Structural Anthropology, Volume 2 by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Author:Claude Lévi-Strauss [Lévi-Strauss, Claude]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnology, Structural Anthropology, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780465082308
Google: LYOBAAAAMAAJ
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 1976-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

We see that, if the Tlingit formulated their matrimonial preferences in this manner, these would result in the choice of a patrilateral cousin for a man, but of a patrilateral cousin for a woman who would herself be her spouse's matrilateral cousin.

A Tlingit tale speaks of a young Haida who, abandoned by his matrilateral cousin as soon as he had married her, left with his father to get married again in another village (Swanton 1909b, p. 242). And it is also with his father's help that he later compensates his first wife when she claims a part of his possessions. This insistence on the father's role suggests that a patrilateral marriage could have followed the matrilateral marriage of the beginning, and that the two forms were thus both permitted. If we add that a Tsimshian myth (Boas and Hunt 1916, p. 154) refers to a young man who is urged by his parents and all his maternal uncles to take a wife in his father's clan—contrary to the well-documented preference for the matrilateral cousin—we must admit that some uncertainty exists about the way these populations thought their own system through and put it into practice.

These facts in no way diminish Rosman and Rubel's demonstration, which keeps all its force. But they do at least suggest that either (1) the two modes of generalized exchange could coexist among the Tlingit and the Haida (even if one presented an exceptional character); or (2) that a certain divergence appeared between ideology and practice, manifesting in its own way this tension between the lines to which we drew attention (see p. 169). Without pretending that they were ensuring their equilibrium by the sole mechanism of matrimonial exchanges, these societies have increasingly relied on other cycles of prestations, bearing on titles and property. This is the reason why—even if the prevalence of the patrilateral marriage were definitely recognized among the Tlingit and the Haida—we do not believe that it could weaken our previous considerations on the precariousness of this formula

— 194 —

(Lévi-Strauss 1969a). For this intrinsic precariousness would be made even more manifest by the fact that the societies that have succeeded in making the formula more durable possess other mechanisms, political and economic, on which their cohesion depends to a greater extent.

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