Three Styles in the Study of Kinship by J.A. Barnes

Author:J.A. Barnes [Barnes, J.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781136534935
Google: 0Vv_AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T04:54:39+00:00

8 Filiation and residence

In Lévi-Strauss’s view women are exchanged not by individual men but by groups of men, and in the models the whole of male society is divided into a number of discrete, mutually exclusive, enduring groups. He distinguishes three types of filiation or recruitment of groups. He uses the term filiation which the translators of Les Structures render as ‘descent’, for in the book he does not make the distinction drawn by Fortes between ‘descent’ and ‘filiation’ which we shall examine in the next chapter. With a rule of ‘undifferentiated descent’ ('indiscriminate descent’ in Josselin de Jong 1952: 10), the two lines of filiation are interchangeable and ‘may be merged in a joint exercise of their functions’ (Lévi-Strauss 1969: 106); by this I understand the rules of some, perhaps of any, cognatic kinship systems. Filiation bilatérale in the first edition of Les Structures becomes filiation bilinéaire in the second edition, rendered as ‘bilineal descent’ (1949a: 135; 1967: 123; 1969: 106), and refers to systems of double unilineal descent. Lévi-Strauss stresses that although some recognition of both patrifiliation and matrifiliation is universal, double unilineal descent is a highly specialized form (1969: 419).

Lévi-Strauss wrote Les Structures at a time when the distinction between the recognition of filiation and the formation of groups was not as widely appreciated as it now is. Despite the changes introduced into the second edition of his book, his writing on this topic still has a curiously old-fashioned ring. He is essentially concerned only with unilineal and double unilineal systems, and has little to say about other societies. The bricks in his models are unilineal groups, or subdivisions of these, and he is concerned with them primarily as units in the game of exchanging women. Hence problems of segmentary fission and fusion, seen as political problems, are left untackled. He is however concerned to show that the choice of patrilineal rather than matri-lineal descent is not of great significance. It is an ‘illusion of traditional sociology’ to attach a decisive value to the mode of filiation (1969: 409). On the other hand, though a four-class system can survive shifts from one mode of filiation to another, the mode of filiation is a ‘convention’ ‘which is basic to the structure of the social group once it is established, and cannot thus be regarded as a “detail” ‘ (1969: 323).

His assertion that ‘the mode of descent never constitutes an essential feature of a kinship system’ (1969: 408) is reflected in his interpretation of indigenous theories of procreation. He notes that in many parts of eastern Asia it is believed that a baby gets his bones from his father and his flesh from his mother. He argues that these beliefs are incompatible with restricted exchange and provide strongly presumptive evidence for the existence of generalized exchange. There is no difficulty in seeing that these beliefs are compatible with generalized exchange, but I do not think that they provide a strong presumption for the existence of this kind of system. Likewise the incompatibility of these beliefs with restricted exchange is not clear.

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