DISCUSSION A N D DEBATE 847

1972b Aq Kupruk: Art and Symbol. In Prehistoric Research in Afghanistan (1959-1966). Louis Dupree, Ed. Trans- actions of American Philosophical Society 62, 4:66-72.

1972c Paleolithic Symbolic Evidence fo r Early Cognition (Acheulian, Mousterian, Upper Paleolithic). Paper delivered at the 71st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological As- sociation, Toronto.

1973 An Olmec Mosaic: Internal Analy- sis Reveals Prehistoric Arithmetic, Pos- sibly Calendric Contents. Paper de- livered at AAAS/CONACYT Meeting, Mexico City. Proceedings of session on Pre-Columbian Archaeoastronomy (in press).

1974 The Chamula Calendar Board: An Internal and Comparative Analysis. In Mesoamerican Archaeology: New Ap- proaches. Norman Hammond, Ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Response to Dr. Anderson

CLIFTON AMSBURY Contra Costa College

Robert T. Anderson (1973) obviously believes the best defense is a vigorous of- fense. To one of his charges I must plead guilty. After reading his explicit statements (1971:213-215), I neither recalled, nor looked back to discover, the brief disclaimer in the fmt paragraph.

However I must remind Dr. Anderson that my first communication on this subject was to him and at some length. At that time he neither objected nor called my attention to the ambivalence of his remarks.

I invite him to join me in an effort to resolve our differences, or to locate a more tenable set of hypotheses than either of us yet has.

References Cited Anderson, Robert T.

1971 Voluntary Associations in History. American Anthropologist 73: 209-222.

Anderson, Robert T. 1973 More on Voluntary Associations in

History. American Anthropologist 75:904.

Submitted for publication August 8.1973 Accepted for publication June 21. 1974

Familingual and Familinear Relationships:

Some Contexts of Negation or Denial

PRANAB CHATTERJEE Case Western Reserve University

Casselbeny (1973) has pointed out that there are social situations in which it is pos- sible to negate or deny familingual or fami- linear roles. In order to understand such negation or denial, it is important to dis- tinguish between the social situations where such denial of familingual or familinear roles take place, since such situations are almost always embedded in discernibly different social structures. An actor defining a social situation (cf. Thomas 1928:584) usually does so wihtin a social structure. If such social structure is based on tradition, then the actor‘s definition of the situation regard- ing denial of familingual roles is very differ- ent from the same in non-traditional social structures. Thus it may perhaps be con- venient to use the concepts of tmditional us. non-traditional’ social structures to under- stand and elaborate on the concept of nega- tion of familingual or familinear relation- ships.

It is to be remembered that a familingual relationship is defined as “a relationship which contains two or more reciprocal roles either actually developing or assumed to be developing from the family where the lin- guistic systems of addressing one another are sanctioned by the culture and where such linguistic usage leads to the reinforcement of social control” (Chatterjee 1972:238). In contrast, familinearization “attempts to develop personal control of one over another by linguistic usage of family roles” (Chatter- jee 1972:238), since in these contexts the cultural prescription regarding use of kinship terms is ambiguous and unclear. Thus Cassel- berry (1972:311) is accurate in his observa- tion that the reluctance of American children-in-law to use parental kin terms in addressing their parents-in-law is negation or denial of possible familinearization. How- ever, he does not go far enough in his obser- vations regarding the importance of tradition (or its absence) in such linguistic behavior.

Submitted for publication December 3.1973 Accepted for publication March 4, 1974

848 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974]

Non-Traditional Settings: Complete or Partial Denial

It may be argued that complete (rather than partial) denial or negation of familinear attempts are more easily observable in non- traditional social settings. Social control in such settings is exercised through the en- forcement of culturally permissible contracts emerging out of norms of specificity, where familinearization may add a dimension of diffuseness. Parsons has pointed out this dis- tinction between specificity and diffuseness in his no t ion of pattern variables (1951:65-66). Thus, complete negation or denial of familinear roles may mean delimit- ing the rights and obligations of an inter- personal contract. Addressing a parent-in-law (or, for that matter, a step-parent) by his or her first name in the American context is perhaps an example of this. If this is the case, the partial denial of familinearization may be observed in addressing a parent-in- law as Mr.- so-and-so or Mrs.- so-and-so.2 The latter form apparently is respectful of the generation-role, but ignores the kinship role. However, such partial denial is perhaps less common in America in recent times.

Traditional Settings: Complete or Partial Denial

Complete negation or denial of familingu- al roles is less common in traditional set- tings, since familingualization in these social structures is an instrument of social control. Nevertheless, such denials do take place in those social situations where the actors are of divergent social origin. In certain industri- al or business settings in India and other traditional societies, where the industrial or business activity is conducted partially or totally according to non-traditional norms, one finds negation of familingual efforts. More frequently such negation is of out- familingual variety, and denial of in- familingual efforts seem less common. For example, a place of business where the inter- personal interactions take place on a title- last-name vs. title-last-name basis (as in Mr. Agarwal vs. Mr. Banerjee type of inter- change)2 there has been a complete denial or negation of possible out-familingual relation- ship. However, complete denial of in- familingualization is less likely, though par-

tial denial is possible. In some cases a Bengali may refer to his maternal aunt or paternal aunt as miishi instead of mGshi-mZ, or pishi instead of pi~hi-rnii .~ In these linguistic usages, the word ma‘, meaning mother, is not used as a suffix. One may conclude that in these linguistic interchanges the kinship role is accepted but the surrogate maternal role is denied. The same words used for non-kin would reflect partial denial of out-familingu- al roles.

In summary, it should be observed that complete denial of both in- and out- fami- linear roles are easily observed in non-tradi- tional societies, and further documentation is needed regarding the frequency of partial denial of this phenomenon. Complete denial of out-familingual roles can also be observed in some parts of traditional societies, especially in those social situations which are definitely ambiguous and are therefore not bounded by tradition. Complete denial of in-familingual roles is less common in tradi- tional societies.

Perhaps an important measure of cultural change can be developed from observed dif- ferences in the denial of familingual and familinear roles between two generations within a given social structure, or over a given period of time.

Notes The term “non-traditional” is preferable

to the other terms such as “modern” or “other-directed,’’ etc., because these latter terms appear more value-laden. The point of focus here is simply the presence or absence of deeply entrenched traditions prescribing social behavior.

’Resorting to the use of title-last-name (TLN) for close kin may mean respect for age or generation role; the same for non-kin reflect attempts to establish a personal and social distance in the interpersonal contract.

See Figure 3 in Chatterjee (1972).

References Cited Casselberry, Samuel E.

1973 Familingual and Familinear Rela- tionships: Companion Terms and Con- cepts. American Anthropologist 75: 310-31 2.

Chatterjee, Pranab 1972 Familingual and Familinear Rela-

tionships: Two Patterns of Control by

DISCUSSION AND DEBATE a49

the Invoking of Family Roles. Ameri- can Anthropologist 74:231-241.

The Free Press.

Parsons, Talcott

Thomas, W. I.

1951 The Social System, New York:

1928 The Child in America. New York: Knopf.

Schools, Disciplines, and Reviews

JUDITH LYNNE HANNA Columbia University

Arens’ review of Urban Dynamics in Black Africa: An Interdisciplinary Approach (AA 75:1828-1828) is disturbing in a t least two respects-my co-author terms these “academic ideological bias” and “oceanic presumption.” (I leave aside the fact that the main themes of the book are never men- tioned.) First, it displays a lack of sympathy with the main thrust of contemporary social science: the attempt to establish empirically based general statements about human be- havior. Thus, after he quotes an introduc- tory statement that “heavy reliance is placed upon general statements,” he condemns such an effort: “Unfortunately, this sentence too adequately characterizes what follows.”

The two paragraphs in the book which follow the quoted statement elaborate what was attemped and show how it fits into a wider effort among social scientists:

This approach is designed to maximize the usefulness of the analysis presented herein to an understanding of all urban areas in Black Africa or any randomly selected one, whether or not specifically covered in the text. Obviously, com- parable detailed information about every town could not be obtained. Therefore, the generalizations presented should be viewed as a series of working hypotheses.

While the emphasis here is upon general statements, it is of great im- portance to recognize that Black Africa’s urban areas and the perspectives and prac- tices of their inhabitants vary consider- ably and that the illustrations we present do not take the place of systematic tests of the working hypotheses (p. 5).

Submitted for publication March 21 ,1974 Accepted for publication April 1, 1974

Some of the general statements we made strike the reviewer as being “selfevident” or “not very startling discoveries.” (By implica- tion, there are some “startling discoveries.”) It should be noted that although most re- search findings are not surprises, what ap- pears through common sense to be obvious may turn out upon investigation not to be

It seems to me that our attempt to generalize and synthesize is compatible with at least one recognized “school” of anthro- pology, not to mention the dominant view in sociology, economics, psychology, and political science. Such books as Perti J. Pelto’s Anthropological Research: The Structure o f Inquiry (1970) and Raoul Naroll and Ronald Cohen’s A Handbook of Method in Cultural Anthropology (1970) are in part pleas for more generalizing work. They point out that both the case study and the nomothetic approaches have their place in the development of a scientific under- standing of man. Pelto, for instance, notes “that data from a single society can only be used for suggesting higher-order relation- ships: establishing more abstract theoretical propositions depends on some kind of trans- formation of primary descriptive data, through a process involving information from many different societies” (1970:7).

Urban Dynamics in Black Africa was not meant to be the final word-our effort was instrumental. Having conceptually synthe- sized the literature (including selected results from our own urban field research, a com- parison of the town-centered communities of Umuahia and Mbale, reported in Hanna and Hanna 1966, 1967, 1969), we call for “additional theoretical development and empirical research so that our understanding of Africa, urban areas, and change itself will be further advanced” (p. 208). This instru- mental thrust was noted by a number of the book’s reviewers. Political scientist Marc Ross writes that the book “is an important first step towards developing systematic generalizations about African city life . . . we can see more clearly phenomena which ap- pear t o be nearly universal in Africa, as well as ways in which particular cities are distinc- tive or even ‘unique”’ (1973). Africanist and urban anthropologist Kenneth Little points out that “the Hannas’ discussion of townward movements and their implications

so.