Rescuing Morgan from Oblivion

1. Rescuing Morgan from Oblivion Classifcatory Kinship Systems and Social Roles and Obligations: W.H.R. Rivers

2. Morgan, Classificatory Kinship and Morgan’s Detractors Rivers: the chief feature of classificatory kinship systems is the application of kinship terms, not to single individuals, but to very wide classes of relatives. In the complete system, no single term applies to just one individual. Morgan was criticized by McLennan for assuming that duties and rights were connected to kin terms, e.g. the term for maternal uncle would involve certain rights and obligations. Kroeber: The origins of kin terms was not evolutionary or social, but rather linguistic and psychological. Rivers: Morgan’s problem was that he was not content to relate kin terminology to social organization at a point in time, but to postulate the existence of forms of family organization, e.g. the promiscuous horde, for which there was NO KNOWN EVIDENCE. However, Morgan’s collection of the wide variety of kinship terminologies throughout and his organization of these into systems that were consistent and logical was a major contribution. Rivers also defended the use of the term classificatory, and its difference from descriptive systems: In our own kinship system, there are some classificatory terms, e.g. aunt, uncle, brother-in-law that apply to several ‘biological’ relatives. However, in the kinship systems termed classificatory, very wide classes of relatives are included in the same kinship term, e.g. all the brothers of the father’s generation on the patrilineal side are termed brother. In the most extensive forms of classification, “The term father, for instance, may be applied not only to all those the father would term brothers, but also to all those married to the fathers’ sisters, all the mother’s brothers and all the husbands of the mother’s sisters. “

3. W.H.R. Rivers, anthropologist and psychiatrist, 1864-1922 • Transitional thinker, between evolutionary thought and functionalism, 19th & 20th C. • Famous for being one of the first anthropologists to undertake direct ‘field studies’, and for his contributions to kinship studies. Torres Strait Expedition of 1898. • Also for his work with ‘shell-shocked’ WWI veterans.

5. Kinship Symbols in Diagrammatic Form

6. Bilateral Kindred, i.e. all relatives, male and female within an individual’s known relatives

7. Matrilateral Cross-Cousin Marriage: • Found in highland southeast and south Asia. • An example of a classificatory system. • Rule is a man marries a classificatory mother’s brother’s daughter. • **Forms of classification: All women of ego’s lineage and of his generation will be termed ‘sister’, and all men of his generation and lineage will be termed ‘brother’. All women of his mo bro lineage, and of his generation will be termed ‘marriageable woman’. All men of his mo bro lineage, and of his generation, will be termed ‘brother-in-law’. All women of his mother’s generation and lineage will be termed mother, all men of his father’s generation and lineage will be termed father. Mother’s brother and father-in-law have the same kinship term applied to them.

9. Another view of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, highlighting how marriage preferences often form a circular pattern, but not clear on the issue of descent.

10. Classificatory Kin Terms and Social Organization • River’s Hypothesis: There is a connection between forms of kin address and clearly defined social practices, rights, obligations. • Evidence: Polynesia and Melanesia: in some societies, e.g. Hawaiian, there is no separate term for the mother’s brother, i.e. the maternal uncle, and the mo bro was classed with father. In other’s there were separate terms, e.g. in most of Melanesia and in Tikopia and Tonga in Polynesia. In those societies where there were separate terms, there were also specified rights and duties associated with the mother’s brother. • Further evidence comes from aboriginal Australia, where there were a large number of duties, rights and privileges linked with specific classificatory relatives. • Our own system is the ‘strange’ one, where classificatory relatives, e.g. aunts and uncles, rarely have clearly defined rights and duties.

11. Rivers and Bilateral Cross Cousin Marriage: Social organization and kin terminology. • Morgan neglected to study the relationships between the kin terms he discovered and social roles because he was most interested in general evolution. • His example is cross-cousin marriage, in which the mo bro becomes the father-in-law. • He further argues that Fiji, the mo bro also becomes the classificatory fa si hu. • Therefore, it is not surprising that one kin terms applies to all these relations. • Similarly, the fa si, the mo bro wi and mother-in-law, all have the same classificatory term. • Fiji, the southern New Hebrides and Gudalcanal are the only parts of Oceania where Rivers found cross-cousin marriage to be practised, and in all three the kin terminology seemed to reflect this form of marriage.

13. Rivers and Kroeber: Social Roles Versus Psychological Explanations • Rivers: What psychological explanation can say why the mo bro has greater psychological similarity to the fa in law than the fa bro? • Why would we need a psychological explanation to explain the identity of kin terms, when in fact, with bilateral cross-cousin marriage, they turn out to be the same individual? • It is the cross-cousin marriage pattern which is the antecedent and the kin terms and relations which consequence of the marriage system. • We do not need a psychological explanation to explain kin terms in various classificatory systems if they follow marriage practises and other social roles so closely.