Kinship and Social Organisation

by W. H. R. Rivers

Similarly, a, who before the marriage of d was her father’s sister, now becomes also her husband’s mother, and B, her father’s sister’s husband, comes to stand in the relation of husband’s father; if C should have any brothers and sisters, these cousins now become her brothers- and sisters-in-law.

The combinations of relationship which follow from the marriage of a man with the daughter of his mother’s brother thus differ for a man and a woman, but if, as is usual, a man may marry the daughter either of his mother’s brother or of his father’s sister, these combinations of relationship will hold good for both men and women.

Another and more remote consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, if this become an established institution, is that the relationships of mother’s brother and father’s sister’s husband will come to be combined in one and the same person, and that there will be a similar combination of the relationships of father’s sister and mother’s brother’s wife. If the cross-cousin marriage be the habitual custom, B and b in Diagram 1 will be brother and sister; in consequence A will be at once the mother’s brother and the father’s sister’s husband of C, while b will be both his father’s sister and his mother’s brother’s wife. Since, however, the mother’s brother is also the father-in-law, and the father’s sister the mother-in-law, three different relationships will be combined in each case. Through the cross-cousin marriage the relationships of mother’s brother, father’s sister’s husband and father-in-law will be combined in one and the same person, and the relationships of father’s sister, mother’s brother’s wife and mother-in-law will be similarly combined.

In many places where we know the cross-cousin marriage to be an established institution, we find just those common designations which I have just described. Thus, in the Mbau dialect of Fiji the word vungo is applied to the mother’s brother, the husband of the father’s sister and the father-in-law. The word nganei is used for the father’s sister, the mother’s brother’s wife and the mother-in-law. The term tavale is used by a man for the son of the mother’s brother or of the father’s sister as well as for the wife’s brother and the sister’s husband. Ndavola is used not only for the child of the mother’s brother or father’s sister when differing in sex from the speaker, but this word is also used by a man for his wife’s sister and his brother’s wife, and by a woman for her husband’s brother and her sister’s husband. Every one of these details of the Mbau system is the direct and inevitable consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, if it become an established and habitual practice.

This Fijian system does not stand alone in Melanesia. In the southern islands of the New Hebrides, in Tanna, Eromanga, Anaiteum and Aniwa, the cross-cousin marriage is practised and their systems of relationship have features similar to those of Fiji. Thus, in Anaiteum the word matak applies to the mother’s brother, the father’s sister’s husband and the father-in-law, while the word engak used for the cross-cousin is not only used for the wife’s sister and the brother’s wife, but also for the wife herself.

Again, in the island of Guadalcanar in the Solomons the system of relationship is just such as would result from the cross-cousin marriage. One term, nia, is used for the mother’s brother and the wife’s father, and probably also for the father’s sister’s husband and the husband’s father, though my stay in the island was not long enough to enable me to collect sufficient genealogical material to demonstrate these points completely. Similarly, tarunga includes in its connotation the father’s sister, the mother’s brother’s wife and the wife’s mother, and probably also the husband’s mother, while the word iva is used for both cross-cousins and brothers- and sisters-in-law. Corresponding to this terminology there seemed to be no doubt that it was the custom for a man to marry the daughter of his mother’s brother or his father’s sister, though I was not able to demonstrate this form of marriage genealogically.

These three regions, Fiji, the southern New Hebrides and Guadalcanar, are the only parts of Melanesia included in my survey where I found the practice of the cross-cousin marriage, and in all three regions the systems of relationship are just such as would follow from this form of marriage.

Let us now turn to inquire how far it is possible to explain these features of Melanesian systems of relationship by psychological similarity. If it were not for the cross-cousin marriage, what can there be to give the mother’s brother a greater psychological similarity to the father-in-law than the father’s brother, or the father’s sister a greater similarity to the mother-in-law than the mother’s sister? Why should it be two special kinds of cousin who are classed with two special kinds of brother- and sister-in-law or with the husband or wife? Once granted the presence of the cross-cousin marriage, and there are psychological similarities certainly, though even here the matter is not quite straightforward from the point of view of the believer in their importance, for we have to do not merely with the similarity of two relatives, but with their identity, with the combination of two or more relationships in one and the same person. Even if we put this on one side, however, it remains to ask how it is possible to say that terms of relationship do not reflect sociology, if such psychological similarities are themselves the result of the cross-cousin marriage? What point is there in bringing in hypothetical psychological similarities which are only at the best intermediate links in the chain of causation connecting the terminology of relationship with antecedent social conditions?

If you concede the causal relation between the characteristic features of a Fijian or Anaiteum or Guadalcanar system and the cross-cousin marriage, there can be no question that it is the cross-cousin marriage which is the antecedent and the features of the system of relationship the consequences. I do not suppose that, even in this subject, there will be found anyone to claim that the Fijians took to marrying their cross-cousins because such a marriage was suggested to them by the nature of their system of relationship. We have to do in this case, not merely with one or two features which might be the consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, but with a large and complicated meshwork of resemblances and differences in the nomenclature of relationship, each and every element of which follows directly from such a marriage, while no one of the systems I have considered possesses a single feature which is not compatible with social conditions arising out of this marriage. Apart from quantitative verification, I doubt whether it would be possible in the whole range of science to find a case where we can be more confident that one phenomenon has been conditioned by another. I feel almost guilty of wasting your time by going into it so fully, and should hardly have ventured to do so if this case of social causation had not been explicitly denied by one with so high a reputation as Professor Kroeber. I hope, however, that the argument will be useful as an example of the method I shall apply to other cases in which the evidence is less conclusive.