The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier
of certain products (blacksmiths, farmers, fishers) or certain services (barbers, gravediggers, etc.).
Alongside these castes whose labour contributes directly to the production of goods and services are others that do not participate in these various work processes but control them socially and receive a share of the product, either because they own the land that the others cultivate or because they exercise religious or political-military functions, and a share of what is produced is allotted them so that they may devote all their time to the exercise of their function. In these societies, of which India is the classic example, each kin group produces whatever its caste is supposed to produce and receives from others the goods and services owed it in exchange. In this case, the economy is a global system that binds together all castes and thereby the kin groups that compose them. No kin group can therefore be materially self-sufficient, if one understands by material conditions of existence much more than the mere means of subsistence. Such a global system, without excluding the use of money and the development of commercial exchanges, operates basically according to other rules than those of the market.8
In contemporary Western societies, where the capitalist economy rests on the mass production of goods and services bought and sold as commodities, where there is a much more complex social division of labour than in caste-based societies (which rested more on agriculture than on industry), and where a person’s status and activity are not definitively settled at birth since there are social classes of owners and non-owners of the means of production and exchange whose access is theoretically open, the economy also constitutes a global system that links all the groups in the society, all the families and all the individuals, through the market (or rather markets – of labour, of industrial products, of money, etc.). Each person must derive the bulk of his means of social existence from whatever he sells or buys in the marketplace. In this context, with the exception of certain sectors such as agriculture, crafts and (small) businesses, families no longer function as production units but rather as consumption units. For those who own the principal means of production and exchange, by virtue of which they intervene in various sectors of the capitalist system, the family is a unit of wealth accumulation, of asset management and sometimes, more rarely, of the direct management of a firm producing goods or services.
In contrast, in societies where there is no social division of labour, or if there is then it concerns only the production of certain goods or certain services, the economy does not function as a global system linking together in their production and distribution all of the kin groups that compose a society whose sovereignty over a territory, its resources and the men and women living there is known (if not recognized) by the neighbouring groups. In such societies, of which the Baruya are an example, the economic activities of production, redistribution and consumption of goods and services remain local and separate, and do not cause kin groups to depend directly and daily on each other in order to reproduce themselves. Nevertheless their material cooperation is necessary and expected in times of war, when most of the men are away fighting and the women cannot venture unaccompanied to their gardens to gather what they need to feed their family and their pigs. This is also the case when it comes time for the initiations, which run for weeks and require big gardens to be planted in advance with a view to liberally feeding the hundreds of guests. But these are exceptional circumstances, in which the economy is placed in the service of the reproduction of the society as a whole, in the service of the social relations that, precisely, encompass all kin groups and cause them to exist within this whole.
In conclusion, let me say that it is clear that kinship is not only about establishing ties of alliance and descent between individuals and between the groups to which they belong. Other realities – material, political, religious – reside within kinship relations and are reproduced along with them. These realities are so many stakes which, depending on circumstances, bring together or divide those who recognize each other as being closely or less closely related. It is not enough to have tender memories of sharing the maternal breast to keep brother from turning against brother or daughter against mother. The passion for power and wealth break ties, sweep away the feelings and obligations that ‘should’ exist between family members.9
And it is because all kinds of social relations that do not come down to kinship relations also reside in them and are reproduced in part along with them that it is impossible to know in advance the importance of kinship in the workings of any given society at any given period. Any general claim concerning the real nature and importance of kinship in society is meaningless.10 And going even further, for a peasant without anything to transmit and a lord who has titles, lands and a glorious genealogy to hand on, kinship can have neither the same meaning nor the same importance, even if both use identical kin terms.
We will now look at each of the four blocks of facts and concepts that make up the field of kinship, both on the ground and in theory – filiation and descent, alliance, residence, and kinship terminologies. These will be the subjects of the next four chapters.
CHAPTER THREE
Filiation and Descent
(First Component)
Filiation and descent: While both words are translated by the French filiation, Anglo-Saxon anthropologists make a distinction between the two terms. The majority of French anthropologists do not, and range themselves behind Lévi-Strauss,1 who, in a debate with Leach2 claimed that the distinction was not useful. This is not my opinion; I think that it is not only pertinent but important. For Meyer Fortes, Leach and Needham, who agree on this point at least, the term ‘filiation’ should be kept to designate the fact that every individual is at birth (or becomes by adoption) the son or daughter of a father or fathers and a mother or mothers who are themselves sons and daughters of a father or fathers and a mother or mothers, and so on. In a word, filiation is the set of ties that link children to their paternal and maternal kin. Filiation is bilateral and cognatic; it links the individual to both agnates and uterines.
DESCENT MODES
Descent is governed by other principles. The calculation of descent can be unilineal, duolineal, bilineal or non-lineal. In the case of unilineal systems, descent is traced through only one of the sexes. When descent is reckoned through men, it is patrilineal. When it is traced through women only, it is matrilineal. In the first case, a man’s sons and daughters belong to his descent group, but only sons transmit this belonging. In the second case the opposite holds true: a woman’s sons and daughters belong to her descent group, but only daughters transmit the belonging. The systems termed ambilineal or duolineal combine the preceding unilineal systems, such that each child belongs to its father’s group by virtue of a patrilineal principle and to its mother’s group by virtue of a matrilineal principle. Alternatively, bilineal systems are rare. They come in two kinds. Either descent is parallel, and the sons of a couple belong to the father’s lineage and the daughters to the mother’s. Or descent is crossed, and a couple’s daughters belong to their father’s lineage, and the sons to their mother’s.
Lastly, in non-lineal systems, the individual’s sex makes no difference, and descent is traced indifferently through the men and through the women. All descendants, in the male or the female line, of an ancestral couple can refer to this ascendance in order to claim rights to titles or land use, for instance. The sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of this ancestral couple have of course married into other groups, and their descendants belong to these groups. Undifferentiated kinship systems therefore require other rules than ascendance to constitute coherent, bounded descent groups.
PATRILINEAL DESCENT
Among the societies that reckon descent grosso modo by a patrilineal principle, we find ancient Greece and Rome, ancient and contemporary China, the Nuer in Sudan, the Tallensi in Ghana, the Cyrenian Bedouins, the Iraqi Kurds, the Juang3 in central India, the Kachin in Burma, the Purum4 in India, the Melpa or the Baruya in New Guinea, the Tupinamba in Amazonia, and so on. These societies differ profoundly from one another. The Melpa prohibit the direct exchange of women and instead exchange wealth for wives. For the Baruya, direct sister exchange is the principal marriage rule, but they practise payment of bridewealth in the case of marriage with other groups. The Katchin forbid wife-takers to be wife-givers as well. When the givers are superior to the takers, the women circulate in the