Kinship and Social OrganisationRivers, W. H. R. (William Halse Rivers)
General
Kinship and Social Organisation
Rivers, W. H. R. (William Halse Rivers)
Anthropology; Consanguinity; Ethnology -- Melanesia; Marriage
I can now turn to the second line of attack, that which boldly discards
the origin of the terminology of relationship in social conditions, and
seeks for its explanation in psychology. The line of argument I propose
to follow is first to show that many details of classificatory systems
have been directly determined by social factors. If that task can be
accomplished, we shall have firm ground from which to take off in the
attempt to refer the general characters of the classificatory and other
systems of relationship to forms of social organisation. Any complete
theory of a social institution has not only to account for its general
characters, but also for its details, and I propose to begin with the
details.
I must first return to the history of the subject, and stay for a
moment to ask why the line of argument I propose to follow was not
adopted by Morgan and has been so largely disregarded by others.
Whenever a new phenomenon is discovered in any part of the world, there
is a natural tendency to seek for its parallels elsewhere. Morgan lived
at a time when the unity of human culture was a topic which greatly
excited ethnologists, and it is evident that one of his chief interests
in the new discovery arose from the possibility it seemed to open of
showing the uniformity of human culture. He hoped to demonstrate the
uniformity of the classificatory system throughout the world, and he
was content to observe certain broad varieties of the system and refer
them to supposed stages in the history of human society. He paid but
little attention to such varieties of the classificatory system as are
illustrated in his own record of North American systems, and seems to
have overlooked entirely certain features of the Indian and Oceanic
systems he recorded, which might have enabled him to demonstrate the
close relation between the terminology of relationship and social
institutions. Morgan’s neglect to attend to these differences must
be ascribed in some measure to the ignorance of rude forms of social
organisation which existed when he wrote, but the failure of others
to recognise the dependence of the details of classificatory systems
upon social institutions is rather to be ascribed to the absence
of interest in the subject induced by their adherence to McLennan’s
primary error. Those who believe that the classificatory system is
merely an unimportant code of mutual salutations are not likely to
attend to relatively minute differences in the customs they despise.
The credit of having been the first fully to recognise the social
importance of these differences belongs to J. Kohler. In his book “Zur
Urgeschichte der Ehe,” which I have already mentioned, he studied
minutely the details of many different systems, and showed that they
could be explained by certain forms of marriage practised by those who
use the terms. I propose now to deal with classificatory terminology
from this point of view. My procedure will be first to show that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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