Transcript No Slide Title

Genealogy, Kinship, and Family
Topics for today:
1. Kinship nomenclature
2. Role concept
3. Are families natural units? That is, are they a part of nature or of culture?
4. Do chimpanzees have culture?
1. Kinship nomenclature
Because kinship is important around the world in societies studied by anthropologists, it
has been necessary to develop ways of representing kinship and kinship relations. The
anthropological systems are simple in conception, but lead to considerable complexity.
We will be concerned with two ways of representing kinship relations: (1) diagrams and
(2) alphabetic nomenclature.
Kinship diagram symbols
D
male
o
female
parent-child
or
}
husband-wife
sibling
Elementary Nuclear Family
D
D
o
o
Ego
Alphabetical Kinship Symbols:
M
F
S
D
C
B
Z
H
W
mother
father
son
daughter
child
brother
sister
husband
wife
Elementary Nuclear Family
D
F
D
o
M
o
Ego
The diagrams can be extended indefinitely to produce complex genealogical relations.
Important: in the anthropological study of kinship, the extended family relations are
NOT called by the same terms as those used in English (i.e., not as "uncle", "aunt,"
"grandfather," etc. They are called by combinations of the elementary relations (i.e, as
"mother's brother," "father's sister," "mother's mother." We'll find out why in a minute.
Extended Family Relations
o
D
D
F
D
B
o
M
o
Ego
o
D
D
o
D
o
D
o
Extended kinship relations can also be described in terms of the elementary alphabetic
symbols.
MOTHER'S BROTHER
MB
MOTHER'S BROTHER'S DAUGHTER
MBD
MOTHER'S SISTER'S HUSBAND
MZH
MOTHER'S MOTHER'S FATHER
MMF
Extended Family Relations
o
D
D
F
D
B
o
M
o
Ego
o
MZ
D
D
MZH
o
D
MB
D
o
MBW
o
Extended Family Relations
o
D
MF
D
F
D
B
o
M
o
Ego
MM
o
MZ
D
MZS
D
MZH
o
MZD
D
MB
o
MBW
D
o
MBS
MBD
Okay, so why do we use this system of diagramming and combination to represent
kinship relations, rather than using the English terms like "uncle," "aunt," and
"grandmother."
Answer: because the English terms carve up the system of kin in CULTURE-SPECIFIC
ways. Other cultures carve it up differently. Example:
ENGLISH
IROQUOIS
"mother" = M
"mother" = M, MZ, FBW
"aunt" = MZ, FZ, MBW, FZW
"aunt" = FZ, MBW
Iroquois Type Kinship Terminology - Mother's Side
"father"
o
D
MF
MM
"uncle" "aunt"
D
F
D
B
o
M
o
Ego
"mother"
o
MZ
D
MZS
"brother and sister"
D
MZH
o
MZD
D
MB
D
MBS
o
MBW
o
MBD
"cousin"
2. Role concept
Role = a bundle of rights, duties, expectations:
Right = what you can demand of others;
Duty = what you must do in relation to others;
Expectations = how you should be.
Status = position within a structure of positions
Recruitment = method for selecting who occupies what status.
Examples of roles:
-
surgeon
-
policeman
-
professor
-
quarterback
-
President of the U.S.
Kinship relations are kinds of roles. We have to study the relations to understand (1)
what rights, duties, and expectations make up that relation; but also (2) how do
individuals who play the roles come to occupy that position (i.e., what is the "principle of
recruitment to the status.") Thus, when we study the role of "husband" in American
culture, we have to ask what kinds of rights, duties, and obligations attach to the position
of "husband." We also have to ask: How does one come to be a "husband"?
Some rights and duties of a "husband" in contemporary U.S. culture:
Right of sexual access to his wife;
Right to expect that his wife will not have sex with
other men (or women) while she is his wife;
Duty not to have sex with other women (or men) while
he is married;
Etc.
Recruitment to the status of "husband":
Man must have the consent of the women to whom he is
to play the role of husband;
Man and woman must undergo a ceremony ("marriage")
performed by an appropriate authority (e.g.,
a justice of the peace).
Etc.
IMPORTANT: roles are part of culture. They are socially learned, socially transmitted.
Because they are part of culture, we might expect them to change over time. We can also
expect to find differences in the roles between different societies. When we find a role in
another culture that resembles one in our own (e.g., "husband"), we have to be careful not
to project onto the characteristics of the role in our own culture, and, instead, attempt to
understand its own characteristics. For example, how does one get to be a "husband" in
that culture? What rights and duties does a "husband" have in that culture?
Example of variability in the "husband" role:
Tallensi people of northern Ghana in Africa. Unlike the contemporary American role of
"husband," it is not the duty of Tallensi husband to confine his sexual relations to one
wife. On the contrary, it is right of a man to have more than one wife. This is called
POLYGYNY. The man has a right to sexual access to each of them.
Classic study of the Tallensi done by the British anthropologist Meyer Fortes and
published in 1949 called The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi.
o2
o1
o3
D
o4
Ego
o
o
o
o
Another difference between the Tallensi and contemporary U.S. cases: Among the
Tallensi the woman has a right to a "bride-price" from the husband that is paid to the
woman's own guardian. According to Fortes (1949: 86): "A wife is usually espoused by
paying the bride-price of four head of cattle or their equivalent in instalments over a
number of years. If he does not fulfil these jural requirements, a man has no rights to and
over his wife."
Note that in many other cultures there is the contrasting phenomenon of the "dowry," a
payment given by the wife-to-be (or her guardian) to her prospective husband.
Going back the question of polygyny (a rule permitting one man to marry several wives
at the same time), there is another rule (polyandry) found in some cultures around the
world in which a woman may marry more than one man at the same time. There are even
some cultures in which group marriage is permitted, i.e., two or more women married
simultaneously to two or more men. Rules permitting or requiring multiple spouses are
grouped under the term polygamy.
Important point: rights, duties, and expectations are not just a matter of what the
individuals immediately involved in a role believe or practice. They are what the broader
society understands as the norm, that is, as the way people ought to be behave in a
particular role. Hence, societies often develop ways of publicly acknowledging a role.
Marriage ceremonies are an example of this, in which appropriate authorities establish
and recognize the existence of a husband-wife relationship. In the contemporary U.S.,
parent-child ties are recognized by the broader society as legitimate by the issuance of
birth certificates. Graduation ceremonies acknowledge the conferral of academic
degrees. Inauguration ceremonies take place to install a new president. And so forth.
Society has a stake in establishing and maintaining roles.
A last difference among societies as regards the husband and wife roles concerns patterns
of POST-MARITAL RESIDENCE, i.e., where the husband and wife will reside. In the
contemporary U.S., there is an expectation (albeit not a right or duty) of
NEOLOCALITY: the husband and wife are expected to take up residence in household
that is separate from that of both the husband's parents and the wife's parents. Another
possibility is PATRILOCALITY, such as is found among the Tallensi of northern Ghana.
There it is the duty of wife to go to live with her husband in her husband's father's
household. In other societies, as historically among the Iroquois Indians who inhabited
parts of what is today New York and Pennsylvania, we might find MATRILOCALITY,
where it is the duty of a husband to go to live his wife in her mother's household. There
are numerous variations of these general patterns.
Patrilocal residenc e (as among the Talle n si)
D
D
o
o
Ego
D
o
Ego
D
Ego's natal family
o
D
D
o
o
D
o
Ego's affinal family household
3. Is the family a natural unit?
Why are we interested in these questions about kinship roles in a course about biology,
language, and culture. Kinship is the key nodal institution between biology and culture.
Human's reproduce sexually. Kinship is in part about biological reproduction. However,
it is important to distinguish the family as an institution constituted by culturallyprescribed roles, and the family as a biological unit. The culturally consituted family is
not necessarily identical to the biological family.
As Prof. Mann showed in his lectures on genetics, a key aspect of the
ability of humans, like other animals, to adapt biologically is sexual
reproduction, in which the genetic material from two different
organisms comes together to produce a new one. Sexual reproduction
does not always mean that there are two distinct organisms
(gonochoric (animals) or dioecious(plants)), a male and a female,
carrying distinctive sets of chromosomes, that come together. Some
sea anemones, for example, are hermaphrodites, carrying both the
male and the female reproductive parts. A number of fishes are also
either simultaneous hermaphrodites (like anemones) or sequential
hermaphrodites (changing their sex over time). Mollies are an
example of sequential hermaphrodites. However, most animals, like
humans, have the distinct sex organs on different organisms.
So it seems natural to find an analogy between the genetic processes involved in human
reproduction and the social units referred to as "families."
Biological reproduction: genes
"father"
Social reproduction: family
"mother"
D
D
"offspring"
o
o
Important: the family exists as a social unit for the purposes of transmitting culture, not
just biological reproduction. Moreover, the family is not necessary for biological
reproduction. This can be seen among non-human primates most closely related to
humans. Among chimpanzees, we find strong mother-child bonds, but apparently no
father-child bonds. This goes along with the apparent absence of regular husband-wife
type relations. Some evidence for occasional consortships, in which a female goes off
with a particular male for several days to weeks, but sex during estrus is generally
described as "frenzied," with multiple males mating with a single female.
Gene flow and social reproduction
in chimps and bonobos
D
D
D
D
D
D
o
D
o
Side point: in chimps, one finds what are called "alpha males." These are dominant
males within the troop. It has been assumed that the dominant male is dominant so that
he can pass on his genes to the next generation. Thus, the social relationship of "alpha
male" appears to reinforce the biological relation of father to child.
However, recent DNA studies of chimps and other primates indicate that the dominant
males do not in fact sire many offspring while they are dominant. In one study
(Gagneux, Boesch, and Woodruff in Animal Behaviour 1999: 19-32), of four dominant
males, only two sired offspring while they were dominant. One male was actually
dominant for 10 years, but sired no offspring. Additionally, there were apparently
"furtive" matings between females and males from other groups that resulted in half of
the biological reproduction within the community over a five year period.
Question: Are humans biologically programmed to live in families (involving the
presence of a husband/father figure), although chimps and bonobos are not? Or is the
human family a cultural invention (like the wheel or control over fire) that is socially
learned and socially transmitted?
• The specific form of the family cannot be biologically determined, since the
form is so highly variable from culture to culture, as we have seen: monogamy vs.
polygyny vs. polyandry vs. group marriage; neolocality, patrilocality, matrilocality;
dowries vs. bride-prices vs. no wealth transfer; etc.
• Comparative evidence indicates that, in the vast majority of cultures, there is
something resembling the roles of "father" and "husband."
• However, even where there is an ideal of families with father/husbands, many
families may be matrifocal (i.e., with only mother and children).
Tentative conclusion: the family appears to be a cultural invention that is socially
learned and socially transmitted. We will have to ask why so many cultures have
employed this cultural construct. Must it have some adaptive significance?
Question: Even if the family is a cultural invention, might it serve the purpose of
supplying greater certainty to males of their own paternity, and, hence, more reason for
them to participate in the socialization of the young?
• Adoption: in cultures where the completed family (with husband/father) is
especially highly valued, such that bachelors or unmarried women are looked down upon,
there tends also to be a great emphasis on adoption. Therefore, families are formed even
in the absence of biological connections between father and child, or even mother and
child.
• Cultural forms that obscure biological paternity: while polyandry and group
marriage are relatively uncommon, these forms make it difficult if not impossible to
determine paternity. Also practices (like ritualized group sex among the Xavante) that
tend to undercut the certainty of paternity associated with marriage.
• Jural fatherhood does not necessarily mean care for the child: Nayar case
(Kerala state, SW India) — jural father may have little or no contact with child; Nuer
case: woman may marry a housepost. Has a husband but husband is not the care-giver.
• Folk theories of biology: many theories about how sexual reproduction takes
place allow for multiple "fathers." Xokleng of Brazil: mother contributes blood, father
semen to make bone, but repeated sexual intercourse needed; semen may come from
different men. Trobriand Islanders (off coast of New Guinea): in their official discourse,
as described by Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1910s, there is no recognition that the father
actually makes a biological contribution to the child. Sexual intercourse simply opens the
womb and makes it receptive to spirits of deceased relatives that are floating around. So
many theories do not acknowledge the idea of one "father."
Conclusion: the family does NOT exist, at least in many well-attested ethnographic
cases, for the purpose of supplying assurance of biological paternity to males.
Why then does it exist? What kind of adaptive value does it have? We'll come back to
this in lectures after Spring Break.
4. Do chimps have culture?
Will not spend much time on this question, however will be asking in subsequent lectures
whether chimps have the capacity for language. In the present lecture, since we have
established that chimps (and bonobos) do NOT have families, while human societies
regularly do, it is worthwhile to wonder whether, if chimps do have culture, that means
that culture does not depend upon the invention of the family form with husband/fathers.
The short answer to this question is that the evidence currently available supports the
view that chimps DO have some culture. Chart shows a small bit of the accumulated
evidence from four decades of field research among wild chimpanzee populations in
Africa (from Andrew Whiten and Christophe Boesch, "Cultures of Chimpanzees,"
Scientific American, 284(1(January)): 60-67).
Conlusion: chimps do have rudimentary culture. Therefore, the human-type family with
its role of husband/father is not essential to culture. Some transmission can be achieved
through the mother-child bond without the husband-father.
However, it is one thing to ask whether rudimentary culture could be achieved without
human-type families. Another to ask whether complex culture (including language?)
would be possible without human-type families. General idea after spring break:
marriage (and, hence, human-type families) make possible a more complex social
organization, and in turn the carrying and transmission of a much greater quantity of
culture.