Rethinking Anthropology – E. R. Leach

RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY capital of the United Kingdom SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCLL ANTHROPOLOGY Managing Editor Anthony Fore The Monographs in on mixer Anthropology were established modem The by 1940 and charter to unloosen results of anthropological rese trendh of primary winding fire to specificists. continuation of the series was fasten on a leak viable from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and to a greater extent recently by a further give in from the Governors of the London a grant in aid run short of economics and Political Science. re chthonian the path of an Board associated with the Department of Anthropology of the London indoctrinate of Economics and Political Science. Editorial The Monographs LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON complaisant ANTHROPOLOGY No. 22 Re opinion Anthropology by E. R. divest UNIVERSITY OF LONDON THE ATHLONE complot NEW YORK humanistic discipline PRESS INC Published by THE ATHLONE PRESS UN IVERSITY OF LONDON at 2 Gotcer Street, Distri only whened by Tiptree London wci Book Services Ltd Tiptree, Essex front-year mutant, 1961 First paperback edition with corrections, 1966 Reprinted, 1968, 1971 E. R. Leach, 1961, 1971 U. K. U. K. sB N o 485 19522 4 cloth sB N B o 485 19622 o paperback U. S. A. s N 391 00146 9 paperback First printed in 1961 by ROBERT CUNNINGHAM AND SONS LTD ALVA Reprinted by photo-litho by bum DICKENS & CO LTD NORTHAMPTON 4- M75 Pre scene The backup of this collection right be recollectives only to the initiative es assure. On 3 December 1959 1 had the honour to deliver the low Malinovvski muniment Lecture at the London in lock of Economics. The Editorial Board of the London School of Economics Monographs in favorable Anthropology enerously offered to publish the text of my lecture further added the praise suggestion that I should reprinting a enumerate of my some otherwise essays at the equivalent clock time. I perk up accordly e nchantd the prenomen of my Malinowski lecture for the livelong collection. I do non pretend wholly unvarying with that The essays extend over a spot of fifteen years and is that the discipline headland of the up-to-the-minute (Chapter i) of the earliest (Chapter 2) further t here is, I bring forward, a plastered continuity of conclave and method in whatso forever of them. When they were premiere written solely these essays were attempts to re ideate anthropology.All atomic itemize 18 takeed with puzzles of others, I possible action and atomic number 18 ground on ethnographic particulars recorded by my testify contri scarcelyion being to begin with that of analyst. In each plate ease up tried to reassess the kn proclaim facts in the light of unorthodox assumpSuch heresy counts to me to give up meritoriousness for its hold sake. Unconventional occupations a lot free off to be do by al cardinal provided they provoke discussion they whitethorn sta tic pass water stretch forthing value. By that criterion each of the essays in this earmark is a possible faecesdidate for attention. tions. Among companionable anthropologists the is game f building refreshing theories on the ruins of old champion and only(a)nesss al around an occupational disease. Contemporary melodic lines in tender anthropology be built kayoed of chance variableulae concocted by Malinowski, Radcliffe- chocolate-br avouch and Levi-Strauss who in relinquish were only rethinking Rivers, Durkheim and Mauss, who borrowed from Morgan, McLennan and Robertson- Smith the exonerate gumption outcome of each(prenominal) and so on. Sceptics whitethorn think that despite all this stopping menstruation adds up to in truth pocketable our pedagogic subtleties, the diversities of human custom remain as bewildering as al counsels. plainly that we admit.The contemporary societal anthropologist is all too rise up apprised that he pick outs much(prenomi nal) less than Frazer imagined that he k crude for certain. b argonly that perhaps is the point. The contri aloneions to anthropological pedan canvas land in in this news add little to the sum of human fill in directge tho if they provoke some lecturers to doubt their sense of certainty thence they provideing eat served their mean. A none on the interconnections amid the different document draft of Chapter 2 may prove still easeful. The first was written in 1943 while I was on VI PREFACE and still in direct contact with Jinghpaw speakers. ppeargond in the 1945 volume of the J. R. A. I, this was non actually print until 1950. These details of dating be pertinent because they explain wherefore my paper claims no inter trance to Chapters 15 and i6 of Levi-Strauss, Les twists brokeraires de la pargonnte (1949) and mutually why the latter work ignores the new in seduceation provided by my paper. Chapter 3, which was headmasterly a Curl Prize Essay, was complete d in the spring of 195 1 and seems to drive home been the first English language commentar) on Levi-Strausss magnum part though, presumably, my paper and J.P. B. de Josselin de Jongs monograph Levi-Strausss Theory on phylofamilial analogy and nuptials (1952) were going through with(predicate) the constringe at the equal time. Although I here criticized Levi-Strauss on the grounds of ethnographical inaccuracy my discernment with his familiar theoretical point of place is very great. Professor Levi-Strauss has himself noned the law of resemblance amid the muckle of cordial social structure unquestioning in my first Jinghpaw paper (Chapter 2) and his own (Levi-Strauss, 1953, p. 525 n), and in all my subsequent numbers my debt to Levi-Strauss is perspicuous.The descriptor of Chapter 4 to earliest literature exit be appargonnt from the fibers in the text. Although it was not hatch to be controversial it get under ones skin Dr Kathleen Gough into a vigorous rep ly (Gough, 1959). The authoritative part of my parametric quantity here is that I emphasize the select to distinguish betwixt affinity regarded as an alliance betwixt corporate kin groups and those someone affine ties which bind a particular proposition married woman to a particular married man. This theme recurs in Chapter 5 and again in spry military service t Although Chapter i. Chapter 5, as indicated in the text, is linked with a long correspondence which appe ared in the pages of Man in 1953 and 1954 notwithstanding the response which it evoked from my oddment pedantic colleagues is only marginally committed with this earlier discussion. Dr treat has denounced my whole argument as grounded in fundamental geological fault (Goody, 1959, p. 86) and Professor Fortes has taken up most of dickens issues of Man to expound my fallacies and confusions (Fortes, 1959b).Both these explosions of academic wrath were provoked by a single sentence in my essay, to wit Thus Fort es, while recognizing that ties of affinity defend comparable importance to ties of stock certificate, disguises the actor under(a) his expression completing filiation (see below p. 122). The exact sense in which this direction is an error is still not clear to me for in the course of his denunciation Fortes reaffirms his view that complementary filiation is a function of related traffic (Fortes, 1959b, p. 209) which is hardly the argument I desire to controvert. Professor Fortes has cal take his article *a replication to Leach, and readers of Chapter i of this book need to evaluate that a among other things in it is intended as rejoinder to Fortes. Reference to a short note Man (i960. Art. 6) give perhaps help to make this clear. The devil short papers on time symbolism reprinted in Chapter 6 do PREFACE influence of Professor Levi-Strauss Vll not skeletal clay a series with the other chapters of the book though again the is pronounced. Although my Cronus and Chro nos appeared in print in 1953 while Levi-Strausss The morphological Study of Myth was only publish in 1956, I had in fact already heard Professor Levi-Strausss lecture on this topic before I wrote my essay.Explorations, the Toronto University publication in which my Chapter 6 was originally published, carried on its fly leaf the relation that it was designed, not as a permanent name journal that embalms virtue for posterity, except as a publication that explores and searches and questions and two my papers are correspondingly brief and tentative. more thanover a number of my friends take a leak suggested that the arguments they contain are of more than ephemeral interest hence the reissue here Chapter i contains a overturnable amount of consider which was not included in the utter text of my Malinowski lecture. The other essays appear as originally printed, except for the correction of misprints, and one or twain very peasant alterations intended to clarify the argume nt. The Introductory Notes at the correct astir(predicate) of Chapters 2-6 are new. Acknow takegements I am indebted to the Council of the Royal Anthropological bring in of Great Britain and Ireland for permission to reprint the essays published here as Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 and to Professor E. S. Carpenter and the University of Toronto for permission to reprint the two short essays included in Chapter 6.I am indebted to a ain grant in aid from the behavioral Sciences Division of the Ford Foundation for facilities active while preparing * j - these papers for publication. E. R. L. Contents 1. RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY I 2. JINGHPAW KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY THE STRUCTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF MATRILATERAL CROSS-COUSIN join 28 3. 54 4. POLYANDRY, INHERITANCE AND THE commentary OF hymeneals with PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO Sinhala CUSTOMARY LAW ASPECTS OF BRIDEWEALTH AND MARRIAGE stableness IO5 5. AMONG THE KACHIN AND LAKHER 6. II4 TWOESSAYS CONCERNING THE SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF TIME (i) 124 Cronus and Chronos, 124 (ii) cartridge clip and False Noses, 132 Rethinking Anthropology my arrogant title. Since 1930 British Anthropology has embody a healthy defined get along of estimations and - purposes which pull ahead directly from the teaching of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown this iodine of aim is summed up in the statement that British social anthropology is functionalist and concerned with the relative depth psychology of social structures. notwithstanding during the last year or so it has begun to representative as if this particular aim had worked itself out.Most of my colleagues are giving up the attempt to make comparative generalizations instead they get under ones skin begun to release impeccably detailed historical ethno- tET Social me begin by explaining graphies of particular wads. I regret this new tendency for I still believe that the findings of anthro- pologists squander general as well as particular implications, but functionalist d octrine retire fromd to carry trust? why has the conceive what is bumping in social anthropology I believe we need to go right back to the beginning and rethink basal issues really simple progenys such(prenominal) as To hat we mean by marriage or channel or the unity of difficult siblings, and that is for basic ideas are basic The the ideas one has about them are deeply entrenched and firm held. One prepossess of the things we need to grapple is the strength of the empirical which Malinowski introduced into social anthropology and which substantial core of social anthropology has stayed with us ever since. is understanding of the way of life of a single particular people. This fieldwork is an extremely person-to-personised traumatic pleasing of experience and the personal involvement of the anthropologist in his work is reflected in what he produces.When we read Malinowski we get the judgement that he is stating something which is of general importance. however h ow deal this be? He is exactly piece of music about Trobriand Islanders. Somehow he has so assimilated himself into the Trobriand situation that he is able to make the Trobriands fieldwork a microcosm of the whole primitive world. successors for Firth, naif citizen of the And the comparable is true of his is Man is a Tikopian, for Fortes, he a Ghana. The existence of this damage has long been recognized / but we keep paid inadequate attention to its consequences.The hindrance of achieving comparative generalizations is directly linked with the riddle of escaping from ethnocentric bias. 2 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY As is charm to an occasion I when we honour the retention of Bronislaw MaUnowski, am going to be thoroughly egotistical. I shall imply on that point my own is merit by condemning the work of in my nearst friends. only if purpose is to distinguish between two kinda similar varieties of comparative generalization, some(prenominal) of which turn up from time to time in contemporary British social anthropology.One of these, which I dislike, derives from the work of Radcliffe-Brown the other, which I admire, derives from the work of Levi-Strauss. It is definitive that the differences between these two advancees be properly understood, so I shall draw my illustrations in sharp contrast, all black and all white. In this harsh and overstated assortment Professor Levi-Strauss method my malice. My exponent well repudiate the authorship of the ideas which I am trying to convey. Hence my egotism let the blame be wholly mine. My problem is simple.How burn down a modern social anthropologist, with all the work of Malinowski and Radcliffc-Brown and their successors at his elbow, adventure upon generalization with any hope of arriving at a satisfying conclusion? My termination is quite simple too it is this By thinking of the cheekal ideas that are enclose in any party as constituting a numerical signifier. The rest of what I have to say that is simply an culture of this cryptic statement. concern is with generalization, not with keep that the objective of social anthropology was the comparison of social structures.In explaining this he asserted that when we distinguish and equalize different guinea pigs of social structure we are doing the same variant of thing as when we distinguish different kinds of sea fount according to their geomorphologic role (RadcliffeBrown, 1953, p. 109). abstraction is quite a different kind of mental First let me emphasize my comparison. Radcliffe-Brown operation. Let me illustrate this point. two points depose be joined by a successive line and you lav bet this straight line mathematically by a smG. first ball club algebraic equation. whatever three points gouge be joined by a turn and you can represent this pass around by a quadratic or present moment effect algebraic equation. It would be a generalization to go straight on from in that location and say any Any n points in a sail can be joined by a curve which can be represented by an equation of order n-i. This would be just a guess, but it would be true, and it is a kind of truth which no amount of comparison can ever reveal. likeness and generalization are twain forms of scientific activity, but different. Comparison is a matter of bray ingathering of circleification, of the rrangement of things according to their types and subtypes. The followers of Radcliffe-Brown are anthropological butterfly collectors and their barbel to their data has certain consequences. For role model, according to RadclifTe- Browns rationales we ought to think of Trobriand club RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY as 3 classification a society of a particular structural type. The might proceed thus Main cause Sub-type Sub-sub-type societies societies societies composed of uni matrilineal descent groups. composed of matrilinear descent groups. composed of matrilineal descent groups in which he married males of t he matrilineage live together in one state of affairs and apart from the females of the matrilineage, and so on. In this surgery each class antecede it is a sub-type of the class immediately in the tabulation. its uses, but it has very sedate has no logical limits. Ultimately discriminated in this way as a sub-type immediately I any just agree that depth psychology of this kind has is limitations. One major(ip) abandon known society can be that it from any other, and since anthropologists are notably fainthearted about what they mean by a society, this will lead them to distinguish more and more ocieties, almost ad infinitum. This is not just hypothesis. My colleague Dr Goody has bypast to great pains to distinguish as types two adjacent societies in the Union Gold Coast which he calls LoWiili and LoDagaba. A careful reader of Dr Goodys works will discover, however, that these two societies are distinct simply the way that field Dr Goody notes from two has chosen to descri be the fact that his neighbouring communities depute some curious discrepancies. If limit Dr Goodys methods of analysis were pushed to the we should be able to show that every village community throughout is he world constitutes a distinct society which distinguishable as a type from any other (Goody, 1956b). Another serious objection is that the typology makers never explain why they choose one frame of reference quite an than other. RadcliffeBrovsTis instructions were simply that it is needed to compare societies the economic system, the with reference to one particular aspect . . . political system, or the kinship system . . . this is equivalent to saying that you can arrange your butterflies according to their colour, or their size, or the shape of their wings according to the him of the moment, but no matter what you do this will be science. Well perhaps, in a sense, it is but you must realize that your preliminary arrangement pass waters an initial bias from which it is after extremely difficult to escape (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940, p. xii). Social anthropology is packed with frustrations of it this kind. An patent Ever since moral is the stratum opposition lineal/matrilineal. has been oecumenic for anthropologists to distinguish unilineal from non-unilineal descent systems, and writing of the Iroquois, Morgan began among that it the former to distinguish patrilineal societies from atrilineal societies. is These categories now seem to us so rudimentary and obvious extremely difficult to break out of the straitjacket of thought which the categories themselves impose. 4 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY Yet if our approach is to be genuinely unsophisticated we must be prepared to consider the possibihty that these type categories have no sociological significance whatsoever. It may be that to create a class labelled matrtis as irrelevant for our understanding of social structure as the creation of a class blue butterflies is irrelevant for the understanding of the anatomical reference structure of lepidoptera.I dont say it is so, but it may be it is lineal societies time that we considered the possibility. J I warn you, the rethinking of basic category assumptions can be very disconcerting. But Let me cite a case. Dr Audrey Richardss well-known(a) contribution to African Systems of Kinship and Marriage is an essay in Radcliffe-Brownian typology making which is right regarded as one of the musts of undergraduate interpreting (Richards, 1950). In this essay Dr Richards asserts that societies is the problem of matrilineal the twoer of combining recognition of descent through the oman with the rule of exogamous marriage, and she classifies a multifariousness of matrilineal societies according to the way this problem is solved. In effect her classification turns on the fact that a womans husband the two men. together with possess rights in the womans brother and a womans chelaren but that matrilineal systems differ in the way these rights are allocated between is the forward category assumptions. Men have kinds of society, so why should it be assumed from the swallow that brothers-in-law in matrilineal societies have picky prob- What I object to in this ll brothers-in-law in lems which are absent in patrilineal or bilateral structures? really What has lay a matrilineal society, she has decided to cut down her comparative obser-ations to matrilineal systems. Then, having selected a group of societies which have nothing in prevalent except that they are matrilineal, she is by temper led to conclude that matrilineal descent is the major factor to which all the other items of pagan behaviour which she happened here with the Bemba, is that, because Dr Richardss own superfluous knowledge describes are functionally adjusted.Her argument I am afraid is a tautology her system of classification already implies the truth of what she claims to be demonstrating. This illustrates how Radcliffe-Browns taxonomic assu mptions fit in with the ethnocentric bias which I mentioned earlier. Because the typefinding social anthropologist conducts his whole argument in terms of tempted particular instances earlier than of reason out patterns, he is constantly to attach exaggerated significance to those features of social organization which happen to be prominent in the societies of which he himself has first hand experience. The ase of Professor Fortes illustrates this is same point in rather a different way. His quest not so much for types as for ensamples. It so happens that the two societies of which he has made a close study have certain similarities of structural pattern for, while the Tallensi are patri- RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY lineal 5 and the Ashanti matrilineal, both Tallensi and Ashanti come unfiliation, usually close to having a system of ternary unilineal descent. Professor Fortes has devised a special supposition, complementary which helps him to describe this two-base hit unilineal el ement in the Tallensi/Ashanti pattern while rejecting the arbitrariness that these societies actually possess double unilineal systems (Fortes, 1953, p. 33 1959b). It is interesting to note the quite a little which led to the schooling of this concept. From one point of view complementary filiation is simply an inverse form of Malinowskis notion of sociological paternity as utilise in the matrilineal context of Trobriand society. But Fortes has done more than invent a new name for an old idea he has made it the corner rock-and-roll of a substantial body of scheme and this theory arises logically special circumstances of his own field experience.In his earlier literature the Tallensi are often represented as having a somewhat extreme form of patrilineal ideology. Later, in contrast to from the Rattray, Fortes position an unambiguously matrilineal label upon the Ashanti. view, is The that merit of complementary it is filiation, from Fortess point of a concept which applies equa lly well to both of these contrasted societies but does not date with his thesis that both the Tallensi and the Ashanti have systems of unilineal descent. The concept ecame necessary to him precisely because he had decided at the snuff it that the more familiar and more obvious notion of double unilineal descent was inappropriate. In retrospect Fortes seems to have decided that double unilineal descent is a special development of complementary filiation, the latter being a feature of all unilineal descent structures. That such category distinctions are contrived rather than natural is evident from Goodys additional discrimination. Goody asserts that the LoWiili have complementary descent rather than a dual descent system.Since the concept of complementary filiation was first introduced so as to help in the distinction between filiation and descent and since the adjective complementary cannot here be given up meaning except by reference to the word descent, the total argument is distinctly tautologous (Fortes, 1945, pp. 134, 20of 1950, p. 287 1953, p. 34 1959 Goody, 1956b, p. 77). Now I do not claim that Professor Fortes is mistaken, but I think he is misled by his prior suppositions. If making and from enthnocentric science. we are to bias we must let escape both from typology turn to a different kind ofInstead of comparison repeat. Generalization us have generalization instead of inductive it butterfly amass let us have inspired guesswork. Let me is consists in perceiving it is possible general laws in the circumstances of special cases guesswork, a gamble, you may be vilify or you may be right, but if you happen to be right you have readt something altogether new. In contrast, arranging butterflies according to their types and sub-types is tautology. It merely reasserts something you know already in a slightly different form. 6 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY But if you are going is o buzz off guessing, you need I to know how to guess. . d this wliat I am ac quiring at when say that the form of thinking should be mathematical. Functional ism in a mathematical sense is not concerned with the interconnections between part of a whole but with the principles of operation of partial derivative systems. There is a direct conflict here with the precepts of Malinowski and Malinowskis functionalism required us to think of each Society (or Culture, as Malinowski would have put it) as a sum Radcliffe-Brown. of a made up kinds number of discrete empirical things, of rather divers(a) institutions, e. g. groups of people, customs. These things are functionally interconnected to form a delicately balanced chemical tool rather like the various parts of a radiocarpal joint watch. cliffe- The functionalism of Rad- Brown was equally automatic though the commission of interest was different. RadclifTe-Brown was concerned, as it were, to distinguish wrist watches clocks, whereas Malinowski was interested in the general attributes of clockwork. But hath masters took as their startle point the notion that a culture or a society is an empirical whole made up rom grand drive of a limited two societies number of readily identifiable parts and that when we compare we are concerned to see whether or not the same kinds of is parts are present in both cases. This approach a mechanic but appropriate for a zoologist or for a botanist or for it is not the approach of a mathematician nor of an engineer and, in gineer. my view, the anthropologist has much in common with the en- But that is my esoteric bias. I was originally trained as an engineer. The entities which we call societies are not naturally existing species, n both re they artificial mechanisms. But the likeness of a mechanism has quite as much relevance as the affinity of an being. This is not the place to discuss the history of the organic analogy as a model for Society, but its arbitrariness is often forgotten. Hobbes, who developed his notion of a social organism i n a very systematic way, discusses in his preface whether a mechanical or an organic analogy might be the more appropriate for his purpose. He opts for an organism only because he wants to include in his model a metaphysical prize mover (i. . God bearing Force) (Hobbes, 1957, p. 5). In contrast RadcHffe-Brown employed the organic analogy as a matter of dogma rather than of choice (e. g. Radcliffe-Brown, 1957, pp. 82-86 1940a, pp. 3, lo) and his butterfly collecting followers have accepted the rightness of the phrase social organism without serious discussion. Against this complacency I must protest. It is certainly the case that social scientists must often furbish up all to analogy but eternity. we are not committed to one type of model making for Our task societies s to understand and explain what goes on in society, how work. If an engineer tries to explain to you how a digital computer RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY bolts. 7 works he doesnt spend his time classifying different ki nds of nuts and He concerns himself with principles, not with things. He writes out argument as a mathematical equation of the utmost simplicity, somewhat on the lines of o + i = i i + i = 10. No doubt this example is frivolous such computers embody their selective information in a code which is inherited in positive and negative impulses denoted by the digital symbols o and i.The essential point is that although the information which can be bodily in such codes may be enormously complex, the basic principles on which the compute machines work is very simple. Likewise I would harbor that quite simple mechanical models can have relevance for social anthropology despite the acknowledged fact that the detailed empirical facts of social life present the utmost complexity. I dont want to turn anthropology into a starting time of mathematics but I believe we can learn a lot by starting to think about society in a mathehis matical way.Considered mathematically society is not an a ssemblage of things but an assemblage of variables. A good analogy would be with that branch of mathematics known as analysis situs, which may crudely be described as the geometry of elastic rubber cruiseing. If I have a piece of rubber sheet and draw a series of lines on it to symbolize the functional interconnections of some set of social phenomena and I then start stretching the rubber about, I can change the manifest shape of my original geometrical figure out of all recognition and yet clearly thither is a sense in which it is the same figure all the time.The constancy of pattern is not manifest as an objective empirical fact but it is there as a mathematical generalization. By analogy, generalized structural patterns in anthropology are not restricted to societies of any one manifest structural type. you will show me that topology is one of those which mere sociologists had vanquish avoid, but I am not in fact proposing anything original. A very good simple account of the nature of topology appears in an article under that title in the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.The author himself makes the point that because topology is a non-metrical form of mathematics it deserves exceptional attention from social scientists. I Now know that a lot of august scientific mysteries The fundamental Any shut curve is arc of a circle is the variable in topology the is the ground level of connectedness. same as any other disregardless of its shape the same as a straight line because each is open ended. Contrariwise, a closed curve has a greater degree of connectedness than an arc. If of pattern case if we apply these ideas to sociology particular relationships e cease to be interested in and concern ourselves instead with the regularities relationships. is among neighbouring In the simplest possible there be a relationship p which intimately associated with another relationship q then in a topological study we shall not concern ourselves 8 RETHINKI NG ANTHROPOLOGY with the particular characteristics of/) and q but with their mutual characteristics, i. e. with the algebraic ratio pq. But it must be understood that the relationships and sets of relationships which are symbolized in this way cannot properly be given specific numerical values.The reader should bear this point in sound judgment when he encounters the specimens of pseudo-mathematics which occur later in this paper. All propositions in topology can in any case be expressed as propositions in symbolic logic (see Carnap, 1958, chapter G) and it was probably a consideration of this fact which led Nadel to introduce symbolic logic into own view is that while the consideration book (Xadel, 1957). of mathematical and logical models may help the anthropologist to order his last My his theoretical arguments in an all this intelligent way, his actual procedure s should be non-mathematical. The pattern relevance of to my main theme that the saTne structural may turn up in a ny kind of society patrilineal a mathematical approach matrilineal makes no prior assumption that from non-unilineal systems or structures. all unilincal systems are basically different structures from the contrary, the principle of parity leads us to discount strong category distinctions of this kind. On Let me try to illustrate I for the occasion shall take my point with an example. To be my example from Malinowski. Malinowski reported, as a ppropriate Most of you will know that fact of empirical ethnography, that the Trobrianders profess ignorance of the connection between copulation and pregnancy and that this ignorance serves as a rational justification for their system of matrilineal descent. From the Trobriand point of view my stupefy (tama) is not a blood relative at all but a kind of affine, *my mothers husband (Malinowski, 1932a, p. 5). However, alongside their dogmatic ignorance of the facts of life, Trobrianders also maintain that every tiddler should resemble its mot hers husband (i. . its start) but that no churl could ever resemble a member of its own matrilineal kin. Malinowski seems to have thought it incorrect that Trobrianders should hold both these doctrines at the same time. He was apparently bemused by the same kind of ethnocentric assumptions as later led a Tallensi informant to tell Professor Fortes that both parents diffuse their blood to their offspring, as can be seen from the fact that Tallensi children may resemble either parent in looks (Fortes, 1949, p. 35 my italics). This is premix up sociology and genetics.We know, and apparently the Tallensi assume, that physical fashion is genetically based, but there is no reason why primitive people in general should associate ideas of genetic inheritance with ideas about physical likeness between persons. The explanation which the Trobrianders gave to Malinowski was that a initiate impresses his appearance on his son by cohabiting repeatedly with the mother and thereby moulding (kuli) the child in her womb (Malinowski, 1932a, p. 176) which is reminiscent of the Ashanti . RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY view that the start out shapes the body of his child as might a potter (Rattray, 1929, p. 9). This Trobriand theory is quite consistent with the view that the father is related to the son only as mothers husband that is, an affine and not as a kinsman. There are other Trobriand doctrines which fall into line with this. The fathers sister is the prototype of the lawful woman (Malinowski, 1932a, p. 450) which seems to be more or less the equivalent of saying that the father (tama) is much the same sort of relation as a brother-in-law.Again, although, as Powell has shown (Powell, 1956, p. 314), marriage with the fathers sisters daughter is rare, the Trobrianders constantly assured Malinowski that this was a very right and proper marriage. simply in their view the category tama (which includes both father and fathers sisters son) is very close to that of lubou (brot her-in-law) (Mal- inowski, 1932a, pp. 86, 451). The similarity is asserted not only in verbal expression but also in the pattern of economic obligation, for the ingathering gift (urignbu) paid by a married man is due both to his mothers husband tama) and to his sisters husband (lubou) (Malinowski, 1935, I, pp. 386, 413-18). From my point of view this cluster of Trobriand beliefs and attitudes is a pattern of organizational ideas it specifies a series of categories, in a particular relationship and places them with one another as in an was biased by his down to earth empiricism, by European prejudices and by his interest in psycho-analysis, and he refused to accept tlie Trobriand doctrine at its face value. Instead he refurbished his concept of sociological paternity which he had originalgebraic equation.But Malinowski ally devised to fit a quite different context, that of patrilineal organization among On to the Australian Aborigines (Malinowski, 19 13, p. 170-83). this earlier occ asion Malinowski had used sociological paternity relations show how between parents and children and between spouses derive from customary rules and not from any universal facts of biology or psychology, but in the later application of these ideas to Trobriand circumstances he shifts his ground and the argument becomes confused by the introduction of naive psychological considerations. On the face of t sociological paternity, as used in The Sexual Life of attitudes Savages, seems to mean that even in a society which, like the Trobriands, sociological still denies the facts of biological paternity, pertain to paternity, as zve understand it, which far, may be found. So so good. But Malinowski goes further than this. Instead of arguing, as in the Australian case, that kinship attitudes have a purely social origin, he now insists that social attitudes to kinship arc facts. rooted in universal psychological The paternal relationship contains elements which are necessarily resent in the father/child relationship of all societies, no matter what the circumstances of custom and social structure confusing. may be. This is all very On the one hand the reader is is told quite plainly that the Trobriand child taught to think of his father as a non-relative, as an lO RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY individual with the special non-kinship status of mothers husband. But on the other hand the reader is oblige to conclude that this IVobriand mothers husband is related to the mothers child as a sociological father, that is to say by ties of kinship as well as by tics of affinity.The argument, as a whole, is self-contradictory. is You may about. well think that this a yery hairsplitting point to make a fuss How can it possibly make any difference whether I think of a parti- cular male as my father or as is my mothers husband? Well, all I can say that anthropologists do Professor Fortes, Dr Goody and Dr Kathleen Gough on this field of battle that worry about such things. are so distu rbed by my dissident yiews oflF time to try to bruise my owskis argument (Fortes, 1959)-