins to have children, she is assigned a hut of her own. Her husband
will maintain a room of his own, especially if he has other wives, and each wife
will be responsible for providing for their own children, from their own efforts
and from resources and income provided by the male householder. General
efforts are divided between some farm and other domestic production that is
undertaken by the compound as a group and other economic activities that a
woman and her children carry out on their own account. In this arrangement, any
income that a woman earns by herself can be used at her own discretion without
her husband’s input or approval. General governance within the compound
involves male control in theory, but practical day-to-day domestic management is
allocated to the women. Senior generations assume authority over junior ones and
senior wives, in order of marriage, take precedence over junior ones. Women
born in the house, i.e., sisters, when they are present, rank above wives.
As intimated above, the traditional Igbo social order is fundamentally based on
polygyny and, prior to the influence of Western culture, most men aimed for and
attained control over several wives. Large households with many wives and
children established the social foundation for a man to assume the status of “big
compound head” and the economic basis for controlling a substantial productive
operation. With these assets, a man establishes himself as a key member and
important leader within his community. As in other polygynous systems, marital
and prestige statuses tend to correlate with age. Younger men require a long time
to amass the necessary bride wealth or to obtain it from their fathers and form a
cohort of bachelors in their twenties. Older men acquire several wives in the
course of their lifetimes. The correlation between polygyny and status is also
expressed in women’s social careers. They can acquire wives on their own
account and become “female husbands” if they pay the requisite bride price. The
incentive to do so may be infertility and their obligation to their own husbands to
have children. In this situation a woman will use her own resources to acquire a
co-wife and claim any issue as her own. Alternatively, a woman, especially if she
is very wealthy, will set up her own compound and take wives to establish and
advance her own status. In this case the wives involved will have affairs,
sometimes with men of the “husband’s” choosing, and add any children as
dependents of her house. They will accordingly form a minor lineage of which
she is the founder. Although this group has a female ancestor, subsequent descent
will be traced through males to form a patrilineal group.
Marriage in a Turkish Village
In comparison with the exogamous orientation of the previous two examples,
marriage patterns in rural Turkey are noticeably influenced by endogamous
preferences within villages and kinship groups. This difference clearly reflects
the different situation of a peasant community in which there is heavy pressure
on the land base and an inward focus social order. Other important marriage rules
and customs focus on the requirement that a prospective husband’s family pay a
substantial bride price in cash to his prospective father-in-law. Polygyny,
allowable in Islamic tradition but is prohibited in Turkish law, is actually evident
in the community, but at a very low incidence.
Data from the two locations show a uniform preference for marriage within the
community as well as an interesting contrast in rates of endogamy. Both villages
showed a similar level of in-marriage among women resident within the village,
67% for Sakaltutan and 63% for Elbasi, indicating an approximate ratio of two
women marrying and remaining within their natal village for every one who
married out. This outcome is a reflection of strong sense of solidarity within the
corporate peasant community, also apparent in the tendency for almost every man
to remain within his village over his lifetime or to return if he had migrated out
for wage work.
The contrast in endogamous patterns appears in the differential out-marriage of
women born in each community as opposed to its resident women. Sakalutan
women showed a low rate of remaining within their villages (approximately
50%) and were equally likely to marry men in other locations. The in-marriage
rate for Elbasi born women was considerably higher at almost 75%. This
discrepancy led to an imbalance in female migration rates. Sakaltutan
experienced a net loss of women. Almost twice as many women moved away as
moved in to marry. Elbasi experienced a net gain resulting from the reverse
situation. These demographic peculiarities reveal a pattern of hypergamy, which
is present along side of endogamy and reflects an acknowledged status difference
between communities. Elbasi was the richer location and could draw wives from
marginal settlements from families who sought more favourable domestic
conditions for their daughters as well as affinal contacts in prominent
communities. Thus the village with the most resources was able to better
actualize the endogamous ideal.
Sakaltutan residents demonstrated not only a preference for marriage within the
village but also for marriage between kin (almost 90%). They maintain a special
preference for selecting husbands and wives within agnatic lineages (40%) on the
basis of parallel cousin marriage. This pattern was directly related to a bride
wealth schedule, in which the social distance between the parties determined the
size of the marriage settlement. Accordingly, brothers and other lineage mates
exacted only nominal payments from each other and facilitate the intermarriage
of their children. More indirectly, lineage endogamy fostered the retention and
consolidation of family property within the group.
Generally, marriages are contracted between the fathers of the prospective
couple. However, sons and daughters are usually consulted in the decision and
their preferences will be accommodated. Consideration is give to family and
lineage endogamy and the relative social standing of the two families, which is
generally based on wealth. The size of the bride price is also a consideration. A
father may favour a situation, such as marriage to a close agnate, in which the
bride price is low. He may alternatively accept a high demand because it
demonstrates his social prominence. In this regard, bride price in the Turkish
village does not follow the same patterns or perform the same functions as it does
in Igbo society. The amount proscribed tends to differ with the social position
and social relationship between the two families involved and tends to validate
their status claims. A large sum reflects the groom’s father’s wealth and
generosity and the honour and value of the bride. Accordingly, the total fund and
the money expended on the wedding ceremony reflect a pattern of conspicuous
consumption. Nothing needs to be retained to fund subsequent marriages by the
recipient’s family. In fact a substantial portion will be invested supply a newly
married daughter with household implements that she will take to her new home.
If the marriage ends in divorce or a woman is barren, bride wealth payments do
not need to be refunded.
A new bride joins her husband’s domestic unit, usually headed by his father, and
is placed under the authority of her mother-in-law. In the rare cases of polygyny,
she will be located in a completely separate household, as co-wives and their
children will not tolerate each other’s presence. Generally, a wife becomes
incorporated into her husband’s group at the expense of her ties with her family
of origin, which may be located in a different quarter or even a different village.
Her activities in the household are segregated according to gender in terms of
task and location. According to Islamic rules of purdah, women are not supposed
to be seen in public and are regular sequestered in the private inner areas of the
compound. They are supposed to look after child-care and purely domestic
chores, and leave public activities and income earning responsibilities to their
husbands. However, poorer men need to put their wives to work in the fields to
make ends met and cannot easily conform to the traditions. This problem stands
as one of the reasons why fathers go against local endogamy preferences to place
their daughter’s in richer families, which the ideal gender divisions can be
maintained.
References
Bell, Duran. (1997). Defining marriage and legitimacy. Current anthropology 38:
237-253.
Blackwell, Debra L. (1998). Marital Homogamy in the United States: The
influence of individual and paternal education. Social science research 27:159–
188.
Chagnon, Napoleon. (1997). Yanomamo. 5th edition. New York: Harcourt Brace
College Publishers.
Farber, Bernard. (1968). Comparative kinship systems; a method of analysis.
New York: Wiley.
Gough, Kathleen. (1959). The Nayars and the definition of marriage. Journal of
the Royal anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Kuper, Adam. (1982). Wives for cattle. London: Routledge and Kegan-Paul
Lehrer, Evelyn L. (1998). Religious intermarriage in the United States:
determinants and trends. Social science research 27: 245–263.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1969). The elementary structures of kinship. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Lewis, Richard Jr. et al. (1997). Racial and nonracial factors that influence
spouse choice in Black/White marriages. Journal of Black Studies: Vol. 28: 6078.
Ottenheimer, Martin. (1996). Forbidden relatives: The American myth of cousin
marriage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ramu, G.N. (1993). Marriage and the family in Canada today. Second edition.
Scarborough, ON: Prentice Hall Canada.
Stone, Linda. (1997). Kinship and marriage. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Unit 10
Household and Domestic Organization
We have already touched on household composition and organization in our
treatment of descent and marriage, as both of these kinship components are
essential elements of domestic arrangements. We will now give fuller and more
focused attention to this essential institution and will investigate the variations in
basic residential patterns in different societies.
The household is a basic feature of domestic organization is every culture and is
generally an important social, economic, and even political and ritual institution
in most geographic settings. It is the core group in which most daily activities and
the more mundane processes of existence take place. In most non-industrial
societies, it constitutes the working unit of production as it did in Europe prior to
the 19th century. Even in the West, it is still responsible for basic consumption
and at least the early stages of child rearing. Accordingly, the household provides
the social context that most fundamentally moulds our personality and outlook. It
is also one of the most difficult concepts to adequately define and describe from a
cross-cultural perspective.
Study questions
A. Diagram and describe the following:
Neolocal family
Matrilocal family
Patrilocal family
Avunculocal family
Ambilocal family
Natlocal family
B. Essays
1. Look up the treatment of Statistics Canada’s treatment of household types at
http://www.statcan.ca/english/concepts/definitions/household01.htm#02.
Do you think that their consideration of domestic groups is totally objective or that there
is a cultural model behind their categorization? Elaborate on someof the implicit cultural
premises and discuss why and how it might be inappropriate to use their model for a
different cultural setting.
2. Look at the statistics about family/household composition in Canada based on
the 2001 census, release date October 22, 2002. What trends and patterns do
you observe? How can you explain them? What do they reveal about the
character of our society and how it is changing.
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/release/index.cfm
3. Discuss the problems of the corresidence of men and women of the same
lineage in a matrilineal society indicate how they are solved by matrilocality,
avunculocality, and natalocality. What problems and solutions doe each offer.
4. Compare and contrast Igbo and Turkish patterns of patrilocality and relate the
differences to other aspects of their kinship systems.
5. Discuss the concept of the domestic cycle and explain why it complicates the
classification of households into types
6. Discuss the concept of the matrifocal family and explain why it is important.
Identify some of the criticism concerning the formulation and application of
the concept and provide appropriate illustrations.
Study notes
Defining the household
We can begin our general consideration of the problems of the cross-cultural treatment of
the household by considering how it is conceptualized in Canada, specifically from the
perspective of our census compilation. Statistics Canada has been periodically faced with
the basic issues of how to define, identify, and describe the domestic units in our society.
It employs two terms: the household and the “census family” as follows:
1. The concept of Household applies to a person or group of person (sic) who occupy
(sic) the same dwelling …The household may consist of a family group, such as a census
family, of two or more families sharing a dwelling, of a group of unrelated persons or of
a person living alone (Statistic Canada2001a).
2. Census family is defined as a now-married couple, a common-law couple or a loneparent with a child or youth who is under the age of 25 and who does not have his or her
own spouse or child living in the household. Now-married couples and common-law
couples may or may not have such children and youth living with them (Statistic Canada
2001b).
Several assumptions are reflected in these definitions. Firstly, the household is considered
as pertaining to a “dwelling,” essentially a single, spatially delimited physical structure.
Secondly, households assume two forms: “family households” and “non-family”
households. The “family” here conforms to the census family construct and is based on
either the husband-wife or parent-child relationship either separately (i.e., childless
couples or single parent families) or combined (a couple with their children). Non-family
forms include single person units, roommates, and relatives who are not directly related
as husband and wife or parent and child. Thirdly, although not all households contain
families, all families must be located within a single household/dwelling.
Although it tries for objectivity, the Statistics Canada text reflects the influence of several
cultural premises and values that sometimes create problems for the understanding of our
own society. They are even more questionable when applied to other cultures. Three
major interrelated problems are evident:
1. The household can be conceptualized from both spatial and social perspectives, which
may define separate rather than coincident networks of interaction.
2. Household organized responds to two sets of forces each of which must be given due
consideration before an acceptable typology and description is possible. On one plain, its
structure is constructed from social values about family life. On another, it must cope
with ecological, demographic, economic realities that sometimes hinder people from
realizing their ideals.
3. Household organization at any one time must be understood as a point in a
more complex domestic cycle, which reflects the basic patterns in which domestic units
add members and grow.
The first point is represented in Canadian culture in situations in which happily and
successfully married couples live separately because they are employed in different
locations. Spatially, and according to the Statistics Canada definition, they form two
separate households: perhaps a single person unit and a lone parent one. However, from a
basic social perspective the two partners still function as a cohesive family and usually
form a single economic operation, holding joint assets and transferring incomes to meet
needs as they arise. As such, the domestic functions are more important than the spatial
arrangement in establishing the core unit for social analysis. A similar problem emerges
in the more general consideration of the matrifocal family, a concept we will consider
more fully in a later section. This is essentially a female-headed lone-parent family,
which has become the most common domestic form in many African American
communities. It is identified according to the standard census definition of a household as
a dwelling unit (or “housing unit” according to the US Census terminology). However, as
in the previous situation, household members are often critically linked to individuals in
other households with whom their share and exchange basic domestic responsibilities
such as childcare and financial support. Accordingly, one researcher has suggested that
the relevant unit of analysis for this arrangement is not the census household but the
“domestic network” which involves cooperation between many types of kin (Stack 1974).
A final illustration comes from a completely different cultural context, a group of
spatially dispersed Ga fish sellers, whom I studied in Ghana (Schwimmer 1976). This
group of women has long assumed a critical role in the distribution of one of the most
critical food items in the country and its single most important protein source. In the
traditional ocean fishery, before the advent of mechanized trawlers and packing plants,
the whole catch was harvested inshore with the use of canoes and nets. Men were
responsible for the actual fishing. Their wives took responsibility for processing and
selling in a string of marketplaces that extended up to a hundred miles into the hinterland.
To provide a stable organization for the distribution chain, agents of the larger fish
traders would establish themselves permanently in the upcountry markets to receive and
sell the stock that had been shipped from the coast. The supplier-agent relationship was
usually based on a mother-daughter tie or a similar kin relationship. The mother would be
responsible for all the financing and would theoretically receive all the profits after
providing commissions for her daughters. She would also accumulate assets in the
business, which they would eventually inherit to start independent business of their own.
The large trader would live permanently on the coast, usually with her husband. The
upcountry sellers might also have husbands on the coast and live away from them, get
their husbands to eventually join them, or would marry and cohabit in their towns of
residence. All the women in the system would keep the financing of their fishing
operation strictly separate from their conjugal accounts, even to the point of paying their
own husbands for the original catch. Thus from a spatial perspective, the residential
arrangement reflect the presence of several, widely dispersed and separate units, both
nuclear families containing cohabiting husbands and wives or single mother units.
However, the basic domestic economy suggests a mother daughter unit, which was in fact
also a strong social consolidation that was economically more important than and usually
outlasted the marital tie.
The second issue regards the cultural values structure domestic relationships and
the actualization of ideal forms in on-the-ground arrangements. The Statistic
Canada definition clearly follows the nuclear family ideal and would treat
alternative domestic forms, especially those based on extended family ties, as
add-ons, specifically “non-family persons living with relatives” in “family
household.” From an anthropological perspective, such residential structures
must be identified and understood by the rules by which such relatives are added
to the household as they are born, mature, marry, have their own children, and
age. Accordingly, the unit of description and analysis must be understood in
terms of the main principles of domestic formation and composition. Households
are not mere physical assemblages but the result of rules that create them. In this
regard we will investigate a range of postmarital residence rules that specify
where a couple will live after marriage and often lead to extended rather than
nuclear family patterns as the core arrangement. For example, households in
Turkish villages are formed according to a very strict patrilocal rule that a son
must live in his natal household until his father dies. This stipulation means that,
when a man marries, his wife will normal move in with his family and raise her
children under her mother-in-law’s roof along with her sisters-in-law. Although
residence rules are uniformly enforced according to cultural norms, they are not
always neatly observable in actual cases. One survey of Turkish village domestic
organization indicated that over 70% of all households included only nuclear
family members. This curious condition was not the result of a deviation from
patrilocality. It was just an accident product of the large death rate of men during
World War I. Since their fathers had uniformly died at an early age, a generation
of men began their domestic careers as heads of independent households.
The final problem of household definition and classification stems from the fact
that a household is a dynamic unit that changes over time, often in relation to
consistently applied but complex rules. Accordingly, a researcher might record
families as belonging to a specific type without realizing that they may be
occupying a stage that will be subject to unobserved principles and unanticipated
changes. For example, many of the earliest studies of urbanization in Africa
suggested that a nuclear family pattern was replacing the extended family
households that were prevalent in traditional rural societies. However, those
carried out a generation later observed a high incidence of large and complex
domestic units. Clearly, the first migrants to the city were young and newly
married and had formed small families with spouses and young children. As they
aged, their children married and had children of their own, but, rather than
forming a second generation of separate householders, they tended to remain
resident with their parents, according to their central cultural dictates.
Residence rules
Our discussion has indicated that an appropriate cross-cultural identification and
typology of residence forms is too complex to be neatly accomplished.
Anthropologists have generally tried to cut through some of the methodological
problems by focusing on rule-based descriptions and isolating a fixed number of
post-marital residence rules to classify and analyze household structures.
These cultural norms specify where a couple should reside after marriage and,
accordingly, influence household organization and size. Although seemingly
straightforward, residence rules have complicated consequences and must be
understood in terms of the broader social structure, the domestic cycle, and the
ecological, demographic, and economic forces that can often interfere with their
expression. Anthropologists have identified six basic rules and household forms.
1. Neolocal residence, where both spouses leave their families of origin and jointly
form a new household, which develops as nuclear family.
2. Patrilocal residence, where, upon marriage, a man must remain in his father’s
household while his wife leaves her family to move in with him. As children are born,
they are added to the paternal unit. The result is a patrilocal extended family, in which
three or more generations of related men live together to form a shallow patrilineage.
An alternate designation, virilocal, refers to a simpler rule that a wife must move to
her husband’s residence, which is not necessarily with his father.
3. Matrilocal residence, where, upon marriage, a woman remains in her mother’s
household while her husband leaves his family to move in with her. As children are
born, they are added to the maternal unit. The result is a matrilocal extended family,
in which three or more generations of related women live together to form a shallow
matrilineage. An alternate designation, uxorilocal, refers to a simpler rule that a
husband must move to his wife’s residence, which is not necessarily with her mother.
4. Avunculocal residence actually involves two residential changes. A household
begins with a virilocal rule, placing a married woman in her husband’s household,
where their children are raised. Upon reaching maturity, men relocate to their mother’s
brother’s household, the actual avunculocal move. The result is an extended family
consisting of a man, his sister’s sons, and all of their wives and young children.
5. Natalocal residence, where each partner remain with his and her own family of
origin after marriage. If children remain in their mother’s household, the usual
situation, it will develop as a domestic matrilineage to which all male and female
members belong.
6. Ambilocal residence, which allows a married couple to decide whether to
join either the husband or wife’s household of origin. According to the choice
made in the previous generations, they may reside with either spouse’s father
or mother. The result is an ambilocal extended family.
Neolocal residence
Neolocal residence rules form the basis of most Western domestic structures.
Upon marriage, each partner is expected to move out of his or her parents’
household and establish a new residence, thus forming the core of an independent
nuclear family. As each generation moves out of parental households, marries,
and has children, new neolocal households of nuclear families are formed.
Figure 10.1 Neolocal Residence
Neolocal residence and nuclear family domestic structures are found in societies
where geographical mobility is important. In Western societies, they are
consistent with the frequent moves necessitated by choices and changes within a
supply and demand regulated labor market. They are also prevalent in hunting
and gathering economies, where nomadic movements are intrinsic to the
subsistence strategy.
Patrilocal residence
Patrilocal residence is structured by a rule that a man remains in his father’s
house after reaching maturity and brings his wife to live with his family after
marriage. Daughters, conversely, move out of their natal household and into their
husbands’ residences when they marry. As a couple’s children mature, the next
generation of sons bring in their wives to form an extended patrilocal household.
Figure 10.2 Patrilocal Residence
Patrilocal extended families assume their functions in terms of joint ownership of
productive domestic resources, usually under control of a household head. They
usually work together as a unit of production in a domestic enterprise, which is
typically farming, but can also include trading or even specialized manufactures.
Unlike nuclear family patterns, the residential patrilocal family grows with each
generation and may include dozens of members. As household size increases, the
organization of working groups becomes unwieldy and domestic conflicts
increase. These problems lead to an eventual division or segmentation of the
household and the beginning of a new domestic cycle for each component group.
Patrilocality is of course found in patrilineal societies and emerge according to
the same forces, especially in context where men within a family need to
cooperate for property management, subsistence production, or political
representation. It is by far the most common residential form in the ethnographic
record. We shall look at two examples: Turkish village and Igbo households. A
comparison will show that specific arrangements representing a supposedly
uniform type present some interesting differences.
Patrilocal Residence in a Turkish Village
The two most important units of Turkish peasant social organization are the
corporate village community and the household. Domestic organization conforms
to a classic pattern of patrilocal residence in which adult sons remain as
dependents in their father’s household until his death and women move to their
husbands’ households upon marriage. The result is a patrilocal extended family,
which, in its full extent, includes an elder household head and his wife or, much
less commonly, wives, his adult sons and daughters-in-law, and his
grandchildren. Their size may total as many as 20 people.
The unit begins as a nuclear family. In the first generation of children, daughters
move out to marry. Sons remain into adulthood and bring in their wives. As the
new couple has children an extended patrilocal household is formed.
Figure 10.3 Turkish Household Formation
The domestic economy is controlled and coordinated by the male household
head, who owns the farm land, domestic animals, and other family assets. Sons
work under their father’s direction and must turn over all their income to him.
This responsibility applies even to income they may earn outside of household
activities, including wages from migrant labor. Control over sons is an important
source of personal wealth and status, and heads of large households are especially
prominent in the village hierarchy.
Except for unmarried daughters, the women of the household affinally related to
each other and for the most part are under the authority of their mother-in-law.
They are generally confined to the inner rooms of the house, where, according to
the rules of purdah, they cannot be seen by men who are unrelated to them. This
restriction limits their ability to go out in public and to visit with members of the
natal families. In-laws and neighbors constitute the main context for regular
social interaction. Men tend to spend much of their time in gender restricted
“guest rooms,” which are built within the wealthier households. Women past the
age of child-bearing have more freedom of movement and may even make
regular appearance to the guest rooms.
The integrity and importance of a residential family develops only during the
course of the household head’s lifetime. Upon his death, land and other property
is divided equally among all his sons, and they each form a new domestic unit
with their wives and children forming a core for the renewal of the cycle. The
new households are often located in the same neighborhood as the parental home,
and close relations among brothers continues after separation.
Figure 10.4 Turkish Household Segmentation
Turkish law and Islamic traditions specify that daughters have inheritance rights,
but these are rarely upheld in village inheritance disputes. Accordingly, most
property passes through generations of fathers and sons along a patrilineal line.
However, the continual subdivision of property in each generation mitigates against the
permanent accumulation of great amounts of wealth within individual families.
Exceptions to the patrilocal rule sometimes occur because of tension between
fathers and sons or among brothers. The most common source of family conflict
is a household head’s remarriage. Although polygyny is rare, it does occur, and
men almost always take new wives after a divorce or bereavement. On these
occasions sons of a first or former wife usually move out to form new households
and are effectively disinherited.
A patrilocal residence rule does not mean that all or even most households are
patrilocal at any one time. In fact in Sakaltutan, one of the sample villages in the
study, only a quarter of the residential were patrilocal and only a third of the
inhabitants were living patrilocally. The majority actually lived in nuclear family
settings. This pattern was mainly a result of the domestic cycle and a
demographic peculiarity of a high mortality for men over 40. Thus there is an
empirical or statistical norm that people reside in nuclear family households,
which contrasts to the standard cultural norm that adult males should reside with
their fathers. From the perspective of the domestic cycle rather than a single point
in time, however, almost every villager will reside in a patrilocal extended family
during some period of his or her life.
Igbo patrilocality
The Igbo residential system follows the same general rule as the Turkish one:
sons remain with their father after marriage, usually until his death. However,
other aspects of social system are also expressed in the domestic organization and
lead to a very different structure and dynamic. The system of polygyny and the
resulting bond between siblings descended from the same mother are particularly
important.
In the traditional Igbo arrangement, men attempted to develop large households
in order to gain prestige and influence within the community. A household head
as such received the important designation of ezi, and the head of a “big
compound” was considered a major leader in village affairs. As in the Turkish
system, the lifelong residential attachment of sons formed an important
mechanism for increasing household size. However the Igbo utilized the
additional principle of polygyny to substantially extend the capacity of their
domestic unit. Unlike the Turkish system, a man’s second and subsequent wives
remained resident in his compound to provide an expanded base for him to
acquire dependents. Each was given a separate area within the larger structure in
which they received a hut for personal use and a surrounding area where their
grown sons and daughters-in-law would eventually set up their own huts.
Figure 10.5 Igbo Household Formation
The husband might have a separate hut, which would primarily be used as a
reception area, but he would normally sleep in one of his wives rooms according
to a scheduled rotation. Each wife’s complex formed a separate social and
economic unit, as well as a spatial one. It was designated as an umunne as
apposed to the umunna, which covered the larger compound. All the umunna
members would cooperate in some joint tasks, usually the cultivation of “men’s
crops,” including yams and oil palms. The “women’s crops” were the
responsibility of each wife on her own. The head of the household would share
the proceeds from joint production among his wives, but each woman was
allowed autonomous control of her own produce and any income it yielded. She
would usually use her resources to provide for her own children within the
umunne, for whom she held the primary care and feeding responsibilities. The
separate status of the umunne was also important for the unity of full siblings,
which formed the basis for the dynamic of household segmentation.
At the death of a compound head, his sons could reorganize the domestic group
in a number of ways. As in the Turkish case, the assets could be divided among
all the brothers, each of whom established a new unit. However, at least some of
them would often remain together. On occasions half-brothers would be able to
cooperate and leave the unit completely intact under the leadership of the eldest,
the okpara, the father’s main heir. More often, a group of full brothers, who
constituted a single umunne, would separate from the other umunne within the
compound.
Figure 10.6 Igbo Household Segmentation
The senior branch, headed by the okpara would usually occupy the existing
homestead and the others would general be responsible for founding new ones. In
this scenario, the new domestic unit would begin from a different base than the
one first introduced in Figure 10.5. A group of brothers (only 2 in the diagram)
and their wives, rather than a single person, now formed the elder generation. The
first-born brother assumed the title of ezi and the corresponding ritual, political,
and economic rights and responsibilities. He would hold authority over his junior
brothers and their children as well. Subsequent generations would develop by
accretions through marriage and patrilocal residence, as the same way as a
household started by a single individual.
The structure of polygyny and sibling unity in traditional Igbo society created
households that were quite different in size, organization, and dynamics than the
Turkish patrilocal pattern. They were larger with a more complex internal
structure. For particularly prominent men, their scale could be increased even
further through the addition of sister’s sons, with whom they maintain a special
relationship, slaves, and other economic dependents such as apprentices and the
number of residents could exceed a hundred.
Household dynamics also had an implication for those of the wider descent
system. Typical domestic division between groups of full brothers established the
basis for segmentation within the lineage system. As a separate compound, each
sibling group would become a new minor lineage. (Paradoxically, this patrilineal
segment is actually establish by descent from a female ancestor.) All of the new
compounds that formed from the defunct one would become constituted as a new
major lineage.
The contrast between Igbo and Turkish patrilocal patterns are representative of
general differences between the African and Eurasian social orders. It can in part
be explained according to differences in the basic conditions of tribal and peasant
societies. In the former case, the open availability of land and the land intensive
production regime put a premium on the direct domestic control of labor.
Accordingly, large households tend to form. The only limit to their size is the
complexity of managing them, which is partly met by the Igbo system of
delegating responsibility to domestic sub-units. In the later case, land is in short
supply and households have fixed allotments that cannot be expanded.
Accordingly, domestic units cannot growth beyond a fairly low threshold.
Relatively small households will be easily organized through direct management
by the head of the family.
Matrilocal residence
Matrilocality can take on a number of forms, some, but not all of which occur
within matrilineal societies. Non-standard cases include societies with bride
service, in which a man moves in with his wife’s family and eventually sets up on
his own. In this arrangement he will be joining her father’s group and, as such,
the system should be termed uxorilocal, i.e., living with the wife’s family but not
necessarily with her mother’s. The more usual system is technically designated as
uxori-matrilocal. The residence rule requires that a woman remain in her
motherσ household after reaching maturity and bring her husband to live with her
family after marriage. Sons, conversely, move out of their natal household and
into their wives= groups. As the couple’s children mature, daughters in the next
generation bring in their husbands to form an extended matrilocal household.
Figure 10.7 Matrilocal Residence
In this arrangement, the females in the house all belong to the same matrilineage,
but the men belong to different ones.
Residence of matrilineal kin under different residence systems
Residence rule
Coresident matrilineal kin
Male
Female
Matrilocal
X
Avunculocal
X
Natalocal
X
X
The dispersion of men from a single matrilineage into their wives' households
creates something of a logistic problem for the exercise of male familial
authority, which is quite significant in many matrilineal societies. For that reason,
matrilocality is often found where societies have nucleated settlement
arrangements, so that men residing in different households can easily
communicate and interact with one another. For example, the Hopi of the
southwestern United States were matrilineal and matrilocal. Households were
founded through a core line of women, whose husbands regularly resided with
them (Egan 1950:29). Women exercised a good deal of domestic authority, since
they owned the houses, land, and the basic crops that supported and fed their
families. However, men were allowed to claim ownership of any livestock their
raised. They also held the most important ritual and judicial offices within the
settlement. Several contexts required men to participate in matrilineal affairs. The
disciplinary role in the household was allocated to mother’s brothers rather than
fathers, so frequent avuncular visits were required. Brothers regularly undertook
joint economic projects. These necessary interactions were facilitated by the Hopi
settlement pattern, which traditionally clustered the population into a massive
concatenation of rooms, housing up to a thousand people. Thus, while they lived
in separate residences, the men of a single lineage could regularly meet on short
notice to deal with common concerns.
The Hopi case raises a question of how matrilocality affects marriage possibilities. It
quite clearly favours village endogamy, since men cannot retain regular lineage contacts
if they marry into different locality. It also discourages polygyny, as the possession of
several wives would create a considerable problem of maintaining conjugal relations in
several separate households. Accordingly, Hopi men are monogamous, although they do
divorce and remarry quite frequently. Other matrilocal societies have found ways of
allowing men to have more than one wife. Among the Bemba of central Africa men
reside matrilocally after their first marriage, but bring subsequent wives into their first
partner’s household (Richards 1950:227). Among the Manangkabu of Indonesia,
who are perhaps more matrifocal than matrilocal, polygynous husbands circulate
among their wives’ households (Tanner:1974 143).
Avunculocal residence
Avunculocal residence is generated from three separate rules.
1. Women take up residence with their husbands after marriage, and the
couple’s children reside with them until adulthood.
2. Upon reaching maturity, sons are expected to move out of their parental home
into their mothers’ brothers’ households to which they will bring their wives.
3. Daughters continue to follow a virilocal pattern, by moving to their husbands’
households after marriage.
Figure 10.8 Avunculocal Residence
Avunculocal residence is a common pattern in matrilineal societies, as it brings
the adult male members of a matrilineage into a single residential unit thus
reducing the problem of male dispersion that is present in matrilocal arrangements. Of
course, the women of the group become separated from one another.
Natalocal residence
Natalocal residence is structured by a rule that, upon marriage, both the husband
and wife continue to reside with their families of origin. Children usually reside
with the mother and remain in their natal household throughout their lives.
In the initial stages of household development a sister and brother get married,
but each resides in his or her original household, as do their spouses. In the next
generations, children continue reside with their mothers and mothers’ brothers.
Figure 10.9 Natalocal Residence
The main outcome of the natalocal rule is that both males and females of the
same matrilineage continue to reside in a common residential unit. This
residential pattern is fairly uncommon and is almost always found in matrilineal
societies.
The exclusion of husbands and wives from each other’s household imposes
obvious problems for conceiving and raising a family. The Nayar, who as we
have seen follow a natalocal arrangement, the solution is almost total dismissal of
fatherhood and the assignment of male authority to brothers and mothers’
brothers. Among the Akan, where natalocality is practiced along with several
alternative residence rules fatherhood is highly significant, conjugal and paternal
relations are facilitate by the settlement nucleation (Fortes 1950). The population
is concentrated into fairly large towns, so spouses live within easy walking
distance and regularly spend nights together in one or the other’s household.
Wives are responsible for cooking for their husbands and may often send the
children to deliver his meal if they are otherwise occupied. Thus husbands and
wives have important mutual responsibilities that place them in a common
domestic unit but one that has no single physical location.
Matrifocality
The residential systems we have identified cover a broad range of possible
domestic forms, which are evident in numerous social systems around the world.
However, they do not cover all the eventualities. Notable exceptions include
some New Guinea societies, in which unrelated males reside together in a central
“men’s house,” separately from their wives, Nyakusa “age villages,” where
young boys live in a group camp separately from their parents, and the Israeli
kibbutz, where unrelated couples live together and children are reared in a
communal childcare facility. A much more widespread phenomenon is
represented in the matrifocal family, in which the fundamental unit is simply a woman
and her children. This form is often viewed as typical of people whose ways of life are
determined by poor employment opportunities and low incomes and has been identified
as a salient feature of the “culture of poverty.” It is also becoming an increasing frequent
family form in many postindustrial societies, including Canada. Despite its apparent
simplicity, understanding and explaining its forms and functions have presented a
challenge to anthropological analysis.
The term matrifocal, or its synonym, matricentric, simply means mother or female
centered and can be understood to designate a domestic form in which only a mother and
her dependent children are present or significant. Adult males in the capacity of husbands
and fathers or of brothers and mothers brothers are either absent or, in some formulations,
present but marginal to family life. The term should not be confused with matrilocality,
where husbands are present in their wives households or with natalocality, where brothers
assume male domestic responsibilities. Moreover, the arrangement is not particularly
associated with matrilineality nor is it the product of an obvious residence rule. It is
prevalent in communities in which men are not able to meet domestic commitments
because of unemployment or poverty. Major examples have been drawn from Latin
American and Caribbean squatter’s settlements and American Black ghettos. An
incidence in Canada of 20% of all families with children is mainly attributable to a high
divorce rate. A small but notable component of this figure results from women who have
children out of wedlock, usually by accident but sometimes by choice.
Anthropological treatment of matrifocality reflects many of the classificatory and
explanatory problems that we have identified for household analysis and
illustrated in some of our case material. Major controversies have been initiated
over whether this residence form:
1. can be understood as an expression of deeply rooted cultural values or simply
an undesirable accommodation to economic hardship,
2. adequately takes into account the inter-residential networks of aid that are
often highly significant in very poor communities, and
3. adequately represents the domestic cycle.
Carol Stack’s work on residence, family, and kinship patterns in a Black
American ghetto, which she calls “the Flats,” provides a cogent analysis of the
matrifocal concept in light of these various issues (Stack 1970, 1974).
The Flats is an exclusively Black and poor neighborhood in a large mid-western
American city. Unemployment is high, incomes are low, and many families are
provided by the welfare department. This source is mainly available to women
with children, and, accordingly, men’s contributions to family support are often
marginal. Marriages or more informal conjugal unions are quite fragile and often
end in separation. Women will often have their first child out of wedlock in their
teenage years and then go through a series of liaisons with boyfriends and
husbands, acquiring responsibility for children by different fathers. The erratic
presence of males leads to a statistical pattern of matrifocal households, at least
according to the census definition. Stack actually provides no statistics on the
prevalence of this form, but other surveys of Black ghettos have indicated an
incidence of approximately two thirds of all households. However, the frequency
hides the fact that the actual household composition is a stage of a domestic cycle
where women regularly cohabit with men when they can develop relative stable
relationships or sometimes combine to form larger kinship units. In addition,
children may be raised in households other than their mother’s. In one fifth of the
cases, resident caregivers were other relatives. These included the maternal
grandmother, who regularly assumed the status for the children of teenage. Other
older female relatives as well as the relatives of the child’s acknowledged father
would also foster children for varying periods of time. In general this process was
episodic. Except for mothers who became permanent “mamas” to their immature
daughters’ children, a child might be returned a natural mother, who had, in the
interim, found a job or established a stable conjugal relationship. As such much
more than the 20% of families in the sample had been involved in boarding their
sons and daughters with other kin.
The exchange of children between households followed a broader pattern of
“swapping,” in which relatives with gave goods and cash to people in need on a
regular basis. This was basically a system of reciprocities in which donors would
eventually receive a return from their contributions when the tables were turned
and they fell on hard times themselves. Contributions to childcare included not
only full fostering but lesser services as well, e.g., regularly providing meals,
babysitting, or simply entertaining or teaching an important skill. Aid of various
sorts came primarily from mothers and sisters but also from male kin, especially
brothers. Husbands, ex-husbands, or other men who accepted paternal
responsibility would also help out, as would their kin. As such, the household by
itself reflected only a fragment of the full system of support, which Stack
identifies as the “domestic network.” This complex of kin ties, rather than the
physical household, forms the effective domestic unit. Its members usually
choose to reside in close proximity to each other to facilitate the communication
and exchange on which the system is dependent.
Figure 10.10 Patterns of Residence and Domestic Cooperation within Viola
Jackson’s Kindred: 1945 - 1948 and
Figure 10.11 Patterns of Residence and
Domestic Cooperation within Viola Jackson’s Kindred: 1958 – 1965
The major conclusion of Stack’s identification and analysis of the domestic
network is that the matrifocal concept is inappropriate because it masks the more
significant patterns of inter-household cooperation and changes through the
domestic cycle.
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