Table Of ContentKinship, Ecology and History
Interdisciplinarity Between Biological Sciences and Social
Sciences Set
coordinated by
Georges Guille-Escuret
Volume 2
Kinship, Ecology and History
Renewal of Conjunctures
Laurent Dousset
Sejin Park
Georges Guille-Escuret
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced,
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ISTE Ltd John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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© ISTE Ltd 2019
The rights of Laurent Dousset, Sejin Park and Georges Guille-Escuret to be identified as the authors of
this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019943756
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-444-5
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Georges GUILLE-ESCURET
Chapter 1. Conditional Conjecture: the Relationship
Between Ecology, Evolution and History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Georges GUILLE-ESCURET
1.1. Do the sources contaminate history? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1. Consequences and extensions of a deadlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.2. The return of evolutionism: another
disposal of ecology and history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. The recurrent pitfalls of conjecture in the face of kinship . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1. The misleading security of the base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2. Causes, emergences and functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2.3. Statistics and anomalies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.3. Controllable conjectures: perceiving kinship as conditional . . . . . . . 21
1.3.1. Aram Yengoyan’s edifying investigation into Australia . . . . . . . 22
1.3.2. An ecology of kinship from its initial reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.3.3. Prescription and prohibition: “to marry the closest”? . . . . . . . . . 34
1.3.4. Contraventions, restrictions and extensions:
adaptable kinship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
1.4. The relationship between filiation and alliance
reconsidered as a variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1.5. The challenge: correlating and speculating
without conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
vi Kinship, Ecology and History
Chapter 2. Mode of Reproduction and Prohibition of Incest . . . . . 57
Sejin PARK
2.1. Mode of reproduction in world III:
the case of nomadic hunter-gatherers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.1.1. Universal kinship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.1.2. Couple formation as condition for reproduction . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.1.3. Ways to obtain the category of “marriageable kin” . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.2. Mode of reproduction in world I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.2.1. Two invariants and an alternative in community formation . . . . . 67
2.2.2. Promiscuity regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.2.3. Transition from the undivided community to the
community divided into consanguineous groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.3. Mode of reproduction in world II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
2.3.1. The meaning of We . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2.3.2. From immediate to delayed sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
2.3.3. Mode of reproduction and delayed sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2.4. On the evolutionary pertinence of the prohibition of incest . . . . . . . 83
2.4.1. Sexual avoidance and exogamy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
2.4.2. Prohibiting more to specify more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Chapter 3. Open and Closed Systems: Rebuilding
the Social Organization of Prehistoric Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Laurent DOUSSET
3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.2. Theoretical proposals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.3. Kinship and the problem of symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.3.1. What is a “kinship system”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.3.2. Recalling the basic principles of terminology representation . . . . 103
3.3.3. The system called “Eskimo” or cognatic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
3.3.4. The so-called “Dravidian” system and its variants . . . . . . . . . . 111
3.3.5. The problem of symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3.3.6. Lévi-Strauss and the origins of kinship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3.3.7. Nick Allen’s “tetradic” theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
3.3.8. Why are section systems not strictly speaking kinship? . . . . . . . 134
3.3.9. Practice and rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.3.10. The basics necessary for the discussion of
open and closed systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
3.4. Kinship and ecology: hunter-gatherers and Sahul . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.4.1. To be or not to be a hunter-gatherer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.4.2. Closed systems: the “classic” Australian model . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Contents vii
3.4.3. Open systems: ethnography of the Western Desert . . . . . . . . . . 158
3.4.4. The first occupants of Sahul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
3.5. Is a “sociobiology” of exchange realistic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
3.6. For a new typology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Laurent DOUSSET
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Introduction
The Life of Structures and the
Confinement of Kinship
The study of kinship occupies a paradoxical place in social anthropology,
being both omnipresent and isolated. The manifestations of kinship infiltrate
all sectors of society, animating the economy as well as rituals, political
relations as well as representations of nature, and technical cooperation as
well as moral prescriptions. It was also the focus of the first surprises of
Westerners when they became involved in outlining a “science of the other”
by identifying the sources of exoticism: the great pioneers immediately came
up against the disconcerting observation that notions felt by them as obvious,
and therefore presumed to be universal (father, mother, uncle, aunt, cousins,
etc.), broke into a thousand pieces when tested by the facts observed from a
distance. The astonishing variation in the bonds of inbreeding and
arrangements of matrimonial alliance could not fail to become a central
stronghold of ethnology.
Unfortunately, the majestic fortress was imperceptibly transformed into
an ivory tower, this isolation worsening in the 1980s as the ultimate and
disconcerting consequence of a triumph: that of the dazzling theory that
Claude Lévi-Strauss presented in 1949 in Les structures élémentaires de la
parenté [LEV 67]1, whose international success in the discipline was
immediate. It conquered without hesitation, proved to be a decisive influence
and became an essential reference point for discussions on this subject. A
small community of specialists was formed around this contribution in order
Introduction written by Georges GUILLE-ESCURET.
1 Throughout this volume, we will refer to the 1967 edition, which is supplemented by a long
preface.
x Kinship, Ecology and History
to refine the analyses. However, as they advanced along this path,
researchers focused on the various psychological activities that logically
constituted ideal kinship systems, neglecting the ancillary treatments caused
by intertwined practical circumstances: historical, ecological, economic and
political. A fascination for universal facts and fundamental laws flourished,
creating an anthropology explicitly assimilated to a psychology [LEV 62,
p. 174] to the detriment of “prosaic” sociological questions. In short, what was
to become a switch between invariants and variables split the two types of
investigations. Enclosed in this game, the science of kinship gradually lost its
appeal, if not its beauty, to the point, Laurent Barry deplored, of being “seen
as a cabinet of curiosities or as a mystery paving the way to a quest for pure
abstraction” [BAR 00, p. 13]. In writing these words, he wanted to believe
that this image was over, but it must be said that, from a global point of view,
it persists today by quietly rejecting all denials.
A second disenchantment, coming from an increasingly dominant
relativism2, followed that of materialism, noting that structuralism did not
respond to its concerns and swept history away by an accumulation of
disparate contingencies. For many, kinship represented, “par excellence”,
the aspiration of anthropology to a constructive but constraining scientificity.
As such, it could not fail to embody, in the eyes of the new current, a naive,
excessive and, ultimately, illusory ambition: a life that was certainly not
conducive to the dismantling of its problems.
Contrary to this perception, let us recall a spontaneous and scathing reply
by Françoise Héritier, questioned some 20 years ago on the label of
“dinosaur of the human sciences”, which this field of research was now
given:
“Those who make this judgment understand nothing. Kinship is
indeed a dinosaur of the human sciences, but not in the sense
that it would mean that it belongs to the past! It is in the sense
that ‘it is there’, in an instrumental way, that it poses genuine
problems and until we understand how these things work at the
heart of social cohesion, it is difficult to see how we can
2 As with the lack of interest in kinship, this preponderance of relativism signals a necessarily
basic overall vision: in both cases, “pockets of resistance” are created, although it is not
possible, for the time being, to predict a widening of disapproval.
Introduction xi
understand the pure intelligibility of politics or economics, to
take only these two areas” [HER 99, p. 14, our translation].
Some silver lining: the two disapprovals that overwhelm it (that of a
materialism that demands an interweaving of analyses and that of a
relativism that renounces the appetite for science) place the study of kinship
at a crossroads, in the sense that it can only invalidate one by ratifying the
other. If, in fact, it remains exclusively affiliated with an investigation on the
mental substrate of our species, then the essential part of its task is carried
out and it is up to a psychology stricto sensu to continue the exploration by
making the information that has been generously offered to it bear fruit. On
the contrary, if it intends to develop by itself an “intelligibility” of all the
phenomena concerned, this anthropology will have to become fully
sociological again and agree to restore a constant communication with
comparative observations of heterogeneous collective experiences. However,
we will see that, strictly speaking, it will not be a question of restoring a lost
harmony, but of establishing a completely new organization.
This book was born from the meeting of the three authors around the
thesis defended by one of them. Sejin Park, the applicant, proposed a
“thought experience” in the sociology of hominization that discerned logical
thresholds, necessary passages and transitional conditions, in which kinship
necessarily played a crucial role [PAR 15]. Laurent Dousset, a kinship
specialist, and Georges Guille-Escuret, rooted in an interdisciplinary
methodology, were part of the jury. Parallel to the torture of their younger
brother, the elders engaged in a lively discussion about the missed
opportunities and old barriers that undermine the “exercise of kinship”3. The
following chapters reflect this. The objective of the first chapter is to remove
a number of epistemological barriers that had provisional relevance in
certain historical phases of social anthropology, but which eventually
blocked potentially legitimate analytical procedures. In the second chapter,
Park will identify “the evolving relevance of a mode of reproduction
governed by kinship relationships” over three periods of our kind. Finally,
Dousset will dedicate the final chapter to the dual emblem of hermetic
kinship systems and “primitive” societies, often presumed to exist upstream
of history, to begin a reflection on the forms of social organization of
prehistoric humans when they colonized the Sahul continent. Against the
3 According to a wise expression by Héritier [HER 81].
xii Kinship, Ecology and History
current of evolutionary prejudices, this presentation will instead show them
immersed in ecology through history (and vice versa) into kinship.
Our small volume alone will certainly not solve such a vast difficulty, nor
will it be enough to get the sector out of its rut: the intention here is to start a
more modest questioning – in the literal sense of the expression – whose
motives lie in the theory, but whose stakes are far beyond it. For many
applied research projects, for example, kinship raises an epistemological
obstacle, both chronic and impassable: it poses many pressing problems for
agronomists, “developers” and economists, without them being able to
understand its intervention, let alone anticipate it. It is therefore necessary to
examine in theory the vicious circles and the a priori blocked paths that lead
it to confine itself, so that a dialogue can then be unlocked with the outside
world. Hence, despite the title, the reader will only discover a small sample
of ecological correlations in this book: the urgency is to find a way to reach
them, without the incongruous use of preconceived determinations.
