The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier

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СКАЧАТЬ through the female line, thus a matrilineal principle. Furthermore, if the Baruya recognize themselves as being the son or daughter of a father and a mother, and thus represent themselves as being in a bilateral relationship of filiation with their paternal and maternal kin, what is the significance of favouring the ties that go through the men, starting from a common ancestor, to constitute the kin groups we have called lineages and, with more reserve, clans? Finally, is it because this descent rule is patrilineal and the children belong to their father’s lineage that the Baruya give so much importance to sperm in their representations of child conception? And yet we know that there are societies where the kinship terminology is of the Iroquois type and descent reckoning is patrilineal and which nevertheless do not hold sperm to be of much importance, for instance the Paici of New Caledonia. Nor should we forget that, for the Baruya, the husband’s sperm is not enough to make a child, since the Sun must intervene to complete its formation in the mother’s womb. But the Sun is a male power, which acts as a father to all Baruya, whatever their lineage.

      In short, these questions take us to another level, that of the theoretical analysis of the field data, an analysis that can be carried out only by comparing the Baruya’s ways of living and thinking with those found in other human groups that are close or distant over space or in time. It is not that the Baruya do not compare their own ways of doing and thinking with those of their close or more remote neighbours – and, since 1951, with those of Europeans – but they do this by enumerating the differences, without being able actually to explain the reasons, except to say: this is how it’s been for a very long time and the ancestors (and the gods) of the various groups are the ones who made it so.

      What makes the difference between the spontaneous empirical comparisons everyone can make with nearby societies and the comparisons that anthropologists construct are, on the one hand, the terms of comparison and, on the other, the breadth and diversity of the selection of cases to be compared. For when we compare Baruya kinship terminology with the neighbouring systems, we are comparing not only vocabularies but also sets of relationships engendered by a certain number of principles (descent, marriage, etc.), which structure a set of kin terms. This structure defines the system as belonging to a type, usually already identified (Iroquois, Dravidian, Sudanese, etc.). One can also compare the Baruya with other examples of the same Iroquois-type terminology found in New Guinea, America or Oceania, in societies the Baruya have never heard of. But a kinship terminology is a logical-linguistic set of some thirty words, on average, whose content is of a different order of abstraction than the Baruya representations of, say, the process of making a baby and the role played by the father, mother and Sun. This set of representations can in turn be compared with those that have been worked out in other societies, nearby or far away, with various kinship systems.

      Although the comparison of representations of how a baby is made is every bit as ‘constructed’ as the comparison of terminologies, the results do not put the Baruya in as vast a category as that of Iroquois-type terminologies, but into a smaller set; that of patrilineal societies stressing the primary role of sperm. But, if we add the role of the Sun, the Baruya’s cultural singularity shifts to the fore and gives them a specific identity, though not one that is unique, since six or seven of their neighbours – who speak the same language and initiate their boys in the same way – also see the roles of sperm and the Sun in a like manner. But other groups – to the west and the south of the Baruya and their neighbours and who belong to the same big linguistic group, such as the Ankave – lay the stress not on sperm but on menstrual blood, do not go in for ritual homosexuality, and do not give the same importance to the Sun.32 Why?

      In short, the global comparison of societies is clearly not a good way to start. The analysis needs to deconstruct the social relations in a society before attempting to place them in the overall dynamic configuration from which they were detached in an abstract fashion. This global configuration exists in all societies, since it is by reproducing it that societies reproduce themselves and ensure their historical existence. To be capable of creating an analytical reconstruction of these various global configurations that make each society singular is the most ambitious aim of the social sciences, of which anthropology is but one particular discipline. Successes along this path are few and far between, and a high degree of methodological rigour and prudence are called for if one wants the comparison between societies taken as a whole, defined by a few structures and values judged to be characteristic of their functioning and identity, to have any true meaning for science.

      I will therefore not be comparing societies ‘globally’ in the following chapters. These caveats having been stated, I will try briefly to describe the components of the domain of social life that anthropology designates by the term ‘kinship’. But first I will recapitulate what I have learned in terms of theory and methods from my fieldwork about the nature of kinship relations and their role in the Baruya society of New Guinea.

      The first lesson is that there is no assurance of carrying out a successful study of kinship if one starts by trying to resolve the questions this poses, because kinship is closely bound up with all sorts of practices and areas of life that may be much more important to the anthropologist than to the actors themselves.

      The second lesson is that systematically recording genealogies does not mean that one has yielded to a genealogical vision of kinship. The Baruya themselves make a distinction between classificatory kinship and kin ties based on genealogical links. It must therefore be concluded that kinship categories are broader than genealogies without being completely separate.

      The third lesson is that making a systematic survey of genealogies does not mean that one has in mind the Western concepts of consanguinity. As soon as one works from the local ideas about procreation, the conception of a child and its development in its mother’s body, and so on, one is no longer reproducing the Western concept of consanguinity as shared blood. In one society, the blood will come from the father, as will the bones; in another, the bones will come from the father and the blood from the mother. All one can say is that, in all societies, individuals have paternal and maternal kin. But that in no way dictates the content of the concepts of fatherhood, motherhood, marriage and alliance in a given society.

      The fourth lesson is that an anthropologist has no difficulty rapidly identifying Baruya kinship terminology as a variety of the Iroquois type. This shows that the conceptual findings of scientific inquiry into the forms of organization of human societies and their attendant cultural representations do not coincide with the actors’ own experience; that is to say, with their own awareness of themselves and their institutions. From the moment one discovers that Baruya kinship terminology is a variety of the Iroquois type, a problem arises that is not part of the Baruya’s experience, namely: where, on the face of the earth, do we find societies using the same terminology, despite the fact that there is no historical record of contact between the groups in question? Which in turn raises other questions: can we understand, for example, the reasons why, in places so far apart and at such different times in history, terminologies having the same formal structure appear?

      Fifth lesson: Baruya kinship terminology tells us nothing about the descent rule they have adopted to manage their kin ties. The Baruya principle is patrilineal, whereas descent reckoning among the Iroquois, who gave their name to the terminology, is matrilineal. There is, therefore, no necessary tie between kinship terminology and descent rule. This needs explaining.

      Sixth lesson: Do the Baruya have clans? No, if we regard exogamy as a constituent principle of the existence of a clan; yes, if a clan is merely a group that sees itself as having a political-ritual identity based on a unilineal descent principle without this necessarily making it exogamous. Finally, we have seen that in the same society two types of exchange can be used to establish a marriage alliance. The Baruya exchange either a woman for a woman or wealth for a woman. According to the first rule, they conform to the category of elementary kinship structures; according to the second, they have already entered the realm of complex structures. We must ‘think’ this duality and identify in a more global manner how it appears in other contexts.

      Seventh lesson: Taking СКАЧАТЬ