The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier

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СКАЧАТЬ terms used to designate Ego’s brothers and sisters. All are brothers and sisters, which is expressed in anthropological jargon by the statement: parallel cousins are (equivalent or identical to) siblings. Alternatively, father’s sisters’ children and mother’s brothers’ children – Ego’s cross cousins – are called by a distinct term. Since male and female parallel cousins are brothers and sisters, in theory they cannot marry each other. But the Baruya can sometimes marry their matrilateral parallel cousin. Cross cousins, on the contrary, are potential spouses. But, in reality, the Baruya do not marry their mother’s brother’s daughter – their matrilateral cross cousin – because it is forbidden to repeat the father’s marriage and take a wife from the mother’s lineage. The distinction between parallel and cross cousins does not carry over several generations, as in Dravidian systems. It is the outcome, in Ego’s generation, of an exchange of women in the preceding generation (G+1), but it is not the consequence of a rule obliging Ego to marry one of his cross cousins or a rule that in a less constraining manner would have him prefer her to other possible choices.

      The absence of a prescriptive or preferential marriage rule explains the existence in the Baruya language of specific terms for affines, which is a second feature typical of Iroquois-type kinship terminologies that distinguishes them from Dravidian terminologies. The existence of this specific terminology means that the rule is not to marry someone who is closely related on the father’s or mother’s side, but to marry into a lineage into which your line has not yet married (or at least not for three generations). In short, a potential spouse is an unrelated or distantly related Baruya, but not an outsider, for the Baruya tribe is overwhelmingly endogamous. When someone marries an outsider, it is usually in order to seal a trading or a political alliance. In this case, depending on the context, one exchanges either a woman (in the case of a political alliance) or a certain quantity of goods (in view of trading): salt-bars, cowries, bark capes, feathers and so on, in short, wealth for a woman, or bridewealth.

      Let us come back to the fact that Ego’s father’s brothers’ children and Ego’s mother’s sisters’ children are Ego’s brothers and sisters. This implies that Ego’s father’s brothers are also fathers for Ego and that Ego’s mother’s sisters are also mothers for Ego. We are dealing here with a ‘classificatory’ terminology, where the term for ‘father’ designates a category of individuals who stand in the same relation to Ego as the man who is married to Ego’s mother. The notion of paternal ‘uncle’ therefore does not exist in this language and ‘fatherhood’ does not mean the same thing as it does in French or English, since the Baruya word noumwe places in the same category people and relationships that we would distinguish. Likewise for the mother’s side, where the notion of ‘maternal’ aunt does not exist because all of Ego’s mother’s sisters are Ego’s mothers. But since not all of these ‘mothers’ are either Ego’s father’s co-wives or potential or real wives of Ego’s father’s brothers – Ego’s other fathers – we immediately see that the word noua, which I translate as ‘mother’, takes in people and relationships that are distinguished from each other in the European kinship system. Furthermore, Ego’s mother’s brothers are indeed Ego’s uncles, but owing to the fact that Baruya marriage is based on the exchange of ‘sisters’ between two men, one of my father’s sisters is likely the wife of one of Ego’s mother’s brothers (MB=FZH). Alternatively, Ego’s mother’s other brothers will be married to women from other lineages, in accordance with the rule that two brothers are not supposed to take wives in the same lineage. The notions ‘father’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’ and so on thus refer to an indefinite number of individuals who stand in the same category of relation to Ego and Ego’s siblings.

      Given the existence of such classificatory terminologies designating categories of individuals standing in equivalent relationships, kinship specialists wondered whether these categories were constructed by extension, as for example when the word ‘father’ is the extension (and projection) of the father–children relationship created within the nuclear family to all of the father’s brothers, who are not part of this nuclear family and are not married to Ego’s mother. Kinship, however, as we will see, is never simply a matter of the nuclear family – or any other kind – and kin groups are never constructed by simply extending and multiplying the relationships found within the nuclear family, which some, following Murdock, insist on calling ‘primary’ kinship relations. We must therefore look for the explanation in an equivalence posited between the relations linking Ego and the class of his or her substitutes (‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’) with another class of individuals. Furthermore this equivalence can subsume genealogically very different relationships, and even link individuals who have no direct or indirect genealogical tie with each other.

      English and French kinship terminologies, which are of the Eskimo type, also use classificatory terms that subsume under the same word individuals who stand at equivalent distances and in equivalent relations to Ego, whereas their relationship with Ego is distinct. The term ‘aunt’, for instance, designates both father’s and mother’s sister; the term ‘nephew’, a brother’s and a sister’s son; each time one has to clarify the relationship by adding ‘on my father’s side’, ‘on my mother’s side’, and so on. Likewise for the Baruya. To distinguish mother’s brothers from all of the men who belong to the same lineage and who are their ‘brothers’ and therefore Ego’s classificatory uncles, the Baruya say that they are api aounie – ‘mother’s brothers’ (api) ‘of the breast’ (aounie) – and their children are called migwe aounie – ‘cross cousins’ (migwe) ‘of the breast’ – to distinguish them from all other cross cousins. In the same manner, father’s sisters’ children are called migwe kale – ‘cross cousins of the liver’ (kale) – to distinguish them from the children of all of the father’s classificatory sisters. Likewise, father’s brothers are called ‘little’ fathers, to distinguish them from the father who is the mother’s husband; and mother’s sisters, ‘little’ mothers, to distinguish them from the mother who is the father’s wife.

      When it comes to attitudes, rights and duties, all of Ego’s fathers (father and father’s brothers) have authority over Ego. And if Ego does not have a sister to exchange for a wife, he is entitled to expect his other fathers to give him one of their daughters (who are his classificatory ‘sisters’) for the exchange. In addition, as we will see, all of these fathers and all of their children were made from the same sperm as that of Ego’s father and as that of Ego (in the case of a male Ego). Which explains why, even though he also calls the daughters of his mother’s sisters, ‘sisters’, he cannot use them to exchange for a wife: they were not made from the same sperm that made the women of his lineage whom he calls ‘sisters’. Likewise, even though Ego’s mother’s sisters are mothers too, when he addresses his mother, he says Nouaou and when he addresses her sisters, he says Amawo. Finally, grandparents and grandchildren use reciprocal terms, ate (grandfather, grandson) and ata (grandmother, granddaughter). And if your great-grandfather is living and you are a boy, he will call you Gwagwe (‘little brother’) and you will call him Dakwe (‘big brother’). This means that beyond three generations, individuals who carry the same name ‘merge’, and that this merging begins with the third generation, when the grandson carries the same name as his paternal grandfather, the grandmother the same name as her paternal great-aunt, etc. This is direct evidence that for the Baruya an ancestor’s spirit does not die, and to give his or her name to a newborn child is the same as giving this spirit a body in which to reincarnate.

      Baruya kinship terminology is thus characterized by three principal features: first, it is a ‘classificatory’ terminology that makes a distinction between cross and parallel kin, the latter being assimilated to siblings; this distinction is present only in Ego’s generation (G0) and not in the ascending and descending generations, as in Dravidian systems. Second, this terminology also possesses specific forms for designating affines, which is also a feature of Iroquois-type systems and distinguishes them from Dravidian systems. Third, the terminology does not carry any indication of the kind of descent rule at work in this society, which is patrilineal. It should be recalled that the Iroquois Indians described by Morgan were matrilineal and that some Iroquois-type terminologies are also associated with undifferentiated, СКАЧАТЬ