Kinship and Social Organisation (Routledge Revivals) by W. H. R. Rivers

Author:W. H. R. Rivers [Rivers, W. H. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408675984
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Read Books
Published: 2008-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

LECTURE III

THUS far in these lectures I have been content to demonstrate the dependence of the terminology of relationship upon forms of marriage. In spending so much time upon this aspect of my subject I fear that I may have been helping to strengthen a very general misconception, for it is frequently sup-posed that the sole aim of those who think as I do is to explain systems of relationship by their origin in forms of marriage. Marriage is only one of the social institutions which have moulded the terminology of relationship. It is, however, so fundamental a social institution that it is difficult to get far away from it in any argument which deals with social organisation. In now passing to other examples of the dependence of the terminology of relationship upon social conditions, I begin with one in which features of this terminology have corne about, not as the result of forms of marriage, but of an attitude towards social regulations connected with marriage. The instance I have now to consider is closely allied to one which Professor Kroeber has used as his pattern of the psychological causation of the terminology of relationship.

Both in Polynesia and Melanesia it is not infrequent for the father-in-law to be classed with the father, the mother-in-law with the mother, the brother-in-law with the brother, and the sister-in-law with the sister. The Oceanic terminology of relationship has two features which enable us to study the exact nature of this process in more detail than is possible with our own system. Oceanic languages often distinguish carefully between different kinds of brother- and sister-in-law, and, if it be found that it is only certain kinds of brother-or sister-in-law who are classed with the brother or sister, we may thereby obtain a clue to the nature of the process whereby the classing has come about. Secondly, Oceanic terminology usually distinguishes relationships between men or between women from those between persons of different sex, and there is a feature of the terminology employed when brothers- or sisters-in-law are classed with brothers or sisters in Oceania which throws much light on the process whereby this common nomenclature has come into use.

The first point to be noticed in the Oceanic nomenclature of relationship is that not all brothers- and sisters-in-law are classed with brothers and sisters, but only those of different sex. Thus, in Merlav, in the Banks Islands, it is only the wife's sister and a man's brother's wife who are classed with the sister, and the husband's brother and a woman's sister's husband who are classed with the brother, while there are special terms for other categories of relative whom we include under the designations brother- and sister-in-law. Similar conditions are general throughout Melanesia. If, as Professor Kroeber has supposed, the classing of the brother-in-law with the brother be due to the psychological similarity of the relationships, we ought to be able to discover why this similarity should be greater between persons of different sex than between persons of the same sex.

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