IV. Reciprocity and Dual Organization
I have found only one writer who fully appreciates the importance of reciprocity in primitive social organization. The leading German anthropologist, Prof. Thumwald of Berlin, clearly recognizes „die Symmetric des Gesellschaftsbaus” and the corresponding „Symmetric von Handlungen”.4 Throughout his monograph, which is perhaps the best account of the social organization of a savage tribe extant, Prof. Thumwald shows how the symmetry of social structure and of actions pervades native life. Its importance as a legal binding form is not, however, explicitly stated by the writer, who seems to be aware of its psychological foundation ’in human feeling’ rather than of its social function in safeguarding the continuity and adequacy of mutual services.
The old theories of tribal dichotomy, the discussions about the ’origins’ of ’phratries5’ or ’moieties6’ and of the duality in tribal subdivisions, never entered into the inner or differential foundations of the external phenomenon of halving. The recent treatment of the ’dual organization’ by the late Dr. Rivers and his school suffers badly from the defect of looking for recondite causes instead of analysing the phenomenon itself. The dual principle is neither the result of ’fusion’ nor ’splitting’ nor of any other sociological cataclysm. It is the integral result of the inner symmetry of all social transactions, of the reciprocity of services, without which no primitive community could exist. A dual organization may appear clearly in the division of a tribe into two ’moieties’ or be almost completely obliterated — but I venture to foretell that wherever careful inquiry be made, symmetry of structure will be found in every savage society, as the indispensable basis of reciprocal obligations.
The sociological manner in which the relations of reciprocity are arranged, makes them yet more stringent. Between the two communities the exchanges are not carried out haphazard, any two individuals trading with each other at random. On the contrary, every man has his permanent partner in the exchange, and the two have to deal with each other. They are often relatives-in-law, or else sworn friends, or partners in the important system of ceremonial exchange called kula. Within each community again the individual partners are ranged into totemic sub-clans. So that the exchange establishes a system of sociological ties of an economic nature, often combined with other ties between individual and individual, kinship group and kinship group, village and village, district and district.
Going over the relations and transactions previously described, it is easy to see that the same principle of mutuality supplies the sanction for each rule. There is in every act a sociological dualism: two parties who exchange services and functions, each watching over the measure of fulfilment and the fairness of conduct of the other. The master of the canoe, whose interests and ambitions are bound up with his craft, looks after order in the internal transactions between the members of the crew and represents the latter externally. To him each member of the crew is bound at the time of construction and ever after, when co-operation is necessary. Reciprocally, the master has to give each man the ceremonial payment at the feast of construction; the master cannot refuse any one his place in the boat; and he has to see that each man receives his fair share of the catch. In this and in all the manifold activities of economic order, the social behaviour of the natives is based on a well-assessed give-and-take, always mentally ticked off and in the long run balanced. There is no wholesale discharge of duties or acceptance of privileges; no ’communistic’ disregard of tally and ear-mark. The free and easy way in which all transactions are done, the good manners which pervade all and cover any hitches or maladjustments, make it difficult for the superficial observer to see the keen self-interest and watchful reckoning which runs right through. To one who knows the natives intimately, nothing is more patent than this. The same control which the master assumes within his canoe, is taken within the community by the headman who is, as a rule, also the hereditary magician.