140(z5 KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE Kinship: Kinship studies were initiated by an American lawyer, Lewis Henry Morgan, who lived western New York State. He was intrigued by the kinship system of the Iroquois Indians and with their extended forms of kinship terminologies which allowed brothers and sisters and extended cousins of the same generation to be labeled as"father "or"mother""by a child of the succeeding generation Descent and Inheritance Marriage establishes affinal relationships between the kin, or"consanguines" of the wite and those of her groom. Affines are thus people who are married to our consanguines. Consanguines are those who are related to us in a"kin"like way, or through blood. Kinship"is defined as the network of relationships created by genealogical connections, and by social ties modeled on the natural"relations of genealogical parenthood In many societies, the ideal result of the union of marriage is children and a posterity. Children from marriage represent social, as well as physical, continuity and collateral. Their identity is henceforth bound up with those of their parents, family, lineage, and so forth. Children will be recognized as members of a specific "descent "group. Descent refers to social recognition of a common parent or ancestor. Sometimes the actual relations are known and emphasized; other relations, or fictive kinship, base their behaviors on the model of descent even through there may not be any actual blood ties. By a convenient fiction, persons are transformed into kinsfolk and assimilated within the communitys common ancestry. Since they are treated like kin, they become kin in a real sense Patrilineal Descent: Patrilineal descent is present when rules of identity and inheritance state that a child belongs to his or her father's clan. This means that all offspring of a man belong to his clan, as he belonged to his father's clan. A daughter belongs to her father's clan; but her children do not. The belong to the clan of their father One well-known example is the Tallensi 1. Every Tallensi belongs to his or her father's patrilineal descent group(sometimes llda“ corporate group,” or corporation.) 2. All political and religious rights are obtained are transmitted through the patrilineage 3. A man must marry a woman from another patrilineage 4. Members of many patrilineages recognize a common ancestor. When a sacrifice made to the ancestor, persons from these lineages are entitled and sometimes obliged to attend 271
5. Persons of the same patrilineage are obliged to hold certain economic and religious responsibilities toward one another. They share unique ties of kinship which bind them together in ways which are not found among non-kin. Thus, Fortes has called kinship the"axiom of mity. "(Similar to Frosts"Hired Hand: "Home is a place, where when you go there, they have to take you in. Matrilineal Descent In matrilineal societies, a child belongs to the clan of his or her mother and not that of the father This kind of descent and inheritance is found among the Asante of West Africa, the Trobrianders of Melanesia, and the Navajo Indians of N.A. Among the Trobrianders, the continuity of the clan is not through a man's own children but through those of his sister. When descent is traced through the mother's lineage, or matriliny, the men nevertheless monopolize all the positions of power; a man's closest relative is his sister and his most immediate heir and successor is her son In such systems, therefore, the maternal uncle serves as more of an authority figure than does a childs own father. Even marriages are considered weaker or less important than the perpetuation of the ties of the matrilineage. Within such marriages, men posses few rights, beyond general sexual access to their wives; and within such families, men own few obligations to their wives and their own children. In Asante, marriage is even regarded as somewhat of a necessary inconvenience; and in-laws are considered to be somewhat of a menace. Traditional Asante households, at least during the first years of marriage, have the wife and her brother(s) under one roof. The woman's husband maintains his own household nearby. He visits his children from time to time and gives them minor gifts. But his real allegiance is to his sisters hildren.They will inherit from him. After a few years, if the marriage survives, the husband and wife will eventually co-habit under one roof. By then the identity of the children is firmly established within the matrilineage. Needless to say, Asante marriages are hardly stable and do not often last long Marriage and Forms of Alliance Assuming that unions between the closest kin are excluded by incest prohibitions, there are basically three possibilities 1. One can marry whom one likes 2. One must marry outside one's own immediate group 3. One must marry inside ones own immediate group How the group is defined and constructed varies from society to society. The second approach (out-marriage or exogamy) is common when the members of a group are already strongly united and feel little need for further social integration. Lineages and clans are often, though not always, fiercely exogamous, taking brides from those considered to be non-kin, and even enemies. Where this is the case, in-marriage is discouraged by a definition of incest that precludes marriage within the group. Incest is regarded with an almost universe disgust and
repudiation throughout the world. The incest taboo both prohibits sexual partners and promotes out-marriage. Denial of marriage and sexual access to women of one's group makes them available as partners to males of another group Where marriage within the community is strongly valued, making out-marriage prohibited,is endogamy. This principle applies to the various divisions of the Indian caste system, and to various religious groups, including Mormons. In the caste system, the rigid purity of a particular caste is preserved by marrying within the caste; although an infinite number of sub-castes makes marrying“up” or marrying“down” a routine possibility.. These practices are known as herpergamy and hypogamy, respectively. Many Muslim societies of the Middle-East follow a less exacting forms of endogamy, strongly favoring marriage between the sons and daughters of brothers(known as patrilateral cousin marriage). This preference is sometimes so great that a man possesses a right to marry his fathers brothers daughter. Such a daughter is not free to marry another suitor unless all such males have renounced their claim on her Other rules regarding marriage concern numbers of spouses. Most societies like our own practice monogamy, or one spouse. However, in the U.S., a noted alteration on monogamy is serial monogamy, in which persons have a succession of spouses. This is due to the frequency of divorce and remarriage. No state legally allows more than one spouse at a time. But some people have numerous spouses, one after the other There are a handful of different kinds of polygamy, or plural spouses. Polygyny refers to plural wives. When sisters are involved, the term used is soral polygyny. Polygyny was common in the old Testament, and was practiced by Jacob and others Much more rare than polygyny is the practice of polyandry. This refers to the marriage of one woman to several more than one man. When brothers are involved, the term used is adelphic or fraternal polyandry. Today, among ethnic Tibetans in northwest Nepal, the ideal form of marriage is fraternal polyandry. The oldest brother in this case is the senior husband, and is regarded as the father of all the children, even though he is not likely the real biological father Marriage Transactions In many societies, marriage is somewhat of an exchange. In small scale societies, the reproductive capacities and domestic services of women are recognized and acknowledged at marriage by the transfer of property. When payment of goods, usually cattle or other domestic animals, is passed from the husband's kin to the wife's kin, this transaction is known as bridewealth. Many societies in Africa recognize cattle as the preferred form of bridewealth The Bantu have a saying, "Cattle beget children; "which means that cattle are given in bridewealth for a sister who will provide children- another form of status and"wealth in people-to the lineage of her husband Residence
Neolocal residence: The newly married couple forms a new independent household, with no residential affiliation to either the groom's family or the bride's family. This is common in Al merica a nd in northern Europe. Societies with bilocal residence requires the new couple to live with either the groom's family or the bride's family. Bilocal residence is found on Dobu Islands near New Guinea and Borneo in Indonesia. Virilocal residence: This common form of residence is where the newly married couple go to live in the household of the groom's parents. This helps to incorporate to some degree the new bride among the grooms kin. Virilocal marriage is common throughout the Mediterranean especially North Africa, and in many places in tropical Africa
Religion How is religion defined? What is religious practice and experience? Some definitions What if we said that religion was whatever involves a stated belief in spirits, gods, or mystical entities of some sort? With this definition, however, there are two problems 1)The first is that the anthropologist Rodney Needham of Oxford tried to apply and translate the word"belief"into the religious language of the people in Indonesia with whom he lived for some time. Needham claimed that there was no equivalent in their language for our concept of religious belief. 2)The second problem deals with what may be viewed as entities of a existence which is not part of this everyday world What is called"religion"may therefore look very different from one society to another. There may be an emphasis on religious belief, on religious practices such as certain kinds of rituals, or an emphasis on shared emotions. For our purposes we will consider religion as"an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings This definition was originally given, in part, by E B. Tylor a Oxford 100 years ago; and it has been reiterated by current scholars such as Jack Goody, Robin Horton and Mel spiro Pollution and Purity Many religions stipulate not just things people should do, such as sacrifice and ritual, but also things they should not do: eating certain foods, wearing certain clothes, coming into contact with people of other religions or of lower status, etc. Prohibitions and"taboos" are some of the most fundamental aspects of religion, in part because they distinguish and often socially separate, persons of different religions. They bring religious life into everyday social existence by estricting, sanctioning and prohibiting social interactions and behaviors Proscriptions and taboos regarding food and clothing are common aspects of many religions They often served to keep distinct and apart people and things deemed to be importantl different: men and women, impure people(menstruating women, unclean men) and pure people, high and low-status people, meat and milk products, etc. Rules about food-what to eat, when to eat it, with whom to eat it- are of central importance in many religions In the religions of the Middle East(Islam, Judaism, Christianity), meals serve as key symbols of religious affiliation and as a means through which religious acts are carried out. During the Passover Seder, the house must be cleansed of all leaven; throughout Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, Muslims may not partake of food from sun-up to sun-down; and the importance
of the Last Supper of Jesus is conveyed over and over in the tokens of his body and blood taken in forms of communion or sacrament in many Christian religions. Often, the individual forsakes food for a period in order to obtain a higher level of religious purity. Eating together is a primary means of achieving peace everywhere. Comensality harmony and unity. One does not eat with unequals or with whom there is social discord the other hand feasts in New guine people"fight with food, seeking to outdo each other ability to host a big feast or moka The Abominations of Leviticus: Mary Douglas has argued that prohibiting certain foods was a way of carving up the natural world into the pure and the impure, and thereby creating a model for thinking about the purity of the Divine. In fact, many Biblical prohibitions are of things that are partial, maimed, or blemished. Animals being sacrificed must not have a blemish; no one who has a physical defect may become a priest; even fields should be sown with only one kind of seed, etc. Prohibitions on food thus represent a means of creating order within the theology of the times. Certain animals served as models of the divine order. Cattle and sheep were most familiar; and the law stated that these animals represented orderliness. Beasts lacking the characteristics of these animals were considered disorderly. Thus, pigs, camels and other animals were impure. Other prohibitions also have to do with species that fall outside of three main categories of animals: those that fly in the air with wings, those that swim in the water with fins and scales, and those that walk or hop on the land with four legs. a comprehensive reading is given in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy Douglas claims that the Biblical focus on order, makes the dietary rules"like signs which at every turn inspired meditation on the oneness, purity, and completeness of God. Religion is thus a means of figuring out man's place within nature To understand pollution ideas and taboos is to comprehend the cultural notions of dirt. Dirt is a"by-product of the systematic ordering and classification of matter Thus, Douglas claims that taboos"ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating, and punishing transgressions'-have as their primary function to impose order on an inherently untidy world Ritual and Rites of Passage In all societies people mark transitions or life stages by carrying out certain"transition rituals"or "rites of passage. These rituals often contain a religious dimension; and they usually center on ritical points in a persons life: birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Passage into adulthood often involves endowing a person with a new identity or social status(passing out of moran as noted for Maasai and Samburu). Death rituals are meant to transfer the non-material remains of the person to another kind of existence in a supernatural realm. Thus, at the end of thefuneral mass for Princess Diana, the clergy spoke to the spirit by declaring it to "leave this world peacefully, and to“ depart” into an eternal world. The word ritual, and its synonym"rites, " has been used by a variety of scholars in a variety of ways. Here, ritual may be considered as social action; its performance requires the organized cooperation of individuals, directed by leaders. Rules define which individuals should
participate and on what occasions. Ritual performance also is social in that it must follow proscribed patterns, including bodily movements, words, the use of colors, singing, prayer, and so forth. While changes in ritual do occur, there is a general consideration that the structure of ritual is fixed. Also, where ritual is performed, it is considered morally and socially necessary that it must take place Ritual performances, or rites, are directed toward achieving some result. It may be general, such as peace and tranquility, or specific, such as the healing of a sick child. The relation between ends and means in ritual is usually described by contrasting it with what has been called rational technical action The first phase is characterized by the stripping away of the initial state, a kind of separation of the person from the ordinary social environment. It may involve rites to purify the body, seclusion, cutting hair, or acting as if dead. This phase often recognizes a natural event such as death or puberty. It may create a peer group and define a geographic space, such as the moran village among Samburu young men. This phase also often involves an exchange of clothing and the assignment of a new identity as with a name Then comes a stage of marginality, the transitional or liminal ("threshold")stage during which the person is outside of normal social life. The liminal person may have to observe certain taboos, or be isolated, or be subjected to beatings and insults, or be elevated to temporary high status Radical transformation: (in manhood rituals in New Guinea, the young initiate is beaten by older boys; he comes out of the ritual with a new social and psychological identity 2. Rebellion: (during liminality initiates experience a time of"anti-status "or"anti-structure"in hich the normal distinctions of society are turned on their head, sometimes mocked and ridiculed, and even threatened to be destroyed. Outside of ritual this is witnessed in such events as Halloween or Carnival.) 3. Communitas: (liminality is a period in which all initiates have all things in common-a sort of shared existence. It is said that they are "betwixt and between"the normal rungs and statuses of society. Outside of ritual communitas is experienced in the Islamic Haj or pilgrimage to Mecca. During this time of pilgrimage, Sunnis and Shi Muslims -otherwise unable to sit in the same cafe together without quarreling or fighting-and men and women(otherwise highly stratified)are found parading together, wearing the same clothing and circling the great Ka'ba a third phase, aggregation or integration, ends the ritual. It represents the reintegration of the person back into social life. A girl may have become a woman, or a boy a man; a candidate is now a king; the loose soul of a dead man takes up its place in heaven Ritual removes the person from everyday life and provides time for people to define the event and its consequences; to transform the person in body, mind, and status, and then to define the new state- as fertile woman, or a soul proceeding to the world of the dead. Moreover, in those
sequences or changes in life which are expected, the liminal stage provides the setting for a dramatization of the individual's recasting into a new form, a statement that the old has passed and the new is born An elaborate example of rites of passage performed for an anticipated event is chisungu, a female initiation ceremony done publicly among the Bemba of Zambia. The expressed purpose of chisungu is to change girls into women, not merely by teaching them songs and dances, and showing them sacred emblems, but by transforming them in the course of the ritual experience Overt emphasis of the rites is placed on marriage, a woman's responsibilities, her subservience to her husband, to senior women and all others in authority. The rituals are opened by the headman of the village but men play only a minor role. Audrey Richards noted that the full ritual is long, taking four weeks to complete in 1931. She was told that formerly it lasted several months, the rites intermingling with visits from kin, feasts and dancing. During this time, the girls remained as ritual initiates, learning about marriage, motherhood, and other features of socialization such as the power of men within the matrilineage, the role of chiefly authority in village life and some aspects of cosmology of mystical importance. A particular rite, called""begging for parenthood displays these associations An important stage in the ceremony had now been reached -the lighting of the new fire This might be described as the first of the rites of aggregation. The senior"father's sister"of one of the girls, wrinkled and bent with rheumatism, danced to the company and then lay down on her back. Nangoshye picked up the firestick and started twirling it round in the groove on the old woman's thigh, telling the two girl novices to copy her afterwards. Then the two old women set out to make fire in earnest. omen do not commonly make fire among the Bemba. The work needs skill and practice as well as considerable strength. The two old women rubbed the firestick in turns, sweating and groaning with the effort. The company swayed to and fro, moaning the chisungu fire songs We have come to get fire Lion we beg it of you Scratch scratch(the grating of the firesticks) How many children have you born? When at last the tinder caught fire it was greeted with relieved clapping. The father's sister plays the leading part in the ceremony and it is she who by tradition influences the fertility of the girl The interpretation of the songs was given as follows: the sticks are rubbed on the back of the girl's father's sister who can give or withhold parenthood(she represents the father's clan); the girl is told that she owes fire to the older woman whose hands ache from the rubbing; she must take over now. She must take her turn at the bearing of the children now; the lion is the bridegroom,the chief or the male principal throughout the ceremony; the bridegroom is begged
for fire. The whole rite is called"begging for parenthood Bemba marriage is exogamous outside the clan. These statements of marriage thus also reenforce inter-clan alliances established through the exchange of sisters as marriageable women The concern of girl's initiation rites with marriage and maternity is thus not only a concern with reproduction. It is also a dramatic enactment of the moral order of society Symbolism: Religions involve actions, ideas, and rules, but they also provide images and symbols around which religious activity centers and coalesces. Objects and images have great power when endowed with mystical forces. For example, the Asmat of Irian Jaya, the western half of New Guinea, taking the heads of victims in war recreates mystical powers of the cosmos. Taking a head reenacts a sacrifice made at the beginning of time. In a widely told story, a being who was both god and man killed his brother and cut off his head, and when he did so he immediately caused the universe to come into existence, and all of culture along with it. Taking a head thus caused life to emerge because it is regarded that the skulls of the dead help bring about new birth Men would often sleep on or near the skulls of wartime enemies claiming that they absorb something of the deceased' s power at night Witchcraft: Witchcraft involves people who by their very bodily or spiritual composition seek to harm others Witches are people within the community; often they harm only persons who are immediate kin such as in Asante only within the matrilineage. They typically attack out of envy, spit, or greed but also, in recent times, witches are persons whose financial and material success is known to outdo others persons of the lineage or community. Thus, recent studies have linked witchcraft in Africa to money, commodities, financial well-being and, earlier in this century, to the rise of a middle class where persons consumed European goods on a conspicuous level. In fact, Apter has recently argued that the rise of the Atinga witch-finding cult in Yoruba was financed mostly by men who intended to direct accusations of witchcraft toward those women who were competing against them in the cocoa business in the 1940s Navajo trace the appearance of witchcraft to the First Man and First Woman. Those beings developed poisons and spells which inflict illness and death. Witchcraft has been a part of that few overt hostilities are allowed in Navajo society. But openly hating a witch is approve (a traditional Navajo religion; and Kluckholm's description takes a psychological approach statin behavior and provides an emotional outlet. The classic study of witchcraft is Oracles, Magic and Witchcraft among the Azande, by E-P. In E-P's study of witchcraft in azande he made note of the fact that Zande were aware of the physical and biological causes of their daily world. Biological and physical processes were familiar to them, he claimed, as they are to us in the western world. They may not comprehend
the scientific cause and effect of a phenomenon; but they understand that occurrences have particular physical causes or reasons for occurring. Nevertheless, he said, Zande also claim that unfortunate events are the result of witchcraft. These unfortunate events included illness, death, accidents, crop failure, the sudden death of animals, and so forth. If someone is sitting under a granary, and the granary collapses killing the person sitting there ---this is witchcraft. Zande know that the wood is old and that it may be rotted by termites. Yet the lingering question in such a death due to accident is, Why did the granary fall on that person at that particular time? In view of this kind of reasoning, E-P claimed that for Zande witchcraft explains unfortunate events. He writes A man hangs himself after quarreling with his brothers. Now, he was clearly prompted by the quarrel to take his life, but that explanation is insufficient, because people wuarrel every day but only very rarely hang themselves. The"second spear"of witchcraft is need to explain his actions Some people are shading themselves under a granary when the structure collapses, killing them. The cause to a certain extent is to be found int he termites who had eaten away the granary's foundations and caused the collapsed. But why was it precisely at that moment that it collapsed? Why was it those people who were killed rather than some This view of witchcraft is identical to that found in the Bocage region of western France. People in the Bocage understand that illness and death and calamity happen. Their singular occurrence is rarely considered noteworthy or peculiar. The loss of one animal, one illness, one bankruptcy even one death, do not call for more than a single comment: " the trouble with him is that he drinks too much;”“ she had cancer of the kidneys;”“ my cow was very old. Shamanism and Possession: Shamans, especially shamanic healers, are said to be possessed by spirits of deities, and to deriv their power from this possession. In many societies, the shaman is the only kind of religious practitioner;that is, he practices all forms of ritual in such societies. Shamans generally are not specialized practitioners and they carry out their abilities in return for a gift or some fee Shamans possess several mystical qualities. They have access to the powers of spiritual beings which are sometimes referred to as spiritual helpers. The effectiveness of a shaman in curing is believed to derive from the potency of his spirit helps and from his ability to contact them and get them to do his bidding. Contact is made through altered states of consciousness. This altered state(otherwise known as trance)is achieved through intake of drugs, ritual chanting and ecstatic movements, or the rhythmic participation with music. The spirits commonly entered the body of the shaman and/or of the patient in order to effect the healing of someone. In most societies, the major role of the shaman is curing illness When possessed, the shaman becomes a medium, or mouthpiece for the spirits. Instruction of the
