think
in the middle sup
in the first if these talks I want to try and explain why kinship and marriage
is such an important subject within anthropology also why it's such a
difficult subject
and then explain a few the simple terms and move on
to the analysis of one kind of society hunter-gatherer societies
the subject is very important for a number of reasons
one reason is that kinship and marriage
are institutions which dominate
most human societies Evans per child
to stable I happened to be sitting
wrote that among the newer to the North African tribe as in all human societies
marriage and the family are the most fundamental
institutions among the
South American and Obama people described by Napoleon Chan your
later but can ship is the heart a primitive social structure
and it must be understood in detail rather than through generalizations
the rules governing marriage along with the kinship system
together comprise and delineate the structure
of the unabomber society for
in the words of and old homo Indian in California
what is a man I'm and it's nothing
without his family he is a less importance
a nap bag crossing the trail as less importance
then the sputum or exude feel at least they can be used
to help poison them a man
must be with his family to amount to anything with us
if he had nobody else to help him then
the first couple he got into he would be killed by his enemies
no woman would marry him he would be poorer than the newborn child
he would be poorer for the worm in the right way of doing things
the family is not so important police
and soldiers take care of protecting you the courts
give you just it's the post office carries
messages for you the school teaches you
everything is taken care of even your children
after you die but with us the family is everything
or rather everything
in the past now
it is nothing we're getting like the white people
and it is bad for the old people we had no other people's homes
like you the old people were important they were wise
your old people must be fools
being so important in many the scientists studied by
anthropologists it has occupied
more than half the texture on non-western societies
and in order to understand this mixture one has to make one's
way through a dense jargon filled
jungle but as I'll explain the jargon
has a purpose and if one can master the field
it has an intrinsic fascination not only
in making us understand other societies but in expanding our own
particularly our own in a time when
the basic institutions are sexual
mores our marital customs and our kinship structures
seem to be changing and altering very fast and in looking at the patterns in
other societies and our own perspective
we may have ways being able to understand our own
better it's a difficult subject
probably the most difficult in and apology
as from this now Malinowski put it
I believe that kinship is really the most difficult subject to Social
Anthropology
he was one of the founders of modern anthropology and that he was able to
write
describing his relations with other great figures in the field
I may say that whenever I meet missus seligman
hold off to Larry will discuss matters with Radcliffe brown
ok rover I've become at one so where that my partner does not understand
anything in the matter now I and usually with the feeling
but this also applies to myself
why is it so difficult
well firstly it's a matter of
examining our own very basic assumptions
this is quite easy to do in economics and
perhaps in religion but in a are family this system into which we have
won't and brought up and we never question
the task of trying to understand other systems and thereby
admit their logic and rationality in comparison to our own
requires a fundamental search of our own institutions
let's take just one example the question if on what basis to remarry
in our own society of course we tend to get married
after we have been afflicted with that strange
feeding that surge the motion which tells us that we are attracted to
someone
what is no to comparative sociologists
as the romantic love complex
now this his quite widespread in our society but
ninety percent human societies have organized a margin
other ways on the basis arrangement between partners
in fact we other deviants here as well flint and the anthropologist
put it or societies recognize
that there are occasional violent attachments between persons of opposite
sex
but %ah present american culture is practically the only one
which has attempted to capitalize these and make them the basis for marriage
their rarity in most societies suggests that they are
psychological abnormalities to which our own culture
has attached an extraordinary value just as other cultures
have attached extreme values to other abnormalities
the hero a modern American movie
is always a romantic lover just as the hero
as the old Arab epic is always
an epileptic
take just briefly another field has one anthropologist has written
our own tendency to connect marriage with sex
is a very peculiar Association that grew up
in our own very unusual society of course nowadays the association is
breaking down
it is perhaps helpful to know but it is in fact
very culturally specific Association that marriage and sex
should go together second reason
for the difficulty as well as this emotional and intellectual 1
is that around the subject has grown up this thick
undergrowth of jargon
some with this of course is the protection and the I'm
custom of any particular distant a
discipline to have a sec if specific terms but it does also
perfect to real difficulty which is that
the institutions a kinship and marriage differ so much between societies that
many of the things that I found in other societies have no parallel
a tool in our own society for instance I'll be talking about
custom of believing that you are related
only to people through males now we don't have that system
and therefore when it was discovered I would have to be calling
to describe two-cent through males
and the terms agnostic or patrilineal were
developed now this is the case take another example we don't have several
brothers marrying one woman
to you need the term polly and re
and this is the case with many tens another reason for having special terms
is that many of the terms that we have in our culture have a very specific
Association and mean specific things which
if we use the same term in describing other cultures
you tend to get distortions to take one famous example
when missionaries went to certain parts of the world
they would ask a native they would know that someone had
a woman who had born them as a child and they would say what do you call that
woman knowing it's that the persons mother and they would say for example
I'm not
and then they they would here this person talking about
the the woman up there as I'm a but they would also
here this person referring to a whole lot of other women as I'm not
and they would jump to the conclusion that I'm a which they translated his
mother
is being used in the same sentence and as a result they
read down in the books but these natives were unable to distinguish
their mother from other women and probably lived in the state
where marriage and the family's were very loose
promiscuous sexual relations were allowed
and in fact it was because the mistranslation and the identification of
what we mean by my facts
because many the Society's a term
which we use from other is actually one which one would use for
s a senior woman of the next generation up
so jonathan is not where they created by the perverted minds
of a small peak of people who are trying to confuse this
and in these talks I want to try and explain some other basic concepts and
terms let's just provide some with these tools
start with the first to these
is kinship
kinship is defined as
two persons akin to each other when they are linked
by socially recognized forms of dissent
or marriage or both the important thing that is the social recognition can ship
is not
about biology and the biological links by the REC realize a shin that you are
linked
someone else secondly there's the question of marriage
the start with the basic definition that marriage is a union between a man
and a woman such the children born to the woman
other recognized the judge to meet offspring of both partners
later we'll see how many difficult as there are in that definition
in order to illustrate something very complex systems one finds in various
parts of the world
some symbols are used by hand for logistics
there is a symbol for a male
which is a triangle there is a symbol for a female
a circle assemble for someone to finance X
diamond if someone dying to cross them through
if people our brothers and sisters siblings
you have to join bylines if they are married to each other
you have been joined byline underneath and as a result
one can construct kinship diagrams where for example one
has mother and father and the children
alternatively met one may not want to draw a diagram one might not want to
describe the relationship
and in such instance when uses strings of letters
either the first letter and from other
be for brother the for daughter or
the first two letters law but
and so on for all for a
and say one construing these together and if one's
describing ones mothers brothers
daughter one would put NBD and
number of texts half the strings of letters
there wanna to other terms that a useful here
one of them is and term ago if you want to enter a kinship system
you need to enter its a certain point can use the Latin
term ago meaning I urine test that point
if you want to describe a set of brothers and sisters or brothers or
sisters
you talk about siblings if you want to describe the relationship
based on marriage you talk about have fun to laugh I know
for months the time describe the relationship based on blood
when talks about com sank wines call sanguine being
that in for plot or consanguinity or
if one wants to describe the relationship upwards and downwards in a
line like grandparents and so on
when talks by then your relatives or relatives on the side like and calls
when describes it as collateral natural being the side
now very briefly let's just have a look at what one might
discuss relation to one kind of society
I'm for justice the divided societies into four main types hunters and
gatherers
who live off the surface of the landscape
extensive food producers those who live
of pasta realism that is herding or
slashing and burning in forests
intensive food producers who use hose and ploughs
to a great extent when and has peasants and industrial societies either the
collective its kind in the east
European made or capped the society s
let's look at the simplest if he is to be in with hunters and gatherers
in such societies the first one thing one might look at is
descent in such societies descent
who won thinks one is related to is usually
based on both male and female lines
you think you are related to your father and your mother simultaneous state
in such societies therefore there are networks of relatives
you can trace through both lines this is very much like our own system and it's
not difficult for us to visualize
hiya and in all the other characteristics are described in fact
hunters and gatherers have features I current
a second feature his inheritance in such societies
there's often very little property very different
few rights in particular articles not the facts and land
to pass on an F for inheritance rules I'm not
very systematic or important individual
in fact tense period the on makers and tools and his and giving
the terminology in such societies isolates out the nuclear family
you have particular terms for your father a mother
and children just as we do and its for this reason
that in fact Western kinship terminology is
are technically known as Escamillo after the Copa rescue mishap
who have the same kind system is on it which isolates the nuclear family you
have particular terms for them
a separate ends for cousins uncles and aunts
in such societies marriage choices based
on individual choice marriage is a contracts its peak between two
individuals
the wider society is not to click and send not
large group which in a go shooting the marriage
and again we have any parallels with Aaron society
is often very small amount to ritual ceremony
at marriage they're often
very few marriage payments marriage is not the occasion when there is a large
transfer of wealth
to pry cloth and diarrhea and other things we've been looking at
in the Society's when tends to marry one person of the opposite sex then
monogamous
whereas missus out his I'm not
a game in the Society's like our own how cell structure is very simple
on Tuesday parents living with young children
the sexual and gender relations have a similar to the current in that there's a
great
equality usually between males and females and sexual
oppositions not heightened indeed
kinship his relatively I'm important in many the simpler societies
there's no great interest in your ancestors on your descendants
they're great concern to adopt ass
now all the seems quite self-evident when we turn
in the following talks to that great middle range of society's
known as tribal and peasant societies will find that in almost every respect
its diametrically differ from that very simple
characterization and from our own conceptions
and it is to those instances but I will turn in my next talk