The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier
They rely on other people to provide these so that they may give them in turn. Yet the fact that elders control the wealth and the means of social reproduction does not mean that they behave like a ‘class’ which dominates the younger people and exploits their labour in exchange for the payment that will enable them to find a spouse. This thesis was defended in the 1970s by a number of Marxist anthropologists, citing Claude Meillassoux’s work.41 They saw control by the elders as ‘the beginning of the transformation of the society with the genesis of hierarchical social classes’, the transformation of older–younger relations into patron–client relations.42
No one can deny the general fact that younger generations depend on their elders for, according to the context, transmission of land or status, succession to functions, and marriage payments. This dependence also entails a relationship of authority between older and younger generations, and unequal responsibilities. But it does not necessarily mean domination or exploitation. In New Guinea, for example, the young people have duties to the other members of the lineage, but that is not all; they also share rights with the older members – the right later to use lineage lands, the right to the bridewealth they need to get married, the right to be avenged by their lineage in the event of homicide or to count on their armed solidarity in the event of aggression or vengeance.
In societies where the merits someone has acquired or the wealth they have produced, individually or by their capacity to enlist kinsmen, affines or friends, give them authority in their group, authority and prestige do not automatically go to the older men, and even less to the oldest or the ‘elders’, but to the Big Men (and to certain women, who achieve the status of Big Women through other means). The Big Man is an older man, but not all older men are Big Men, and even less the oldest. This is apparently not the case in the African societies described by numerous specialists, from Meyer Fortes to Meillassoux. But the example of New Guinea shows at least that the fact that the older men control the lineage lands does not automatically result in domination and clientelism. Other conditions – which largely remain to be described – must be present for this to occur.
Another point is worth mentioning: we saw, among the Daribi for instance, that gifts to the wife’s lineage continued throughout life because the woman’s father is believed to have spiritual and ritual control over his daughter’s fertility. The children she bears are therefore further gifts, as it were, from the woman’s lineage to that of her husband. This is a cultural dimension based on an imaginary representation of the source of women’s fecundity. This representation has serious social consequences, because it makes for a particular configuration of the exchanges between the two groups of affines and between individuals in virtue of the positions they occupy within their group and in these exchanges (husband/wife, father/daughter, father-in-law/son-in-law, etc.). It is important to take note of the social character and the imaginary dimension of the wealth exchanged or given as a one-way gift to seal these alliances and produce new social relationships. In New Guinea, the pig is not valued because it is the Highlanders’ principal source of protein, and to give dead or live pigs is not merely a way of redistributing a certain quantity of pork for consumption or of making a gift of sows that will have piglets. The same is true of cattle in Nuer society. But it also applies to ‘inanimate’ objects which, in addition to pigs, feature in exchanges – polished and decorated shells worked by the men and women in Melpa society, or decorated mats which circulate by the dozens in Polynesian exchanges, the most valuable, the most sacred of which were used to envelop statues of their gods or the bodies of their dead.
OBJECTS AS SUBSTITUTES FOR PERSONS
All of these valuables act as substitutes for persons living or dead. They are given, for example, by a murderer’s lineage to that of the victim to compensate this death and to save the murder’s life. They must therefore be produced (or acquired) and then transferred into other hands so as to establish not only marriage alliances but also political alliances, and alliances with gods and ancestors. By means of these objects and their transfer, individuals and groups contract relations with others, and these relationships form part of their identity. The exchanged objects are loaded with both the meaning and the strength of these relationships, vested with cultural meanings and social importance. They are thus mental and social representations materialized in animate or inanimate beings. I purposely say ‘beings’ rather than things or objects, for these ‘things’, which are substitutes for persons, are perceived as containing powers for acting on persons and therefore as being in a certain manner persons themselves. That is why, like human or supernatural people, some of these objects (shells, mats, etc. – which are of no use in daily life when it is merely a question of subsistence, but which are necessary for producing a social existence) acquire a name, an identity, a history and powers of their own.
As an example of the complexity of the imaginary and symbolic meanings taken on by some shells, which explain their use in the reproduction of kinship and political relations but also their status as both wealth and symbols of power, we will summarize some findings that Jeffrey Clark presented in his exemplary study of the symbolism of pearl-shells among the Wiru of New Guinea,43 who exchange them for ‘the body’ of a wife, for ‘the skin’ of the children she bears, and so forth.
Here briefly is how the Wiru load a pearl-shell with meaning. The naturally yellow pearl-shell is rubbed with ochre powder and its lower lip is outlined in white sap, which quickly turns black. Several notches are cut into the upper lip, and the whole shell is laid and exposed on a bark support. All of these operations are the outcome of meticulous work which transforms an object that entered Wiru society as a commodity bartered for a pig (or bought with money) into an object not only loaded with a new meaning but also one that has become more beautiful in their eyes – and by their hand. What is this new meaning? For the Wiru, yellow is a female colour, associated with a yellowish substance that they say is found in the womb and becomes a key component of the foetus when it is conceived. Ochre is associated with virility and wealth, and for this reason the sacred stones associated with the fertility of the land, human health, etc., are smeared with ochre powder. The white of the sap is associated with semen, and the black, like the ochre, is associated with virility. The cuts on the female lip of the object represent the incision of the glans of a penis. In short, these androgynous objects harbour the attributes of the men’s masculinity and the women’s femininity – in this case essentially their reproductive capacities. It is in this sense that the apparently inanimate objects given in exchanges are not only substitutes for persons but are themselves objects endowed with meaning and power.44
The same holds for the Nuer who, according to Evans-Pritchard, define all social relations in terms of cattle. When they are initiated, young men are given the animals that they will tend to throughout life, a life they will spend in a society where the production or maintenance of practically all social relations demand the transfer of cattle in various ways.45 It is understandable that in these conditions an identification is created between men and their cattle such that, when they give away their animals, they are giving part of themselves. By alienating part of their herd to get a wife, men detach part of themselves from their own lineage and expect that their wives will detach from their own bodies and lineage the children they will bear. But the husband’s lineage will not appropriate these children unless he has paid his affines a brideprice. Otherwise they will belong to the man who pays the price in the husband’s stead. This man will then become the children’s social father, while the husband is no longer the father but simply the genitor.46
WHAT IS THE BRIDEPRICE?
Making a marriage payment, paying a brideprice is therefore not ‘buying’ a woman. Except in very rare cases, such as ancient China, the woman is not completely detached from her birth group and absorbed into the group, clan, lineage or family that has alienated a portion of its wealth to obtain her. Women continue to possess rights in their birth group and have obligations to the members of this group. In addition, a wife acquires rights in her husband’s group, together with duties. This is precisely the case in China, where the daughter-in-law’s status changes once she has given birth to a boy who will carry on her husband’s line and continue to venerate their ancestors after his father’s death. When a woman dies, it is not unusual for her name to be included among her husband’s ancestor tablets. In short, we are far from the image suggested by Lévi-Strauss’ famous formula ‘kinship is based