Kinship and Social Organisation

by W. H. R. Rivers

In the Arabic system of relationship used in Egypt many of the terms are descriptive; thus, the father’s brother being called ’amm, the father’s brother’s wife is mirat ’ammi, the father’s brother’s son ibn ’ammi, and the father’s brother’s daughter bint ’ammi, and there is a similar usage for the consorts and children of the father’s sister and of the brother and sister of the mother.

Similarly, many Shilluk terms suggest a descriptive character, the father’s brother being wa, the wife of the father’s brother is chiwa, the father’s brother’s son is uwa, and his daughter is nyuwa. The father’s sister being waja, her son and daughter are uwaja and nyuwaja respectively. Similar descriptive terms are used by the Dinkas. The father’s brother being walen, the father’s brother’s son is manwalen and his daughter yanwalen; the mother’s brother being ninar, the mother’s brother’s son is manninar and his daughter yanninar.

According to the main thesis of these lectures, these descriptive usages should own some definite social cause. The descriptive terminology seems to be particularly definite in the case of cousins, and it might be suggested that they are dependent, at any rate in part and in so far as Egypt is concerned, on the prevalence of marriage with a cousin. Marriages with the daughter of a father’s brother or of a mother’s brother are especially orthodox and popular in Egypt, and different degrees of preference for marriage with different classes of cousin would produce just such a social need as would have led to the definite distinction of the different kinds of cousin from one another by means of descriptive terms.

It is more probable, however, that the use of descriptive terms in the languages of the Semites and of the Shilluks and Dinkas has been the outcome of a definite form of social organisation, viz., that in which the social unit is neither the family in the narrow sense, nor the clan, but that body of persons of common descent living in one house or in some other kind of close association which we call the patriarchal or extended family, the Grossfamilie of the Germans. It is a feature of the Semitic and Nilotic systems, not only to distinguish the four chief categories of cousin, but also the four chief kinds of uncle or aunt, viz., the father’s brother, the father’s sister, the mother’s brother and the mother’s sister, all of whom are habitually classed together in our system, while some of them are classed with the father or mother in the classificatory system. The Semitic and Nilotic terminology is such as would follow from a form of social organisation in which the more intimate relationships of the family in the narrow sense are definitely recognised, but yet certain uncles, aunts, and cousins are of so much importance as to make it necessary for social purposes that they shall be denoted exactly. The brothers of the father and the unmarried sisters of the father would be of the same social group as the father, while the brothers and unmarried sisters of the mother would be of a different social group, which would account for their distinctive nomenclature, while within the social group it would be necessary to distinguish the father from his brothers. It would be too cumbrous to call this variety of system after the extended family, and I suggest that it should be called the “kindred” system.

Analogy with other parts of the world suggests that all those of the same generation in the social group formed by the extended family may once have been classed together under one term, and that, as later there arose social motives requiring the distinction of different relatives so classed together, descriptive terms came into use to make the necessary distinctions. You must please regard this only as a suggestion. We need far more detailed evidence concerning the social status of different relatives among the peoples who use these descriptive terms. Such knowledge as we possess seems to point to the dependence of the Semitic and Sudanese terminology upon the social institution of the extended family, just as our own system depends on the social institution of the family in the narrow sense and the classificatory system upon the clan.

If this descriptive mode of nomenclature be thus the outcome of a social organisation of which the essential element is the extended family, I need hardly point out how natural it is that we should find this kind of nomenclature so widely in Europe. The presence of this descriptive terminology in Celtic and Scandinavian languages, in Lithuanian and Esthonian, would be examples of the persistence of a form of nomenclature which had its origin in the kindred of the extended family. On this view we must believe that, in other languages of Europe, this mode of nomenclature has gradually been replaced by one dependent on the social institution of the family in the narrow sense.

At this point I should like to sum up briefly the position to which our argument has taken us. I have first shown the dependence of a number of special features of the classificatory system of relationship upon special forms of marriage. Then I have shown that certain broad varieties of the classificatory system are to be referred to different forms of social organisation and to the different degrees in which the regulation of marriage by means of clan-exogamy has been replaced by a mechanism dependent upon kinship or genealogical relationship. From that I was led to refer the general features of the classificatory system to the dependence of this system upon the social unit of the clan as opposed to the family which I believe to be the basis of our own terminology of relationship. I then pointed to several features of the classificatory system which suggest that it arose in that special variety of the clan-organisation in which a community consists of two exogamous moieties, forming the social structure usually known as the dual organisation. I considered more fully the dependence of our own mode of denoting relatives upon the social institution of the family, and then a study of the descriptive terminology of relationship has led me to suggest that certain modes of denoting relationship in Egypt, the Sudan and many European countries may be examples of a third main variety of system of relationship which has arisen out of the patriarchal or extended family. We should thus have three main varieties of system of relationship in place of the two which have hitherto been recognised, having their origins respectively in the clan, in the family in the narrow sense, and in the extended or patriarchal family. These three varieties may be regarded as genera within each of which are species and varieties depending upon special social conditions which have arisen within each kind of social grouping, either as the result of changes within each form of social organisation or of transitions from one form to another. We know of a far larger number of such varieties within the classificatory system than within those due to the two forms of the family, and this is probably due in some measure to the fact that the classificatory system is still by far the most widely distributed form over the earth’s surface. Still more important, however, is the fact that among the peoples who use the classificatory system there is an infinitely greater variety of social institution, and especially of forms of marriage, than exist among civilised peoples whose main social unit, the family, is not one which is capable of any extended range of variation. The result of the complete survey has been to justify my use of the classificatory system as the means whereby to demonstrate the dependence of the terminology of relationship upon social conditions. It is the great variability of this mode of denoting relatives which makes it so valuable an instrument for the study of the laws which have governed the history of that department of language by which mankind has denoted those who stand in social relations to himself.

You may have been wondering whether I am going to say anything about the merits of the controversy which has till now given to systems of relationship their chief interest among students of sociology. I have so far left on one side the subjects which have been the main ground of controversy ever since the time of Morgan. You will have gathered that I regard it as a grave misfortune for the science of sociology that the topics of promiscuity and group-marriage should have been thrust by Morgan into the prominent place which they have ever since occupied in the theoretical study of relationship. Even now I should have liked to leave them on one side on the ground that the evidence is as yet insufficient to make them profitable subjects for such exact inquiry as I believe to be the proper business of sociology. Their very prominence, however, makes it impossible to leave them wholly unconsidered, but I propose to deal with them very briefly.

I begin with the question whether the classificatory system of relationship provides us with any evidence that mankind once possessed a form of social organisation, or rather such an absence of social organisation, as would accompany a condition of general promiscuity in which, if one can speak of marriage at all, marriage was practised between all and any members of the community, including brothers and sisters. I can deal with this subject very briefly because I hope to have succeeded elsewhere in knocking away the support on which the whole of Morgan’s own construction rested.

Morgan deduced his stage of promiscuity from the Hawaiian system, which he supposed to be the most primitive form of classificatory nomenclature. In an article published in 1907 I showed[33] that it rather represents a late stage in the history of the more ordinary forms of the classificatory system. My conclusion at that time was based on the scanty evidence derived from the relatively few Oceanic systems which had then been recorded, but my work since that article was written has shown the absolute correctness of my earlier opinion, which I can now support by a far larger body of evidence than was available in 1907. It remains possible, however, that the Hawaiian system may have had its source in promiscuity, even though this condition be late rather than primitive, but it would be going beyond the scope of these lectures to deal fully with this subject here. I cannot forbear, however, from mentioning that Hawaiian promiscuity, in so far as it existed, was not the condition of the whole people, but only of the chiefs who alone were allowed to contract brother and sister marriages, while I have evidence that the avoidance of brother and sister in Melanesia, which has so often been regarded as a survival of man’s early promiscuity, is capable of a very different explanation.[34] Our available knowledge, whether derived from features of the classificatory system or from other social facts, does not provide one shred of evidence in favour of such a condition as was put forward by Morgan as the earliest stage of human society, nor is there any evidence that such promiscuity has ever been the ruling principle of a people at any later stage of the history of mankind.