Filiation and Affiliation

217 Pages·2000·23.8 MB·English

by  Harold W Scheffler

FILIATION AND AFFILIATION
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FILIATION AND
AFFILIATION
Harold W. Scheffler
Yale University
Westview
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ-
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sion in writing from the publisher.
Copyright © 2001 by Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Published in 2001 in the United States of America by Westview Press, 5500 Central Avenue,
Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877, and in the United Kingdom by Westview Press, 12 Hid's
Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ
Visit us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scheffler, Harold W.
Filiation and affiliation / Harold W. Scheffler.
p, cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
IBN 0-8133-3761-5
1. Kinship. 2. Kin recognition. 3. Matrilineal kinship. 4. Patrilineal kinship.
5. Affiliation (Philosophy). I. Title.
GN487.S34 2000
306.83—dc21
00-043788
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984,
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction ix
PART ONE: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
1 Kinship and Descent 3
2 Descent Groups 21
3 Jural Structures I 36
4 Jural Structures II 48
PART Two: SPECIFIC INSTANCES
5 Patrifiliation Necessary and Sufficient 69
6 Patrifiliation Necessary but Not Sufficient 106
7 Patrifiliation Sufficient but Not Necessary I 120
8 Patrifiliation Sufficient but Not Necessary II 132
9 Joint-Family Systems 160
10 Cognatic Descent Groups? 169
References 181
Index 198
v
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ILLUSTRATIONS
TABLES
2.1 Implications of rules of filiation and affiliation 27
7,1 Yakö group nomenclature 123
FIGURES
5.1 Territorial segmentation, Nuer 75
5.2 Descent group segmentation, Nuer 76
5.3 Dominant lineage relations, Nuer 80
5.4 Realignment of lineages, Tiv 102
9.1 Chinese "lineage" segmentation 163
vii
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INTRODUCTION
One of the special tasks of social anthropology has been to detect the or-
der that is inherent in the universal and often-extensive use of relation-
ship by birth (kinship) in the constitution of human social orders.
Notwithstanding the claims of a few contemporary skeptics (Needham
1971; Kuper 1982, Schneider 1972, 1984), progress in this area has been
substantial, especially since clarification, around the turn of the century,
"of the old confusion between kinship and descent" (Goodenough
1970:45; C, Harris 1990:22) or, in other words, between the genealogical
relations of persons one to another and the allocation of persons to social
groups or categories on the basis of their parentage or ancestry. Our un-
derstanding of this latter domain, of "descent," is still, however, more
than a little untidy, and it continues to be a subject of much, often more
heated than illuminating, discussion and controversy.
Since the late 1950s that discussion has focused from time to time on
the questions of how best to define the categories "descent" and "de-
scent groups," but there has been little progress toward a consensus.
Indeed, some writers (e.g., Kuper 1982) have suggested that this whole
area of inquiry, debate, and discussion is deeply flawed and should be
abandoned altogether. That course of action is, however, no more nec-
essary than it is possible—if, that is, we intend to continue to practice
social anthropology. We cannot in good conscience turn our backs on
the practices of our subjects who persist in organizing themselves into
groups that are either wholly or in part genealogically constituted and
that vary greatly in other aspects of structure and function. Nor can we
in good conscience turn our backs on or routinely belittle the very sub-
stantial ethnographic and conceptual contributions of our predeces-
sors. However much we may find fault with their general theoretical
orientations, many of the projects they began can be brought to greater
fruition.
The predominant tendency on the part of the critics (e.g., Schneider
1965, Dumont 1971, Holy 1976,1996, Kuper 1982) has been to identify the
root of the problem as the theoretical orientation known as structural-
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