Kinship, a-kinship, anti-kinship: Variation in the logic of kinship situations

Sandra Wallman

Dc$artment of Anthrofmlogy, University of Toronto, Canada, and Antropolo~ch-Sociologisch Centrum, L&w&it van Amsterdam, N&erlands

Received 22 March 1974 and accepted 12 November 1974

Kinship, A-kinship, +i-kinship:. ~la~tinm in the Logac of Kidup .

Where contrasts between rural/urban, non-industrial/industrial, simple/ complex et cetera societies are drawn, a corresponding contrast in the importance of kinship as an organising principle is more or less explicitly implied. Similarly, the weight put upon kinship is assumed to vary inversely with technological and/or social evolution. The analytical and practical effects of these assumptions are examined with reference to situations involving kinsmen in Lesotho (Southern Africa), in other non-industrial societies, and in middle-class Great Britain.

The paper aims (a) to account for the unexpected non-use of kinship as a consistent organising principle in Lesotho, and (b) to demonstrate that kin-ties are nowhere consistently used since they are social resources whose existence will be exploited, ignored or denied as the logic of particular situations demands; that relations between kinsmen in any society may be governed by any one of three different kinship principles- kinship, a-kinship or anti-kinship.

By corollary it is argued that the real significance of kinship can neither be read off an evolutionary continuum, nor denied on the grounds of inconsistent usage.

1. Preamble

This paper deals with situations involving kinsmen in Lesotho, making comparative reference to other non-industrial societies and to middle-class Great Britain. Its aims are (a) to account for the unexpected non-use of kinship as a consistent organising principle in Lesotho, and (b) to propose that kin-ties are nowhere consistently used since they are social resources whose existence will be exploited, ignored or denied as each situation warrants. Relations between kinsmen in any society may therefore be governed by any one of three different kinship principles: kinship, a-kinship or anti-kinship. By corollary it is argued that the real significance of kinship can neither be read off a non-industrial/ industrial rural/urban * continuum in the manner of popular evolutionism, nor can it be denied on the grounds of inconsistent usage.

2. Introduction

At the core of evolutionary kinship theory is the assumption that each advance in technology will be accompanied by a correlated advance in family patterns. The less the technology-i.e. the lesser the degree of industrialisation-the wider the family and the deeper the kinship bond. Although “no such correlation actually emerged” from

* Deliberately following popular (and popular academic) usage, these dichotomies are here used interchangeably. Important distinctions not directly relevant to this argument are explored in Santos (1971). Similar dichotomies of course abound: reference can readily be found to folk/urban, simple/complex, mechanical/organic, traditional/modem, rural/non-rural, backward/advanced and underdeveloped/developed. It is not always easy to distinguish one scale from another-for reasons which are implied here but articulated by Bendix (1967).

Journal of Human Evolution (1975) 4, 331-341

332 S. WALLMAN

empirical study and “the science has since evolved beyond that theory”, it has yet found no substitute for it (Goode, 1971: 367). This may be one reason why the evolutionary assumption is so often implied in comparative statements on the family.

Certainly the correlation is readily and predictably inferred by the non-specialist. Goode quoted in a Penguin Reader writes “. . . family patterns seem to vary independ- ently of economic and technological systems. This statement does not imply . . . that there is no set of determinate relations among family and economic or technological variables . . . (Although) no such set of determinate relations has been demonstrated. . . they are often assumed to be well known” (ibid., 1971: 369. See also Firth et al., 1969: 11, 87; Fox, 1967 : 14; Wolf, 1966 : 5 etc.). The many studies of “advanced” (urban, industrial) societies which report “traditional” forms of kinship organisation commonly do so in tones of quite explicit surprise, as though reasons for such exceptions had to be found (e.g., Leyton, 1965; Singer, 1968; Simic, 1973-even McGee, 1973; see Gutkind’s bibliography in Southall (ed.), 1973). This is not true for the opposite end of the scale: I can find no analysis of a non-industrial (etc.) society which seriously examines the possibility that (positive) kinship organisation is not of overriding significance, or specifi- cally recognises the operation of what I am calling a-kinship or anti-kinship principles, although suggestive reference is not uncommon (e.g. J. Schneider, 1970: 7).*

Among kinship specialists, in fact, explicit argument for or against evolutionary theory is now rate. There is debate on the cause and meaning of family forms, but within no single theoretical framework---evolutionary or other. The Association of Social Anthro- pologists’ kinship volume (ed. Needham, 1971) contains more theories than it does cases and can be interpreted to mean that the interest in grand theory has been superceded, that no one is looking for an alternative all-purpose model. Paradoxically, this evidence of the vitality of the topic has led some to deny its relevance if not its reality. The editor of the same volume writes: “To put it bluntly . , . there is no such thing as kinship, and it follows that there can be no such thing as kinship theory” (Needham, 1971: 5).

Such a statement refers to kimhit-the-concept; it should not distract our attention from the empirical facts of kinship-the-resource : When people choose partners for social and/or economic enterprise, do they or do they not choose relatives? And for what reasons? How far is kinship a significant element in decision-making? . . . Questions of this kind have not lost their practical significance. Indeed it is in practical situations that the social validity of theory may be tested. It is relevant that the present argument emerges from an effort to find out why rural development projects in Lesotho had been consistently unsuccessful (see Wallman, 1969), and that, incidental to that effort, the popularity of the assumption that kinship must be the prime organising principle in non- industrial societies was demonstrated and the assumption itself tested.

When it is concerned to explain and (perhaps) to predict the choice of partner for particular social and/or economic purposes, analysis necessarily begins at the level of individuals. This is not to say, however, that individual choice is an individual matter : the individual is crucially constrained by a number of factors outside himself. He may be aware of these factors and so take them into account; he may, on the other hand, know nothing of them until their effect is expressed. He is acting with particular objectives

* The present paper ignores the many analyses of different categories of kin uis-ci-vis one another and/or to the denial of one kin-link in favour of another. The category “kin” is here used in simple opposition to that of non-kin.

KINSHIP SITUATIONS 333

within a set of circumstances which will constrain his actions and may even cause him to run counter to those objectives. His actions may therefore be understood only by reference to the logic of the situation in which he acts.

Models for the analysis of situation are not wanting in social anthropology. The most useful if least alike are probably those of Goffman (1959 et seq.) and Nadel (1957). Gellner’s (1973) paper underlines the enormous difficulties inherent in circumscribing (or, as he argues it, refusing to circumscribe) the context in which a concept is meaningful. The same difficulties inhere in attempts to define situation: it is hard to know where to stop. Indeed, without explicit criteria of relevance, the tendency is to define situation in wholly subjective or psychological terms : the situation is only what the subject perceives (cf. Stebbins 1969). It is not a coincidence that scholars in economic anthropology, being concerned with the way in which “real” resources are evaluated, are least prone to this fallacy. Firth’s statement of the tasks of the sub-discipline is both a plea and a prescription for situational analysis, and implies a logic by which the situation can be bounded (Firth, 1939: 1-31, 352-365; 1951; 1972: 38; quoted in Cohen, 1967: 93). Jarvie’s recent exploration of the notion is more explicit. He itemises the non-subjective dimensions of situation and castigates holistic and psychologistic approaches for ignoring their logic and so denying the systematic importance of unintended consequences (Jarvie, 1972: 3-36; see also Popper, 1959: pas&n; 1973: 78).

The present paper is not as thorough an analysis as either Firth or Jarvie appear to intend. It argues only that particular inconsistencies in the use of kin-ties within and between societies reflect neither the unfolding of teleological process(es) nor the random twitchings of idiosyncratic performance, but can be explained by differences in the logic of situations involving individuals who happen to be related to one another. Lesotho provides the case in point.

3. Description

Lesotho is a stark, mountainous country enclosed by the Republic of South Africa. Its total area is less than twelve thousand square miles. A maximum of fifteen hundred of these are technically suitable for cultivation, but subsistence farming is the principle productive activity of most of the population. This farming gives meagre returns: the soil is poor, erosion is rapid and extensive, and nearly two-thirds of the land area is made up of rugged foothills and mountains which are ideal for the health of sheep and mohair goats but are virtually inaccessible to the plough. Seventy percent of the population (of 800,000) crowd into the lowland third of the country. Few Basuto earn regular cash incomes at home. Aside from employment in government, small hotels or the households of foreign residents, the raising of smallstock is the only significantly lucrative occupation open to peasants. Relatively few take up the smallstock option: the majority attempt to meet their cash needs in sporadic migrations to South Africa.

In 1966, after more than a century of British tutelage, Lesotho became an officially independent nation. But it remains a rural enclave within South Africa and political independence has not altered its dependence on the industries of that country (Wallman, 19736). The migration of Basuto to work over the border continues to be a fundamental fact of life: it is estimated that over 40 percent of Basuto men are away working in South Africa at any one time. Since the vast majority of these work in the industrial mines of that country and pass through the city of Johannesburg at the beginning and end of each

334 S. WALLMAN

mining contract, very many Basuto have direct or indirect experience of industrial life- albeit normally at the lowest end of the economic scale. The urban tastes which they acquire away remain with them at home, affecting consumption patterns and frustrating economic aspirations (Wallman, 1969: 61-75; and 1972). From this point of view it is arguable that Basuto are not a non-industrial/non-urban people at all : certainly there is a lack of fit between their geographic setting and their economic perspective (cf. Santos, 197 1, pas.&). Nonetheless, their position on the social evolutionary scale is unambiguous : Lesotho is plainly a non-industrial country.

The kinship system in Lesotho appears to operate according to normal southern Bantu principles (see e.g. Schapera, 1937). The Basuto family is patrilineal and, ideally, patrivirilocal-although it is said to be possible to take up land and residence under any local chief who makes it available. All but a tiny minority of Basuto live in small, scattered villages under the rule of chiefs, each of whom is responsible to the one above him in an extensive hierarchy, and all of whom are finally responsible to the Paramount Chief (now king) as head of the Basuto nation. The chiefs are collectively referred to as the Sons of Moshoeshoe (who was the original Paramount) and the majority of the senior chiefs are in fact related to each other by birth or marriage.

Incorporated in the tribal unit are a number of patrilineal sub-units which have been called clans (seboko: see Ashton, 1952 : 12-17), but have no ritual significance and are better described as remnant nations-descendants of the various tribal groups who fled from the wars of the 19th century and formed the Basuto nation under the leadership of Moshoeshoe I. People marry without reference to these groupings.

Every Mosuto is therefore a member of a more or less extended family, * of a particular “clan”, and of the Basuto nation. There is a kinship terminology appropriate at each level, and one often hears people addressed as “father’s sister”, “mother’s brother”, “cousin”, “elder sister”, as a member or a particular “clan”, or as the “child” or a particular chief or headman. These terms are as often evidence of affection as they are of affiliation. This is not a classificatory kinship system because the terms exchanged between two people do not show sufficient regularity?.

There are only two occasions on which a Mosuto expects to see his patri-kinsmen as such: these are at the wedding or the funeral of a member of the family. If the relationship is close enough, a person will travel from as far afield as the Johannesburg mines in order to help at either of these ceremonies. But eagerness to attend is said to vary with the degree of friendship as well as kinship so that closeness of relationship is not determined by the kinship factor alone (Wallman, 1970, 1974).

At a traditional wedding, close kinsmen are entitled but not required to give the couple advice or warnings about their future together and may discuss matters of exclusive family interest such as the distribution of real or putative bridewealth (Wallman, 1969 : 44f). At funerals, the family will decide amongst themselves the order of “throwing earth” and may arrange or confirm the distribution of any inheritance-both of which

* As Firth et al. (1969: 456-7), I use the term to mean simply a group of kin outside the nuclear family and do not intend to imply corporate- ness. Re: the Basuto family, cf. Sheddick (1953 : 22; 91). t Given inevitable changes in context, situation, role frame etc., it seems to me possible that they never do: “ . . . we do not know whether two things are the same or not unless we are told the context in which the question arises.” (Winch, 1970: 27). See also Leach (1971: 76) “ . . . the linguistic competence of a single individual is likely to include alternative kin labels for the same genealogical relative . . .“.


procedures may once have been but are now pre-determined by the kinship structure. The sanction attaching to the obligation to attend the weddings and funerals of near

kinsmen is simply a fear of what people will say: a “good” person being expected to turn up appropriately. The great majority of Basuto are at least nominally Christian, and although ancestral spirits are sometimes referred to in seance or in jest, they are not said to be interested in the kinship structure of social gatherings.

Outside the sphere of these two family ceremonies, Basuto normally organise their lives without specific reference to the kinship principle. “Where ordinary practical matters are concerned, one does the most practical thing.” Ordinary practical matters are predominantly matters of survival-of food, shelter and warmth. Take food production as an example.

Every Mosuto householder has a traditional right to the use of three lands* on which to grow his subsistence food. Overpopulation, soil erosion and sometimes the selfinterest of the chieftainship entail that not everyone has his full entitlement, and that something like ten percent have no land at all. Most of those who do have lands have trouble working them properly-they have not the money for seed; their oxen-if they have oxen-are too weak to plough; they lack the necessary implements or manpower; maybe the field is too hard and stony to grow anything anyway (Wallman, 1969 : 39-46). An enormously high percentage of Basuto can work their lands only if they go into share- cropping partnership with one or more others. This is apparently traditional practice and is referred to unambiguously as scahLo10 (except by Sheddick, 1954: 85).

There are four essential ingredients to the seahlolo operation: oxen, field, seeds and food-for-the-people-working. In a normal seahlolo arrangement between two men, each brings two of the four parts to the partnership-oxen and food; seed and field-any combination is acceptable. The two should then do the work together and harvest together, dividing the crop equally. A man may have as many different share-cropping partners as he has fields-or parts of fields. Some of these partnerships will persist over several seasons, others will be one-shot ventures. Arrangements are made or renewed ad hoc at the beginning of each farming season in every case.

On the basis of the predicted association between non-industrial societies and kinship organisation, one would expect that people would make every effort to enter seahlolo contracts with kinsmen. They do not. Rural working arrangements in Lesotho are instead made according to entirely practical criteria. One share-crops with a particular man because he has seed available; because his oxen are fat; because his wife is a hard worker; because his field is adjacent to one’s own. The majority of arrangements are made between social equals, sometimes between close friends-“because I know him and we shall not quarrel” --not between kinsmen as such (cf. Sheddick, 1954: 86-7). Some people go so far as to avoid working with their kinsmen-“because there is always trouble with family. . . .“.

There are cases in which a rich and well-equipped man gets richer and better equipped by doing seahlolo with a whole series of poorer landholders and getting half the crop from

* The term “land” is indigenous usage for “field”. The lands pertaining to one village surround the settlement, the holdings of each man being dispersed within that area-both to equalise quality and to insure against hail. The modal size of each land is about two acres in the southern lowlands, but no official cadastral measure has been made and Basuto landholden do not measure in standard units (Wallman, 1965).

336 S. WALLMAN

every field. Obviously he is not himself subsistence farming and can sell a profitable amount of grain to the trader, actually making farming pay. Sometimes the same man

will do more than his share of the contracted work or even bring three of the four parts to the seahlolo operation-the poor man’s part being his allocated field. But this is done as a

favour, perhaps out of a sense of richesse oblige or to reap the dubious advantages of popular status; it is not done because he is related to the poor widows and the decrepit old men that he helps.*

The same applies to the other “practical matters” in a village. Certainly children help their parents and a so-called “good son”, while unmarried, may send part or all of his miner’s wage packet home to his mother. Cooperation within a co-residential nuclear family should not, however, be confused with kinship organisation as such. And while one powerful old martinet of 85 appears to control the economic, social and even the emotional life of his enormously extended family, he is so much the exception that villagers themselves regard him as a curiosity.

4. Discussion

It is obvious that, in Lesotho, there are situations involving kinsmen in which the assumption that kinship is the prime organising principle is not only false, it is seriously misleading. But the evidence is bowdlerised if it is cast in a simple sometimes-yes, sometimes-no dichotomy. In the social anthropological literature, one celebrated refinement of the positive class distinguishes between prescribed and preferred cousin marriage; but the negative case is largely unexamined. It is here the more revealing of the two.

Logically there are three possible reasons for not working with a kinsman; for choosing instead an unrelated partner. One may not choose a kinsman because there is not one available; one may not choose a kinsman because the criterion of choice is efliciency or congeniality (or both) and the kinsman, though indeed available, is not the most efficient and/or congenial option; and one may not choose a kinsman because one absolutely does not wish/cannot countenance a kinsman as partner in a given enterprise.

In the first case kinship-the-resource is absent, in the second it is irrelevant, in the third it is abhorrent. (In a practical situation where it is important to predict, for example, the partnership most likely to hold throughout a given work project, it is patently essential to distinguish between the second and the third reasons for not choosing kin.) Each of these possibilities may be applied to the Basuto case.

The first, in the context of Lesotho, would sound absurd: “One does not choose kinsman because there are none around”. Even the most cursory census indicates a high degree of kin relatedness within the village area-the area of greatest social and economic activity, Despite the fact that 40 % of all able-bodied men (and some women) are absent at work in South Africa at any given time, there is a sense in which everyone is related to everyone else. Population pressure and land shortage cement attachment to the local chief from whom one has, or from whom one’s father has, “received” land, and these constraints preclude substantial geographic mobility within the country. Many individuals, certainly most men, spend the different phases of the life cycle in different parts of

* Economically speaking, land is the scarcest of the four ingredients: it is absolutely scarce. The rules of land tenure are such that it cannot be bought or sold and so has no monetary value. Seahlolo allows the rich man access to more land than his allocation, and the poor man (who has only land) access to the prerequisites to production.


the same village area, working the same lands-even if the cycle is regularly punctuated by migrations away. The majority can indicate the house or the site of the house in which their paternal grandparents did the same.

While this continuity rules out the first possibility, it has bearing on the second. The relevance of kinship in the choice of working partners in Lesotho may be said to vary inversely with the degree to which kin-relatedness is common. Where many people are cousins, one chooses from among them those with whom one wants especially to interact- i.e. on the basis of neighbourhood, congeniality, efficiency-not on the basis of kinship which becomes, in that circumstance, redundant. Contrast the ideal-type urban setting where the incidence of kin-relatedness is so rare as to be significant whenever it occurs.

This pimple of a-kimhip is not peculiar to Lesotho. It is possible that the persistence of the assumption that kinship is a prime organising principle in non-industrial societies springs from a confusion of thefiresence of kin-ties with the utilization of kin-ties, a confusion of kinship-the-concept with kinship-the-resource. Anyone in a small, static, rural population anywhere is surrounded by his/her relatives, works with and visits his/her relatives, counts his/her closest friends among them, but not because they are relatives, just because they are there and non-relatives are not. (cf. Southwold, 1971: 44; Paine, 1969: 505,521).

Of course the reality of social life is never quite so neat, not even in the most bucolic setting. There are probably persons unrelated by kinship or marriage in every community, no matter how small. Certainly there are if we recognise that the boundaries of relatedness may be continually redrawn : that we marry, adopt or classify in; divorce, disinherit and classify out (Wallman, 1973a). And once there is a designated category of non-kin, kinship becomes, for some purposes at least, a significant resource in the choice of social partners.

It is not always a positive resource. Situations in which a kin-tie actually disqualifies a potential partner are extremely common in industrial society. The principle of anti- kinship shows itself in popular advice (as “Never do business with family” *), in bureau- cratic ethics (Fox, 1967: 14f), even in economic theory: the “theoretical” contrast between universalistic (i.e. rational) and particularistic (i.e. non-rational) systems reflects the horror of nepotism that once held together some part of the British flag of Empire. It is still used by some industrial observers to distinguish between “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries (Hoselitz, 1953, 1960 et seq.). (For a radical critique of his usage which has bearing on the present argument see Frank, 1971: 5-18.)

Less anachronistically, the anti-kinship principle in our society could be said to under- line and reflect our peculiar “democratic” mistrust of any status which has not been achieved; with the possible exception of sex, kinship status is more irrevocably ascribed than most. In an ethnographic study of kinship in middle-class industrial English society, Firth, Forge & Hubert report one otherwise sociable informant who categorically refused to invite any of his kin to his home-not even those towards whom he recognised some degree of obligation. He is reported saying “This is my castle and I do not want relatives in it”. It appears in this account that people select out from the kin universe those kin to whom they wish to be obligated, but they do not choose even the “friendly” ones as friends (Firth et al., 1969: 114-l 16).

* The fact that the opposite sentiment is BS strongly and probably as frequently expressed (“Blood is thicker than water”) simply underlima

situational aspect.

338 S. WALLMAN

The contrast between voluntariness in the choice of friends and lovers and involuntari- ness in the choice of kin is frequently drawn in European fiction too. Dickens’ Edwin

Drood provides a most explicit example. He clearly defined his choice of mate as a voluntary and anti-kinship choice, and was reluctant to marry his heroine only because he was obliged to (Dickens, 1972 : 12). Paine (1969 : 513f) uses the notion of “privacy” as the defining feature of middle-class friendship relations. In these terms the kinsman constraining Edwin Drood was intruding on a private choice using non-private kinship principles and so defining the situation differently: for him the logic of that kinship

situation was articulated by an anti-friendship principle (cf. Cohen, 1961: 375, quoted in Wolf, op. tit : 12).

The advent of romantic love in non-industrial non-European societies can be expected increasingly to alter the logic of mate choice and its relation to kinship, although not necessarily in this middle-class European pattern. Traditional patterns were not all

governed by the same logic (as Goode, 1971: 366), and recent interpretations indicate a greater variation in degree of voluntariness in the choice of mate than earlier (evolutionary?) assumptions allowed us to suppose: it is clear that these were invariably non- private pro-kinship situations (see e.g. Gessain, 1971: 24-36).

In terms of friendship, however, it is significant to this argument that an anti-kinship principle closely analogous to that implied by Firth et al. and by Paine for middle-class England operates in non-industrial settings too. Southwold reports for the Buganda that it would be improper, not to say outrageous, to admit of a specific kin-tie to a friend. To trace kinship is to repudiate congeniality (Southwold, 1971: 51). Certain congenial relations are therefore articulated by/defined by an anti-kinship principle. As in the English examples, the Buganda case can be interpreted to mean that ascription means obligation, and obligation must be resented where it impinges on an area which is designated an area of individual choice. This is contrary to Paine’s expectation that the “privacy” of middle-class (urban/industrial) European friendship may be “a luxury” peculiar to that setting.

When the Basuto say, as with seahlolo arrangements, “There is always trouble with family” the context is different, but the inference is the same: in some situations it is definitely better not to choose a kinsman as an economic partner. It is possible that in each of these instances some special rivalry, some specific quarrel was at issue. It is also

possible that the sanctions which we are told once supported kinship obligations have been so weakened by modernity and migration that they are now less reliable than extra- familial sanctions (cf. Southall, 1961: 62-66: Wallman, 1969: 45, etc.). Perhaps kin-ties are no longer strong enough (always?) to hold members in line, but are still strong enough (sometimes?) to hold non-members out, causing members to rally round a kinsman who has reneged. By this logic there may be more risk in kin-partnerships than in anti-kin-partnerships because there is less redress if the partner lets you down (cf. Wolf, ibid. : 10).

My own feeling is that none of these instances is idiosyncratic, neither to individuals nor to societies, but that the operation of an anti-kinship principle needs to be tested in situ as carefully as the positive and neutral versions. In practical contexts the testing occurs willy-nilly: written and reported histories of rural development projects in Lesotho frequently note the refusal of one Mosuto or another to cooperate with members of his/her family as he/she was apparently expected to do. While it is unlikely that this factor alone could cause a project to fail, the “developer’s” assumptions and expectations must affect


its outcome (cf. Frank, 1971). This expectation is so strong that it remains unchallenged by evidence to the contrary.

5. Conclusion

A kinship ideology-using the term in its more general, post-Marxist sense (as Firth et al.;

1969: 87f, Wallman, 1972) reflects the political and economic circumstances of those who possess it. The way in which Basuto use kin-ties must therefore be a function of their social setting in some way. Since that setting in toto is unique to them, so too should be their kinship system: Lesotho’s peculiar political and economic circumstances and ambivalent worldview could then be made to account for its not fitting comfortably anywhere in the four part matrix non-industrial/industrial: kinship/no kinship.

But the fact that elements of the kinship ideology prevalent in Lesotho occur also in significantly different settings indicates that the matrix is too simple for practical purposes. Nor is explanation assisted by stretching the dichotomies into evolutionary scales, making one gamut from non-industrial to industrial (rural to urban, simple to complex) and another from kinship to no kinship, and plotting the position of Lesotho on each. Even if we do accept that the growth of technology follows a more or less tidy sequence, just the examples and references given here demonstrate that the utilisation of kinship does not.

Neither the degree of kinship nor the degree of industrialisation/urbanisation can be held to account for variation in relations between people who are genealogically linked. These relations vary because the kin vary, the context shifts, the setting changes, and the perception and availability of alternative resources or options is not consistent-neither within or between societies.

On another level it is mistaken to suppose that relations between kin are necessarily kin relations. They may be friendships (as Paine 1969 : 505) and-in a small, relatively immobile community in which everyone is potentially able to trace a genealogical link with everyone else-necessarily indifferent to kin-ties. Alternatively, as friendships, they may be hostile to kin-ties because it is important to establish that the association is chosen, private, achieved rather than ascribed, and/or to distinguish the special qualities of one relationship by opposing them to the norms of another*. In situations defined by other-than-friendship priorities-as, for Basuto, those concerned with food production- individuals will similarly find it appropriate to ignore, to avoid, or to deny available kin resources when they define the situation as one in which kinship is irrelevant, unuseful, or a liability. In the case of seahlolo, if they have alternative resources, they will choose an unrelated partner, justifying the choice by anti-kinship principles. If they do not, they will choose on other-than-kinship criteria, using an a-kinship principle. The availability and acceptability of alternatives is a crucial dimension of the logic of all such situations.

There are certainly differences in the range of alternative resources (Santos, 1971; Wolf, 1966: 5) and probably in the density of social relations (Southall, 1973: 6, 71-106) as one moves from rural to non-rural settings. It is therefore hardly useful to argue that increased industrialisation/urbanisation does not affect the logic of kinship situations. But neither is it easy to demonstrate that it does so systematically: the logic of these situations is also governed by factors which are simply not measurable on the industrial/ urban scale. To allow the inference that the importance of kin resources varies inversely

l See Lcyton (ed.) (1974) in which a version of this paper appears.

340 S. WALLMAN

with degree of industrialisation is, as Bendix puts it, to misuse an ideal type as a generalisa- tion (Bendix, 1967 : 3 16).

Obviously societies differ. And the desire to classify them is scientifically proper. But the hazards of boxing ourselves into social typologies are well known (at least since Leach, 1961) and may, in practical contexts, be disastrous. We may be saved by the recognition that there are three possible operating principles governing relations between kinsmen-kinship, a-kinship and anti-kinship; that a particular principle is made appropriate by the logic of a particular situation; and that this logic varies with context

within a society as readily as with changes in socio-geographic settings. Unless in every instance we check out all three angles, we cannot know the practical significance of relatedness.

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Documents

Kinship, a-kinship, anti-kinship: Variation in the logic of kinship situations