Man in Adaptation

The Institutional Framework

Yehudi A. Cohen, Yehudi A. Cohen

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351507516
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Sciences sociales
• Sous-sujet: Sociologie

How do specific activities and institutions in which people are involved fit into the overall adaptive strategy of their society? What are the particular pressures leading to change in each of these spheres when the group's strategy of adaptation changes? What are the human demands made by a hunting-gathering strategy that lead to the development of particular family systems, modes of social control, religious beliefs and practices, values and ideologies, and personality structures? What are the new human demands that lead to the reorganization of these aspects of life as the group moves from one level of development to another?

Man in Adaptation: The Institutional Framework introduces the institutional, psychological, and ideological dimensions of the strategies of adaptation that have characterized human societies from the earliest known forms of social life to the present. Cohen includes topics that are of principal anthropological concern—notably marriage, law and social control, religion and magic, value systems, personality, and art.

There are no studies that deal with cultural change as such in this book. Where possible, Cohen includes articles that deal with changes in particular spheres of activity, such as family organization, law, religion, and value systems. He argues that change is not a special situation. Instead, culture is change and change is culture, and it is unrealistic to study change outside the specific social and technological organization of a given society. This volume unifies the subject matter of anthropology within a single and powerful explanatory framework and incorporates the work of the most renowned anthropological experts on man.

PART I
Marriage and the Family

WE BEGIN with marriage and family relationships because the social arrangements made for mating, the care and development of children, and the division of labor between spouses are generally regarded as the basis of all social relationships that contribute to the survival of the species. Despite the many forms taken by the human family in different societies and throughout all of man’s history, all of these different arrangements provide a central core around which other social relationships are organized.

To understand particular marriage and family relationships in adaptive terms, we must distinguish between the rules governing the selection of mates and the relationships among spouses after their families have been established. Marriage refers to socially ordered mating and sanctioned parenthood; it generally leads to alliances between the mates’ kinsmen and to more or less elaborate economic relationships within and between families. The family has other functions as well, such as providing a stable background for the care and rearing of children, and regulating inheritance. But our concern here is with marriage and the family as modes of acquiring a livelihood and maintaining a viable relationship with the habitat, and therefore we are oing to focus principally on the relationships among and within families and family groups. We are going to see that relationships within the family are inseparable from relationships between families, and these in turn are tied to the overall strategy of adaptation of each society. The successive changes in family organization that we refer to as evolutionary—including changes now taking place in our own family systems—can be understood as the result of changes in sociotechnological systems.

Most families include, at a minimum, a married couple and their offspring, but there are societies in which the family—however it is defined—does not include a husband of the mother or a father (or fathers) of her children. All societies have rules or standards about whom one should marry; in some, there are even prescriptions about whom one must marry. There are also rules in every society about whom one is forbidden to marry or to engage in sexual relations; the two sets of rules are not always the same. These are called rules of exogamy and incest, respectively. It seems from our knowledge of behavior among primates and hunter-gatherers that the rules of incest were probably the first taboos governing the selection of mates in the earliest known human societies. The reasons for the development of incest taboos appear to be inseparable from the sources of marriage and the family themselves:

Although there is probably more uniformity of family organization among hunter-gatherers than at subsequent stages of development, there is nevertheless considerable diversity in the ways in which marriage partners are selected among them. One of the world’s most complicated systems of marriage rules is found among Australian aborigines, and the interpretation of these rules has been the subject of one of the longest and most volatile controversies known to any science; the matter is still far from settled.

One of the reasons for the intensity of this debate is that there is considerable uncertainty about the nature and composition of social groups among Australian aborigines prior to their contact with Europeans. Some anthropologists feel that local groups among the aborigines were formless and transitory; others interpret them as having been tightly organized and identifiable. Similarly, there is considerable debate about the relationships of these groups to their territories and water holes. Though some anthropologists maintain that local groups “owned” the sites with which they were associated, the nature of this ownership remains uncertain. In any event, regardless of the size of hunter-gatherer groups, their internal organization, and the nature of their claimed relationship to their territories, there is no debate over the fact that visiting among groups was very frequent—especially during the dry season—and that even when permission was required to visit this was easily given. Moreover, even when local groups had mythologically sanctioned boundaries, they were not in fact exclusive.

Another reason for the debate is that there is often a wide discrepancy between the rules according to which marriages should be contracted and actual practice among these people. Often, it appears, the rules cannot be followed because of a lack of women in appropriate kin positions, so that men are obliged to take inappropriate wives. Some anthropologists—notably Claude Lévi-Strauss—contend that what is important is not people’s actual behavior but the meaning of the rules themselves, independent of their application; others are uncomfortable with this degree of abstraction from specific and observed human behavior.

We need not stop here to consider the logic or grammar of marriage rules— references to the relevant literature are given at the end of this Introduction—except to observe that one of the outstanding features of marriage arrangements among hunter-gatherers, notably in Australia, is a system of marital exchange and “alliance.” The specific rules of these exchanges regulate marriage and ceremonial life; they are not obviously related to economic and other relationships in the society. What concerns us here is the long-term adaptive utility of these systems as systems.

A system of marital exchange is based primarily on the rule of exogamy: the men of any group may not marry women from that group. Most anthropologists agree that in one way or another this rule was designed—not necessarily consciously—to maintain peace within the group. But this does not explain why some hunter-gatherers (like the Australians) went the additional length of establishing elaborate and often complex arrangements in which particular groups actually exchanged women in regulated ways. To appreciate this, we must remember that hunter-gatherers move around a lot, and more important, that local groups do not have exclusive rights to particular territories or resources (with possible exceptions in Australia). The abundance of food in their habitats varies from year to year, and flexible organization enables people to move from area to area and to join with other groups in coping with this variability. Thus one of the salient features of life at this level of sociotechnological development is that different groups take turns visiting and playing host to each other during different seasons. As a result, there develops a system of mutual and reciprocal access to resources incorporating many groups.

But men have weapons and can easily kill each other, and to survive they must restrain their dangerous capacities. People at each stage of sociotechnological development do so in ways that are appropriate to the realities of their condition of life. Later (in Selection 6 and in the Introduction to Part V) we will consider other sets of controls among hunter-gatherers that contribute to the maintenance of law and order in their groups, and we will see that these also contribute to group fluidity. Here we are concerned with the systems of marital exchange that have developed among hunter-gatherers as a result of their unique territorial relationships. One consequence of exchanging women is that each hunting-gathering camp becomes dependent on others for a supply of wives and is allied with others through the bonds that result from marriage. This contributes to the maintenance of peaceful relations among the groups that move around, camp with each other, and exploit overlapping territories. Such arrangements do not entirely eliminate aggression, but they probably help keep it down to a manageable level.

The family systems of hunter-gatherers exhibit less diversity than their systems of mate selection and less than the family systems found at subsequent stages of development. Within limits, the Hadza family system described by Woodburn in Selection 1 is representative. The focal point of this system is the individual hunter’s need to have hunting partners on whom he can rely for assistance and support; the sentiments and obligations of kinship provide the basis of these alliances within the group, which are indispensable in the hazardous occupation of hunting by means of such rudimentary tools as spears and bows and arrows. In addition, kinship provides the basic lines along which food is distributed in a hunting-gathering camp; this too is important, especially in times of scarcity. As a result of these requirements, and almost without exception, a married pair in a hunting-gathering group settle in a camp in which at least one spouse has a parent, sibling, or (later in life) a married child.

With the technological advance into a horticultural strategy of adaptation, man’s relationship to his habitat changed, and a most important change was the development of the notion of exclusive rights to territory claimed by a group. This exclusive territoriality was probably designed, in large measure, to protect investments of time and effort in particular plots. Hunter-gatherers sometimes practice a little crop cultivation (an example is found in Selection 6), and they too develop notions of exclusivity about their cultivated plots, but in ways that are different from those horticulturists who are entirely sedentary. One of these differences is that when a hunter-gatherer stakes out a claim to a cultivated plot of land, any of his kinsmen has a right to collect wild-growing food on it; among sedentary horticulturists, permission for this must first be secured. Second, a hunter-gatherer who claims exclusive rights to a cultivated plot does so by virtue of his own investment of time and effort; in sedentary horticultural societies, ownership is often exercised by the kin group, and individuals and families have the right to use part of that land by virtue of membership in the group. Thus a comparison of man’s relationship to land in societies at these stages of development suggests that it is the investment of energy in activities intended to produce future returns that underlies the development of notions of exclusive territoriality, but these concepts have different consequences when they refer to the kin group as a whole rather than to the individual alone.

The shift from hunting and gathering to completely sedentary horticulture does not occur in one leap; the evolutionary record demonstrates that the process has been slow. At each step along the way, cultivated foods make up a larger proportion of the diet. Similarly, at each of these steps kin group organization becomes progressively stronger, with commensurate consequences for marriage and family systems. As a result of these social and technological changes, relationships among groups changed, and marriage arrangements with them. While marital exchange is not unknown among horticulturists, other types of exchange more frequently characterize this stage of development, such as the exchange of wealth that symbolizes the bonds between groups joined through the marriage of two of their members.

From an evolutionary point of view, an important influence on marriage and family organization among horticulturists is their sedentary way of life, in contrast to the mobility of hunter-gatherers. Economic cooperation among households is no less necessary, since even though horticulture represents an advance in man’s mastery over his habitat, crops are variable and life remains precarious. It is difficult for a single household to clear land and plant, tend, and harvest crops without assistance. The physical and emotional investments these people make in their cultivated lands contribute to the development of the notion of exclusive rights over land, and the necessary reliance on communal subsistence activity places ownership in the basic communal organization, the kin group. This is illustrated in Selection 2.

The rules governing where a couple settle after they are married are important in the overall system of kinship. Obviously, social relationships in groups in which a married pair resides with or near the groom’s family will differ considerably from those that ensue if the pair resides matrilocally, that is, with or near the bride’s family. The varying consequences of these rules of residence in different strategies of adaptation are illustrated in all the selections in part I.

These considerations require a pause to consider a few of the technical terms of kinship analysis. Kin groups are based on ties of blood or marriage. Groups in which all the members claim descent from a common ancestor are called “descent groups,” and one of the most important of such groups is the “lineage”—a descent group in which the members can actually demonstrate (and not merely assume) their relationship. Matrilineal (or matri-) lineages are composed of men and women who can actually trace their descent from a common female ancestor; patrilineal (or patri-) lineages trace their descent from a common male ancestor. Several lineages whose members claim (but cannot necessarily demonstrate) common descent are generally referred to collectively as a “clan.”

A landowning group of kinsmen that is autonomous politically and maintains its own system of social controls is often called a “corporate kin group.” Such a group exists in perpetuity, and serves as a ceremonial group and a primary or face-to-face group, in which each individual is responsible to and for other members and they are responsible to and for him. Corporate kin groups are almost always exogamous; that is, the members of the group are forbidden to marry each other.

The groups that people develop are among the instruments by which they make use of the energy potentials in their habitat. Thus, it is neither necessary nor possible for hunter-gatherers to form corporate kin groups because their relationship with the habitat involves little investment of energy in land and because their groups must split up recurrently. But horticulturists plant seeds and must wait for crops to grow and to be harvested, and because of these different relationships with the land and other resources, they develop different kinds of groups, more suitable for coping with their habitat.

Consider a lineage, for instance. This is a corporate kin group designed to deal with the allocation of land and other resources, to maintain legal and social control, to engage in short-term political relations with other groups, and to undertake religious and ceremonial activities. Hunter-gatherers do not face the horticultural problem of allocating land and other resources; hence, lineage organization is never found among the former but is widespread among the latter in one form or another (as is clearly illustrated in Selection 2, which describes the horticultural Fijians). In subsequent selections, we will see that the organization of society implicit in a lineage system does not “fit” the religious systems of hunter-gatherers, nor their modes of maintaining order and conformity, but there are close correspondence among all these aspects of life in horticultural societies.

The solidarity implicit in a lineage organization is inseparable from kin-group ownership of the land and the individual’s reliance on inter-household cooperation in his productive activities. It appears that maintenance of such an organization weakens the more intense and intimate relationships of family life. Thus the corporate group organization of horticultural societies (and others in which lineages are present) is accomplished by a tendency for family and household relationships to be eclipsed by the bonds of wider kinship. Corporate kin groups must command a strong sense of allegiance and loyalty to be effective, and these qualities are often in competition with similar sentiments toward the members of the nuclear family. As the distinguished British anthropologist Max Gluckman observes, referring to the extraordinary variety of customs and taboos affecting the relations between spouses and between parents and children in many African societies:

Lineages are also important among pastoralists, but the basic requirement of this technology—to further the welfare of flocks and herds—requires several fundamental adjustments in household organization. Among the most important (as illustrated in Selection 3) are seasonal changes in family organization in response to climatic change. For example, during the rainy season, when all the animals in a herd are able to drink at pools close to the homestead, it is possible for all the members of the household to live together. But when the dry season occurs, grazing has to take place over wide tracts in which the grass cover is uneven; as a result, members of the household have to disperse into the surrounding territory, often for long periods, to take advantage of available grass wherever it may be found.

There is considerable variability in family organization among horticulturists and pastoralists but much more still in agricultural and industrial societies. The reasons are both habitational and political. Agriculturists are able to exploit a greater variety of habitats than people at earlier stages of technological development, and each habitat may require a different social strategy, including different marriage and kinship systems. Politically, agriculture is almost always associated with centralized state organizations, each of which will have distinctive policies with respect to taxation, the organization of labor, law, religion, and the family. Still another source of variability in the family systems of agricultural societies is in their stratification into different groups—peasants, artisans, tradesmen, priests, political elites—living different styles of life.

The agricultural family may be quite large and include several generations, usually as a result of particular local patterns of land ownership and labor relations (as illustrated for Central Italy by Sydel Silverman in Selection 23), but more usually it is small, as in Guatemala (Selection 4). Agricultural families are almost always patrilocal. Central state organizations may try to subvert local sources of solidarity, especially those based on kinship, but such ties are tenacious and difficult to eliminate. When lineage systems atrophy under national political pressures, ceremonial or ritual kinship systems are often substituted; a case in point is compadrazgo described in Selection 4. This is understandable in terms of the need of cultivators—even at advanced agricultural levels—to have groups of people on whom they can rely for assistance when needed.

In industrial society, where every person barters or sells his labor individually and in which the household ceases to be a productive unit, the cooperative labor of kinsmen is no longer required; hence traditional kin groups and ceremonial kinship systems tend to dissolve. In their place is a new emphasis on “neolocal” residence, in which the married pair live separately from the parents of either spouse. This involves not only separate physical placement but also different relationships with the parental households and with the world at large. Thus adaptation to an industrial stage of development involves deep strains in the entire fabric of kinship.

And thus the evolutionary record shows how changes in a society’s strat...