Kinship and Social Organisation

by W. H. R. Rivers

The first point to be noticed in the Oceanic nomenclature of relationship is that not all brothers- and sisters-in-law are classed with brothers and sisters, but only those of different sex. Thus, in Merlav, in the Banks Islands, it is only the wife’s sister and a man’s brother’s wife who are classed with the sister, and the husband’s brother and a woman’s sister’s husband who are classed with the brother, while there are special terms for other categories of relative whom we include under the designations brother- and sister-in-law. Similar conditions are general throughout Melanesia. If, as Professor Kroeber has supposed, the classing of the brother-in-law with the brother be due to the psychological similarity of the relationships, we ought to be able to discover why this similarity should be greater between persons of different sex than between persons of the same sex.

If now we study our case from the Banks Islands more closely and compare the social conditions in Merlav with those of other islands of the group, we find definite evidence, which it will not now be possible to consider in detail, showing that sexual relations were formerly allowed between a man and his wife’s sisters and his brothers’ wives, and that there is a definite association between the classing of these relatives with the sister and the cessation of such sexual relations. If such people as the Melanesians wish to emphasise in the strongest manner possible the impropriety of sexual relations between a man and the sisters of his wife, there is no way in which they can do it more effectually than by classing these relatives with a sister. To a Melanesian, as to other people of rude culture, the use of a term otherwise applied to a sister carries with it such deeply-seated associations as to put sexual relations absolutely out of the question. There is a large body of evidence from southern Melanesia which suggests strongly, if not conclusively, that the common nomenclature I am now considering has arisen out of the social need for emphasising the impropriety of relations which were once habitual among the people.

The second feature of Melanesian terminology which I have mentioned helps us to understand how the common nomenclature has come about. In most of the Melanesian cases in which a wife’s sister is denoted by a term otherwise used for a sister, or a husband’s brother by a term otherwise used for a brother, the term employed is one which is normally used between those of the same sex. Thus, a man does not apply to his wife’s sister the term which he himself uses for his sister, but one which would be used by a woman of her sister. In other words, a man uses for his wife’s sister the term which is used for this relative by his wife. This shows us how the common nomenclature may have come into use. It suggests that as sexual relations with the wife’s sister became no longer orthodox, a man came to apply to this woman the word with which he was already familiar as a term for this relative from the mouth of his wife. The special feature of Melanesian nomenclature according to which terms of relationship vary with the sex of the speaker here helps us to understand how the common nomenclature arose. The process is one in which psychological factors evidently play an important part, but these psychological factors are themselves the outcome of a social process, viz., the change from a condition of sexual communism to one in which sexual relations are restricted to the partners of a marriage. Such psychological factors as come into action are only intermediate links in a chain of causation in which the two ends are definitely social processes or events, or, perhaps more correctly, psychological concomitants of intermediate links which are themselves social events. We should be shutting our eyes to obvious features of these Melanesian customs if we refused to recognise that the terminology of relationship here “reflects” sociology.

This leads me to question for a moment whether it may not be the same with that custom of our own society which Professor Kroeber has taken as his example of the psychological causation of the terminology of relationship. Is it as certain as Professor Kroeber supposes that the classing of the brother-in-law with the brother, or of the sister-in-law with the sister, among ourselves does not reflect sociology? We know that there are social factors at work among us which give to these relationships, and especially to that of wife’s sister, a very great importance. If instead of stating dogmatically that this feature of our own terminology is due to the psychological similarity of the relationships, Professor Kroeber’s mind had been open even to the possibility of the working of social causes, I think he might have been led to inquire more closely into the distribution and exact character of the practice in question. He might have been led to see that we have here a problem for exact inquiry. Such a custom among ourselves must certainly own a cause different from that to which I have ascribed the Melanesian practice, but is it certain that there is no social practice among ourselves which would lead to the classing of the wife’s sister with the sister and the sister’s husband of a woman with the brother? I will only point to the practice of marrying the deceased wife’s sister, and content myself with the remark that I should be surprised if there were any general tendency to class these relatives together by a people among whom this form of marriage is the orthodox and habitual custom.

Till now I have been dealing with relatively small variations of the classificatory system. The varieties I have so far considered are such as would arise out of a common system if in one place there came into vogue the cross-cousin marriage, in another place marriage with the wife of the mother’s brother, in another that with the granddaughter of the brother or with the wife of the grandfather, and in yet other places combinations of these forms of marriage. I have now to consider whether it is possible to refer the main varieties of the classificatory system to social conditions; as an example with which to begin, I choose one which is so definite that it attracted the attention of Morgan, viz., the variety of the classificatory system which Morgan called “Malayan”. It is now generally recognised that this term was badly chosen. The variety so called was known to Morgan through the terminology of the Hawaiian Islands, and as the system of these islands was not only the first to be recorded, but is also that of which even now we have the most complete record, I propose to use it as the pattern and to speak of the Hawaiian system where Morgan spoke of the Malayan. If now we compare the Hawaiian system with the forms of the classificatory system found in other parts of Oceania, in Australia, India, Africa or America, we find that it is characterised by its extreme simplicity and by the fewness of its terms. Distinctions such as those between the father’s brother and the mother’s brother, between the father’s sister and the mother’s sister, and between the children of brothers or of sisters and the children of brother and sister, distinctions which are so generally present in the more usual forms of the classificatory system, are here completely absent. The problem before us is to discover whether the absence of these distinctions can be referred to any social factors. If not, we may be driven to suppose that there is something in the structure of the Polynesian mind which leads the Hawaiian and the Maori to see similarities where most other peoples of rude culture see differences.

The first point to be noted is that in Oceania the distinction between the Hawaiian and the more usual forms of the classificatory system does not correspond with the distinction between the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples. Systems are to be found in Melanesia, as in the western Solomons, which closely resemble that of Hawaii, while there are Polynesian systems, such as those of Tonga and Tikopia, which are so like those of Melanesia that, if they had occurred there, they would have attracted no special attention. The difference between the two kinds of system is not to be correlated with any difference of race.

Next, if we take Melanesian and Polynesian systems as a whole, we find that they do not fall into two sharply marked-off groups, but that there are any number of intermediate gradations between the two. It would be possible to arrange the classificatory systems of Oceania in a series in which it would not be possible to draw the line at any point between the different varieties of system which the two ends of the series seem to represent. The question arises whether it is possible to find any other series of transitions in Oceania which runs parallel with the series connecting the two varieties of system of relationship. There is no doubt but that this question can be answered in the affirmative.

Speaking broadly, there are two main varieties of social organisation in Oceania, with an infinite number of intermediate conditions. In one variety marriage is regulated by some kind of clan-exogamy, including under the term “clan” the moieties of a dual organisation; in the other variety marriage is regulated by kinship or genealogical relationship. We know of no part of Melanesia where marriage is regulated solely by clan-exogamy, but it is possible to arrange Melanesian and Polynesian societies in a series according to the different degrees in which the principles of genealogical relationship is the determining factor in the regulation of marriage. At one end of the series we should have places like the Banks Islands, the northern New Hebrides and the Santa Cruz Islands, where the clan-organisation is so obviously important that it was the only mechanism for the regulation of marriage which was recognised even by so skilful an observer as Dr. Codrington. At the other end of the series we have places such as the Hawaiian Islands and Eddystone Island in the western Solomons, where only the barest traces of a clan-organisation are to be found and where marriage is regulated solely by genealogical relationship. Between the two are numerous intermediate cases, and the series so formed runs so closely parallel to that representing the transitions between different forms of the classificatory system that it seems out of the question but that there should be a relation between the two. Of all the places where I have myself worked, the two in which I failed to find any trace of the regulation of marriage by means of a clan-organisation were the Hawaiian Islands and Eddystone Island, and the systems of both places were lacking in just those distinctions the absence of which characterised the Malayan system of Morgan. Only in one point did the Eddystone system differ from the Hawaiian. Though the mother’s brother was classed in nomenclature with the father, there was a term for the sister’s son, but it was so little used that in a superficial survey it would have escaped notice. Its use was so exceptional that many of the islanders were doubtful about its proper meaning. In other parts of the Solomons where the clan-organisation persists, but where the regulation of marriage by genealogical relationship is equally, if not more, important, the systems of relationship show intermediate characters. Thus, in the island of Florida the mother’s brother was distinguished from the father and there was a term by means of which to distinguish cross-cousins from other kinds of cousin, but the father’s sister was classed with the mother, and it was habitual to ignore the proper term for cross-cousins and to class them in nomenclature with brothers and sisters and with cousins of other kinds, as in the Hawaiian system. One influential man even applied the term for father to the mother’s brother; it was evident that a change is even now in progress which would have to go very little farther to make the Florida system indistinguishable in structure from that of Hawaii.

Among the western Papuo-Melanesians of New Guinea, again, the systems of relationship come very near to the Hawaiian type, and with this character there is associated a very high degree of importance of the regulation of marriage by genealogical relationship and a vagueness of clan-organisation. We have here so close a parallelism between two series of social phenomena as to supply as good an example as could be wished of the application of the method of concomitant variations in the domain of sociology.

The nature of these changes and their relation to the general cultures of the peoples who use the different forms of terminology show that the transitions are to be associated with a progressive change which has taken place in Oceania. In this part of the world the classificatory system has been the seat of a process of simplification starting from the almost incredible complexity of Pentecost and reaching the simplicity of such systems as those of Eddystone or Mekeo. This process has gone hand in hand with one in which the regulation of marriage by some kind of clan-exogamy has gradually been replaced by a mechanism based on relationship as traced by means of pedigrees.