Remarks and Inventions

Skeptical Essays about Kinship

Rodney Needham

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138878709
• eBook ISBN: 9781136536120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume scrutinizes the questions of conceptualization, method and history in the fields of kinship, social anthropology and structuralism. It puts forward a radical revision of the conventional approaches and criteria. Exploring analysis and method in the disparity between relative age and kinship categories as means of social classification, the book makes theoretical readjustments, largely inspired by the precepts of Wittgenstein.
Originally published in 1971.

1
Remarks on the Analysis of Kinship and Marriage

‘What is theory in musical composition? – Hindsight. It doesn’t exist. There are compositions from which it is deduced.’

IGOR STRAVINSKY

I. INTRODUCTION

To consider the analysis of kinship and marriage leads at once into a paradox.

‘Kinship is to anthropology what logic is to philosophy or the nude is to art’, declares Robin Fox; ‘it is the basic discipline of the subject’ (1967: 10). Certainly it is a well-established part of the subject: Lafitau began the comparative study of unilineal descent and classi-ficatory terminologies as long ago as 1724, and Morgan inaugurated in 1871 what has since become a recognized topic of academic investigation and theory. The syllabuses of university instruction in anthropology now invariably include kinship; no textbook is thought adequate without some treatment of it; and in all the variety of examinations in anthropology it occupies a central and unavoidable position. You cannot gain a certificate of competence as a social anthropologist without demonstrating a command of kinship theory, and it is expected of most anthropologists that they will make some contribution to it. Indeed, most of those who have made great names in anthropology – e.g., Rivers, Kroeber, Radcliffe-Brown, Lévi-Strauss – have gained their prominence largely by their publications on kinship. If there is one topic, therefore, which is indispensable to social anthropology, and which defines what social anthropologists essentially do, it would appear to be kinship. Here, if anywhere in the subject, we should expect to find discipline, methodical rigour, and theoretical advance.

This much is, I suppose, a standard account of the matter; but an inside look at what really goes on reveals a curious situation. The majority of students of anthropology, and their teachers, are apprehensive and uncertain about kinship, and they have as little to do with it as they can get away with. Examination scripts seldom show much enthusiasm or sound knowledge, and the professionals often seem not to be particularly good at the practical analysis of kinship systems. There is a comparative paucity of published works on the topic, and progress in understanding kinship systems has been sporadic and slight. The current theoretical position is obscure and confused, and there is little clear indication of what future developments we can expect or should encourage.

In view of the constant professional attention extending over roughly a century, and a general improvement in ethnographic accounts, this is a remarkably unsatisfactory situation in what is supposed to be a basic discipline. Obviously, after so long a time, and so much field research, it is not just facts that we need. Something more fundamental seems to have gone wrong. What we have to look for, perhaps, is some radical flaw in analysis, some initial defect in the way we approach the phenomena. Edmund Leach has already explored this possibility, in his salutary address ‘Rethinking Anthropology’ (1961a: 1–27), but there is little sign that even his verve, clarity, and ingenuity have yet had much effect on received ideas and ordinary practice. What I want to do here, then, is to resume Leach’s iconoclasm and to look with him for a way out of our present uncertainties.

A possible diagnosis may be that the trouble lies not so much in the substantive study of institutions of kinship and marriage as in our conceptual premisses, and most decisively in the way we conceive the classification of phenomena. The failings basically responsible for the present situation are, I shall argue, firstly what Wittgenstein has called ‘a craving for generality’ (1958: 17), and secondly the lingering delusion of a natural science of society, a conception which has led to a kind of analysis that has produced few useful results. You will already recognize in these contentions an echo of Leach’s strictures on ‘butterfly-collecting’ and on biased premisses. For that matter, what I too want to press for is precisely to ‘take each case as it comes’ (Leach 1961a: 10). But I think there is a conceptual therapy by means of which we can prepare ourselves better to do so, and for this purpose I suggest that we should turn back to Lowie’s Culture and Ethnology (1917) and to Wittgenstein’s Blue Book (written in 1933–4, published 1958). You will see therefore that I cannot pretend to be telling you anything very new. But since it has taken me a long time to see the relevance and the useful effect of views published decades ago, I suppose there will be others to whom it will be helpful if I rehearse them on this occasion.

My argument is presented in the form of remarks on a series of topics, not as a progressive exposition, and without any large apparatus of scholarly and ethnographical references. I adopt this means for two chief reasons. The first is that I have already published enough work on kinship and marriage to excuse me presenting any detailed demonstration of what I think ought to be done by way of analysis. This permits me to make my points in a cursory style which may stick more readily in the memory. The second reason is that a fuller citation of pronouncements on kinship uttered by many of my colleagues would have to be rather dissentient, whereas my intention is to be positive. For the most part, then, I shall cite only those with whose opinions I agree, and not even many of these. The essential is not to tax you with facts or with academic controversy, but to concentrate on the concepts that we are professionally inclined to employ when we analyse institutions of kinship and marriage.

I shall deal, rapidly, with the notions of kinship, marriage, descent, terminology, and incest.

II. KINSHIP

There has been a fair amount of discussion about what ‘kinship’ really is. My own view is that much of this debate is pretty scholastic and inconsequential, and I shall not recapitulate any of it or embark on yet another definitional exercise. Let me simply adopt the minimal premiss that kinship has to do with the allocation of rights and their transmission from one generation to the next.

These rights are not of any specific kind but are exceedingly various: they include most prominently rights of group membership, succession to office, inheritance of property, locality of residence, type of occupation, and a great deal else. They are all, however, transmissible by modes which have nothing to do with the sex or genealogical status of transmitter or recipient. Certainly they have no intrinsic connexion with the facts, or the cultural idioms, of procreation. It is true that the possession and exercise of these rights is defined by reference to the sex of the persons thus related; but then so is the division of labour in the simpler societies, yet we do not for that reason think this method of distinguishing statuses so remarkable as to deserve a special designation and to call for a distinct type of theory.

These jural systems and their component statuses can be genealogically defined. Why this should be so is a fundamental question that has never been properly resolved, and I cannot take it up here. Let us merely admit the fact. It is certainly a very convenient fact, but the method of description does not entail any particular property in what is described. The circumstance that two societies can be described by the same means does not argue any significant similarity, either sociologically or semantically, between them. Still less does it mean that the relationships in question are genealogical or that they are so conceived by the actors.

What information is given, then, by the report that an institution has to do with ‘kinship’? Nothing, really, about social facts. For the label designates no distinct type of phenomena; it provides no clue to comprehension; and it does not indicate the kind of analysis that will be appropriate. The use of the word ‘kinship’ is to be found, rather, in the multiple connotations of common usage, in the organization of ethnographical accounts, and in the conventions of academic discourse. When an ethnographer gives one chapter the heading ‘Kinship’, and another the heading ‘Sacrifice’, we have a rough preliminary idea of the different matters they will describe. It may well turn out, though, that there is a close connexion between them, just the same, and very likely neither will be comprehensible without the other. Similarly, if a colleague tells you that he is interested in kinship, his choice of phrase implies that he could have stated instead that he was keen on subsistence economies or primitive law, and the word he actually employs does indeed give you a vague idea of his theoretical bent, the books he has presumably read, and the kind of technical conversation he is likely to engage you in. In this case as well, however, it cannot be inferred that his interest in kinship will be unconnected with economics or law; and in fact, of course, it will probably turn out that he has to deal with these topics also and that they in turn demand a recourse to kinship.

I am not denying, therefore, that the word ‘kinship’ is useful; and still less should I wish to try to reform our professional vocabulary by narrowing the definition of the word or, on the other hand, by urging that it be abandoned altogether. What I am saying is that it does not denote a discriminable class of phenomena or a distinct type of theory. We are tempted to think that it must have this specificity, because it is a substantive and because it is an instrument of communication. But it has an immense variety of uses, in that all sorts of institutions and practices and ideas can be referred to by it. Segmentary organization, section-systems, widow inheritance, polyandry, teknonymy, divorce rates, and so on – all these topics and very many more can be subsumed under the general rubric of kinship. In other words, the term ‘kinship’ is what Wittgenstein calls an ‘odd-job’ word (1958: 43–4), and we only get into trouble when we assume that it must have some specific function.

In a way, it could be said that the trouble is not very serious, since when we actually investigate an institution, or compare ways of explaining it, we do not generally speak of kinship at all. Indeed, this common circumstance demonstrates that the word has in fact no analytical value. On the other hand, anthropologists do often get into trouble, of a timewasting and discouraging sort, when they argue about what kinship really is or when they try to propound some general theory based on the presumption that kinship has a distinct and concrete identity.

To put it very bluntly, then, there is no such thing as kinship; and it follows that there can be no such thing as kinship theory.

III. MARRIAGE

Very similar considerations apply to the concept of marriage and to the theoretical propositions of anthropologists about marriage.

I need not say much about this topic because the case has been well made by Leach: ‘marriage is ... “a bundle of rights”; hence all universal definitions of marriage are vain’ (1961a: 105). I think there is no refutation of this argument. What I should like to re-emphasize, simply, is Leach’s conclusion that ‘the nature of the marriage institution is partially correlated with principles of descent and rules of residence’ (108). Perhaps it is not so much correlated, though, as it is defined in any particular instance by what we divisively call the ‘other institutions’ of the society. It is not only jural institutions, either, that we have to take into account, but moral and mystical ideas as well, and these in an unpredictable and uncontrollable variety. The comparison of marriage in different societies needs therefore to be contextual, and ultimately ‘total’ in a Maussian sense, if we are to be sure that we understand what we are trying to compare.

In this connexion, the designation of marriage has a special interest. Ethnographers do not on the whole report the indigenous terms for marriage, or investigate the connotations of such terms, yet we need not look far to see that these may be revealing. For instance, the modern German Ehe derives, from MHG ē, ēwe, Jaw, statute, and its recent narrower meaning merely singles out marriage as one of the most important of jural institutions. The English ‘marriage’ and French mariage, however, come from the Latin marītus, husband, which is usually referred to IE *mer-*mor-, represented by various words meaning ‘young man, young woman’. It is at once evident that even two European traditions can express, etymologically, two quite distinct kinds of ideas about marriage. More than this, there may not be any designation for marriage at all. In classical Greek, as Aristotle observed, ‘the union of man and woman has no name’ (Politics, 1, 3, 2). Even though marriage was essential for the preservation of the ‘houses’ (οἶκοι) which were the constituent elements of the Athenian city-state, there was no single word which could be taken to stand for ‘marriage’ – nor, for that matter, were there words in classical Greek which stood for ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ (Harrison 1968: 1). And to take a contrasted enough civilization, whereas the Penan of Borneo do have words for husband (banen) and wife (rẽdu, do), they too have no word for marriage. One wonders, therefore, how many other societies make no lexical recognition of that institution which has so commonly been regarded in anthropology as categorically essential and universal.

As soon, however, as we adopt some technical definition of marriage, whether or not it is held to be universal, we run the risk of leaving out of account precisely that feature (e.g., chastity, allegiance, life-giving) which in one or other of the societies compared is in fact central to the institution. This is of course a familiar quandary in comparative studies, but I think it is a question whether its lessons have everywhere sunk fully home. At any rate, large-scale correlations are still attempted, and these can be carried out only by means of fairly strict definitions which are nevertheless presumed to be widely applicable, but the stricter they are the less likely it is that they will cope adequately with social reality.

Once again, though, I am not denying that ‘marriage’ is a very useful word. On the contrary, it has all the resources of meaning which its long history has conferred upon it, and we should now find it hard to communicate without these. For that matter, it is a more indispensable word than ‘kinship’ is, and it directs us more precisely to an identifiable kind of relationship. If an ethnographer sets out to tell us about marriage, we have at least a preliminary indication that he is not going to focus directly on dam-building. But I choose this latter example, all the same, precisely because Onvlee has shown that in eastern Sumba, where marriage is prescribed with the matri-lateral cross-cousin, you cannot understand the organization of dam-building unless you first understand the norms of marriage (Onvlee 1949). Conversely, you cannot understand the marriage institution without knowing the forms of co-operation which follow from it. There are also cosmological grounds to both aspects of Sumbanese social life: as Hocart says in another context, ‘There is much more to the cross-cousin system than the classification of relatives; there is a whole theology . . .’ (1952b: 237). But nothing in the ordinary connotations of the English word ‘marriage’ prepares us to grasp a situation such as this, and nothing in anthropological usage gives the word any technical value either.

So ‘marriage’, too, is an odd-job word: very handy in all sorts of descriptive sentences, but worse than misleading in comparison and of no real use at all in analysis.

IV. DESCENT

The classification of modes of descent is a specially effective example of conceptual difficulty, because the topic has been a constant anthropological concern since Bachofen and McLennan. In spite of this prolonged concern, however, there is still no general agreement on the matter.

Anthropologists habitually use terms such as ‘patrilineal’ or ‘matri-lineal’, yet cannot easily claim that these are specific descriptions. Even when the ethnographic facts are not in dispute, it is sometimes possible to argue about the type of descent system to which a given society should be assigned. Or when it is agreed that a society is patrilineal, for example, it is possible to argue about whether it is a strong or a weak instance of the type. Such arguments might be all to the good if they led to cogent and agreed decisions, but for the most part this is just what they cannot do. What we are left with is not theoretical advance but a wordy conflict of rival definitions. I need not go on, or supply examples, for the situation is familiar to any anthropologist. What is important is to find a way out of this typological confusion.

Some anthropologists (e.g., Köbben, Lewis) have contended that we cannot assimilate different societies on the mere ground that they are ‘patrilineal’, but that this wide designation needs to be broken down into the component functions. It is the kinds of rights that are governed by the rule of descent which, on this view, should decide the respects in which societies are to be counted as patrilineal and thus as comparable: ‘The functional implications of descent are often much more significant than whether descent is traced in the patri- or matri-line’ (Lewis 1965: 109). This approach has a well-established ancestry – it was embarked on by Fison in 1880 and continued by Wake in 1889 – but it is not, I think, the answer. The difficulty remains that this substantive concentration on complexes of rights makes comparison as uncontrollable and as hard to carry out as the rights may be various. Simply to specify more narrowly what ‘patrilineal’ means in a particular description does not make the rubric any more useful; in fact, it tends to show how inappropriate it really is. On the other hand, no one needs it in order to define a single jural system that is under study, for an exact survey can report the social facts without summing them up under any such general label. In any case, the proposed reconsideration is not fun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Figures
• Maps
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Remarks on the Analysis of Kinship and Marriage
• 2 Age, Category, and Descent
• 3 Surmise, Discovery, and Rhetoric
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index