WAGNER, Roy. Analogic Kinship. a Diribi Example

Analogic Kinship: A Daribi ExampleAuthor(s): Roy WagnerSource: American Ethnologist, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Nov., 1977), pp. 623-642Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/643623 .Accessed: 04/07/2011 18:14

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analogic kinship: a Daribi example

ROY WAGNER-University of Virginia

Let us begin with the proposition that all human relationships are analogous to one another. This includes those relationships that anthropologists have called "kin relationships," which, for that reason, will form the subject matter of our discussion. This means that kin relationships, as well as the relatives identified

through those relationships, will be considered as basically alike in some important way. Note that I am making this assumption purely for analytic reasons; I do not mean to imply that this basic quality of analogy or alikeness is somehow "given," or innate in the nature of things. I am merely introducing the proposition as a foil to the traditional anthropological assumption of the innateness of kin differentiation-the notion that the genealogical breakdown into "father," "mother," and so forth, is a natural fact, and that it is a human responsibility to integrate them into particular kinship "systems" (or discover such integrations).

Consider, then, a situation in which all kin relations and all kinds of relatives are basically alike, and it is a human responsibility to differentiate them. The

responsibility of doing so will be our task in understanding kin relationships, as it is man's role in perhaps the majority of human societies. A mother is another kind of a father, fathering is another kind of mothering; a sister might be a better sister for the fact that she is "a little mother" to her siblings, and a

good father is often "like a brother" to his sons. A certain solicitude (perhaps epitomized by Schneider's "enduring, diffuse solidarity") is quintessential to all ideal kin relationships, regardless of how they may be defined or in what forms the solicitude is expressed. And this solicitude represents, as well as anything can

represent, what I mean by the basic analogy of all kin relationships to one another. From the standpoint I have chosen, I might as well speak of one essential kin

relationship, which is encompassed and varied in all of the particular kinds of

relationships that human beings discern and differentiate. This essential similarity flows between and among the latter, in spite of every effort one may make to differentiate them.

And it is for precisely this reason that man's obligation and moral duty is to

differentiate, and to differentiate properly. For if the appropriate distinctions are drawn, and the proper modes of avoidance, respect, deference, and even

burlesque are observed, then the resulting "flow" of similarity will be realized,

Kin relationship may be approached in the traditional manner as the classification or the sociopolitical "relating" of genealogically differentiated relatives, or it may be seen as the purposive differentiation of relational categories to compel a "flow" of analogical "relatedness" among them. Analysis of a New Guinea relational system in the latter terms, beginning with the "interdict" on relations with the wife's mother, reveals a set of operant concepts for the understanding of kinship in symbolic terms, as well as a set of general conclusions as to the nature of kinship.

analogic kinship 623

perceived as an expression of inner morality. But if these distinctions are not drawn, or drawn improperly, or if the wrong or inappropriate ones are made, then the flow of similarity will appear as a kind of contagion, a moral degeneracy spreading from one kinsman to another. This is what the celebrated "incest taboo," which has been identified by so many anxious classifiers in so many diverse societies, seems to be all about. For incest-treating a mother or sister as a wife or lover or treating a son or brother as a lover or husband-is a morally undesirable flow of similarity.

The "relational" aspect of kinship is thus always understandable as a kind of

analogic "flow"-that is what we mean by "being related," and this flow is always the consequence of kin differentiation. Western middle-class society, which takes

responsibility for "relating" in a deliberate sense, perceives differentiation as

something "innate." Thus for Western ideology, a proper "flow" results from the conscious and deliberate performance of legitimate "relating": making a legitimate marriage between compatible people, maintaining and adjusting interpersonal relationships, learning to like one's affines, doing one's relational duty to kinsmen. And the inappropriate flow of incest is seen by Westerners as "going against nature," an abrogation of "natural" differentiation that allegedly brings about disastrous natural consequences. For Western society, appropriate flow is defined and promoted by natural differentiation, and the task of the individual and of

society is that of comprehending this natural "fact" and accommodating our actions to its precepts. We "draw" the creative distinctions by perceiving them "in nature," and we perceive the consequent flow as a potential for "right" or "wrong" performance. Others perceive the flow of relationship as a "given" that prompts appropriate differentiation.

But in both cases the flow of relationship, and ultimately lineality-analogy across the generations-is integrally linked to differentiation. Lineality is not a

separate, "political" consideration, a matter of "group recruitment," but is always an aspect of a totality that includes differentiation as well. The creativity of

kinship in the West is centered on an act of collective joining, the "marrying" of two people, for it is from this act that appropriate differentiation (into "husband," "wife," "mother," "father," and so forth) eventuates. But the creativity elsewhere, and especially in tribal societies, is based on an act of appropriate differentiation, one that will assure a proper relational flow. Marriages, in our sense, are not "made"; they follow, or "flow," from an initial differentiation, from which the

consequences of marriage also flow. Let us then explore this mode of thought and action. All kin relationships and

"kinds" of kinsmen are basically analogous because all incorporate the essence of human solicitude that we call "relating." Every particular "kind" of relationship exemplifies this essence in some particular way, and comprises a ("metonymic") part of a potential whole, a totality of which the aggregate of all the kinds of

relationship represents a homologue. Each particular kind of relationship, since it

incorporates the underlying context of relational solicitude, can be seen as an

("metaphorical") analogue of each other kind of relationship. An example taken from Levi-Strauss's classic study of totemism (1962) might help to clarify this

point. Levi-Strauss postulates a homology between a "natural series" of totemic creatures and the set of human groupings that they represent, in which "it is not the resemblances, but the differences, which resemble each other" (1962:77). Applying this model to Spencer and Gillen's description of the Aranda of Central Australia, we find that for certain purposes this homology is significant, whereas

624 american ethnologist

for others it is "collapsed" into a series of anthropomorphic analogues. Thus the "totemic" groupings in the human series are each responsible for the ritual

proliferation of their "natural" homologues so as to benefit the whole of society. But the Intichiuma rite, which brings this about, requires that each human

grouping synthesize the primordial inapertwa creature that represents a union between man and a natural homologue, an anthropomorphic "metaphor" standing in an analogous relation to other such metaphors (Spencer and Gillen 1968:167-211, 389, 445). This transformation is diagrammed at the top of Figure 1. We can likewise

postulate a homology between the various kinds of relatives traditionally recognized in kinship studies (or, for that matter, between any particular "cultural" set of relatives) and the totality, or aggregate of kinds of human relationship, as I have stated above. By recognizing the union of each kind of relative with its relational

homologue, on the model of the Aranda inapertwa creature, I can transform this traditional conception of kin relationship into the analogical model I have

suggested. The transformation is diagrammed at the bottom of Figure 1. It is a scheme for the differentiation of a kin universe into analogical units.

The traditional concerns and problems of functionalist, structuralist, and

cognitive kinship studies can be seen as consequences of a homological frame of reference. The analysis of joking, avoidance, and respect relationships initiated by Radcliffe-Brown (1952) and Eggan (1937) deals with culture-specific homologies between sociological kin roles and a set of "given" genealogical relatives. Kin differentiation (the genealogical "grid") becomes an invariant control against which the sociological alignments and stresses of various tribal peoples are contrasted.

Joking, avoidance, and respect are understood as conventional strategies for

A Homological Equivalence

natural human series series

Emu o o Emu men

Kangaroo o o Kangaroo men

Honey o o Honey Ant Ant men

Witchetty o o Witchetty Grub Grub men

Homological Equivalence relational kinds of

totality relatives

paternal o o "father" solicitude maternal o o "mother" solicitude fraternal o o "brother" solicitude affinal o o various solicitude affines

B Analogical Equivalence

Intichiuma series I Emu Emu men I

I Kangaroo Kangaroo | men I

IHoney Ant Honey Ant men

Witchetty Witchetty Grub Grub men

Analogical Equivalence kin relationships

I paternal "father" I solicitude maternal "mother" solicitude fraternal "brother" solicitude affinal various solicitude affines

Figure 1: A comparison of Levi-Strauss's "totemism" model and its ritual transformation among the Aranda (Spencer and Gillen 1968) with the model of analogical kin relationship presented in this discussion. Boxes indicate contiguity or incorporation, parallel alignment

indicates resemblances.


converting a naturally differentiated kin universe into a functioning society, and a

comprehensive account of a people's relationship protocols yields their social

homologue of genealogy. Levi-Strauss's "atom of kinship" model (1963) achieves an elegant simplification

(or oversimplification) of this homological approach. Natural differentiation is

supplemented by the constraints of (social) reciprocity to limit the possible constellations of kin attitudes among four "basic" kin types. What Levi-Strauss offers is a limited and rigorous refinement of homology, rather than an alternative to homology. A set of contrastively defined "attitudes" (the distinction between attitude and relationship is by no means clear) is shown to vary in a regular way in relation to genealogy and reciprocal obligation. The insistence on a "given" kin

differentiation, however abstracted, preserves the essentially homological character of this model.

The character of the homology changes radically in the ethnosemantic

approaches of Lounsbury (1964) and others, which substitute culture-specific kin classification for "mode of relationship" or "kin attitudes." The homology of

componential analysis is neither the explication of a sociological dynamic nor a

synthesis of the attitudes induced by reciprocity, but a detailed correspondance established between a native classificatory "system" and the "kinds of relatives"

specified by genealogy. Much of the value of this approach comes from the close

specification of particular homological transformations (rather than a demonstration of how a society is held together); like other homological schemes, however, its usefulness is ultimately contingent upon the validity of the idea of natural kin differentiation.

For the functionalists and structuralists as well as the ethnosemanticists the "problematic" area is demarcated by the empty spaces between boxes in the first column of Figure 1. For an analogical approach, however, the (homological) correspondence is subsumed by the postulated identity between mode of relationship and kind of relative. Here the kin term or terms (as well as the "relatives" it identifies) is part and parcel of the mode of relationship (see Wagner 1972a), and term and relationship together form a

conceptual entity that is differentiated from other such entities. The "problematic" area here corresponds to the empty spaces between boxes in the second column of Figure 1 and involves the "flow" of analogy or similarity between kin relationships.

The dynamic of explanation for an analogical analysis of kin relations is radically different from that traditionally assumed in homological approaches. The traditional

genealogical method, with its "kinship diagrams" and terminological "kin types," is basically synchronic and emphasizes the systematic deployment of relational

correspondences across an invariant grid. What we might call the "temporal" factor can be located as one of a number of logical implications subsumed in the total constellation. But an analogical analysis is of necessity diachronic and

sequential: concerned with "relationship" as the analogical consequence of contrived differentiation, it exhausts a terminological-relational series through temporal sequence rather than logical systemization. Each differentiation has its

consequences and is reestablished or altered diachronically. There is another, perhaps more subtle, implication of an analogical approach

that deserves clarification. This is the fact that, having obviated the distinction between "natural" kin type and "cultural" kin relationship by subsuming terminology and relationship within a single entity, an analogical approach does not incorporate the contrast between "mental" symbolization and "physical" fact. Its constructions are intended as simultaneously conceptual and phenomenal; they


belong to a single universe of apprehended cultural construction (and culturally constructed apprehension) that is contiguous with other realms of conceptualization. Kin relationships are not separated as a rigid "cultural" response to a set paradigm of "natural" contingency but rather emerge as an integral part of a wholly symbolic conceptualization of things.

We begin, not with a grid, but with a conceptual world, and the significance of kin relationships within this world is a function of their meaningful development in terms of its symbols. The beginnings of our analysis should involve an entry into this conceptual world and a creative apprehension of its meanings, rather than the demarcation of a particular "domain" or department of the totality that we might want to designate as that of "kinship." This requires that we begin our analysis with some particular conceptual world, and with a set of assumptions about conceptual worlds in general, rather than a general orientation regarding "kinship systems" in general. Accordingly, I shall present an analogical analysis of kin relationships among the Daribi, an interior Papuan people whose conceptual world I have already reconnoitered in some detail (Wagner 1967, 1972b).

The relationships, restrictions, responsibilities, and obligations of Daribi kinsmen all flow from an initial differentiation, or interdiction, that is made with, and sanctioned by, a considerable moral and ceremonial emphasis. For the purposes of this analysis I shall consider the interdiction to be the basic and primary step (as the Daribi themselves consider it), the "maker" or "creator" of kin relationship. But since the interdiction is made within a conceptual world, one that presumes the analogical flow resulting from differentiation (since the context of differentiation is an established society, not an analytical discourse), it will be necessary to consider it in the light of the analogical flow.

The interdiction is initiated in the form of a betrothal (orowaie "to betroth") and involves the prospective bride and groom as well as certain key relatives of theirs, notably the prospective bride's mother. We might in fact consider the prospective bride's mother to be the more significant party in a basic dyad, since she assumes the essential role in the interdict once the betrothal stage has been passed. But until this time the prospective bride and her mother are treated for most social purposes as the same person. The force of the interdict is to commute all or most interaction ("relating") between two sets of persons, focused on the dyad involved in the exchange of wealth and meat. The abrogation of relationship begins prior to the setting up of the betrothal itself, when go-betweens are used to mediate relations between the two parties, and remains in force with certain modifications, as long as marital relations exist.

The interdiction and commutation of relationships here can be understood in terms of differentiation and analogy. What is abrogated is in fact any preexisting analogical relationships that may be construed to exist among the parties (such as, for example, their being "distant second cousins"), and any familiarity that might arise in ordinary social intercourse. We might say that any "horizontal" or nonlineal analogical relationship is cut off and transmuted into "vertical" or lineal relationship. This point takes precedence over any implications that may stem from our traditional idea of "exchange" or "reciprocity," since "exchange" is no more admissible as an unaccountable "fact" than notions like the "domain of kinship." In order to realize the significance of this, however, we must consider the nature of the "vertical" lineality, for this grounds (and is grounded by) the Daribi conception of sexual differentiation.


Maleness is considered to be an effect of seminal fluid, kawa, which is contained and developed within a system of tubes (agwa bono) and nodes (agwa ge) that we would call the lymphatic system, and is transmitted by a man in sexual intercourse. It forms the outer layer of an embryo, the skin, eyes, teeth, and

hair, as well as the lymphatic system and genitalia of a man, and the lymphatic system and mammary glands of a woman. Femaleness is considered to be an effect of maternal blood, pagekamine, which is contained within the circulatory system and provided by a woman in the conception of a child. It forms the inner layer of an embryo, the bones, viscera, and other internal organs, and the circulatory system. Menstruation is seen as the release of pagekamine for reproductive purposes. Although the heart, lungs, and liver are thought of as places where the soul (noma') resides and are developed from maternal blood, Daribi says that the soul of a man is bestowed by the father, and that of a woman is bestowed

by the mother. But the crucial difference between these fluids and the sexual characteristics

they objectify is the relative contingency of the male and relative self-sufficiency of the female. Both fluids are necessary for the creation of an embryo, but

although the blood in a woman's body is sufficient for her role in conception, the seminal fluid that a man receives from his father is never sufficient in quantity for conception and must be augmented. It is replenished and increased by the

juices and fat of meat that is eaten (in a woman these fluids form maternal milk). Thus meat takes on the considerable significance of an adjunct to maleness and male reproductive potential: it is the partible and portable accessory to masculine

continuity. Beyond this, the contingency of maleness amounts to a definitive statement of moral obligation: man's responsibility should be to retain and

supplement the contingent, to manage and utilize meat resources and exercise social force and constraint in such a way as to contain and incorporate male

lineality. Viewed in analogical terms, kawa and pagekamine are simply two ways in which

the vertical flow of analogy resulting from the interdict are represented. They amount to the same thing seen, as it were, from different angles, and we shall see that the whole course of Daribi relational transformation is but a sequential realization and acknowledgement of this fact. But the realization is a gradual and

sequential one, and the force of the moral obligation is that each party to the interdict shall represent and perceive its own lineal flow as that of male substance, for its primary concern is the retention and replenishment of this substance. The party of the wife givers will, for this reason, represent and perceive the

giving of its women and their consequent reproductive activities as its own lineal flow of male substance. A Daribi man regards and addresses his sister's children as his own. But the party of the wife takers will regard the lineal flow of the wife givers as that of female substance, as a flow of "blood."

What might be described as exchange or reciprocity is in fact an objectified, quantifiable mediation and intermeshing of two views of a single thing. The wife givers represent their own flow to the wife takers as that of femaleness,

giving adjuncts of female productivity (bark cloth, string bags, and so forth) and the promise of a woman. The wife takers represent their flow to the wife

givers as that of maleness, giving meat and other adjuncts of maleness and male

productivity (pearlshells, axes, bushknives). Each party acquires an objectified increment of flow consonant with its perception of the flow of the other, but, because the wife givers regard the woman and her apurtenances as part of their


own male lineality, each party's giving is consonant with its perception of its own lineal flow. "We" are always male contingency, by moral precept, and it is always the women, because of their very self-sufficiency, who are obliged to mediate the flow of male lineality.

The objectification of parallel "male" and "female" flows, as against any single, analogical flow or relationship between prospective wife givers and wife takers, is thus an artifact of the interdict. But because the meat, wealth objects, and,

potentially, the woman involved are not "merely symbolic" tokens like our money, and rather are themselves what they stand for, or represent, we can say that the objectification of parallel flows through "exchange" is the very substance, as well as the artifact of the interdict. Now it should be clear why the full force of the interdict involves a male on the side of the takers and a female on that of the

givers: because the interdict and the objectification of parallel flows are one and the same thing. Betrothal and marriage, via the interdiction and separation of flow

through which they are constituted, amount to the germinal social differentiation of male and female, a differentiation that motivates the whole of Daribi secular life. It is a differentiation that is recreated constantly in betrothal and marriage and that owes its social persistance to this recreation. And this perhaps explains why, when I asked a group of Daribi men what specific practice had always been theirs (and not introduced as part of a cult), they replied: "it is this, that a man should never behold, speak to, or utter the name of his wife's mother."

The establishment of a betrothal, formalized in the passing over of a sizable amount of "male goods" to the prospective wife's people and a small return

gift, initiates the recourse to "affinal" forms of interaction between appropriate parties in the parallel linealities-the beginning of the interdict. This amounts to a total, formal abrogation of intercourse and even recognition between the

prospective groom on one side and his prospective bride and her mother on the other. They may not speak to each other, see each other, utter one another's name or the name of the thing it refers to, or hear such a name spoken. (To this end Daribi women wear their bark cloaks like a shawl about the face-so that it may be drawn over the face if the occasion demands this. They will also

step off a road and turn their backs if there is any possibility of meeting a forbidden person.) There is no terminology of address or protocol for interaction between a male and his betrothed. A male and his betrothed's (or wife's) mother are au to each other. Any infringement of the interdict between them must be

compensated by a small gift of (male) wealth to the female au. Those considered "true" bothers (ama' mu) of a groom or prospective groom and all other women married into the lineality of the bride or prospective bride (generally including wives of full brothers of the woman and the wives of their male issue) are also au to each other, though the force of the interdict may not be as emphatic in these cases.

The terms of the interdict are no less stringent with regard to the father of the betrothed, though the forms are different. This man (and his male and female

siblings) and the prospective groom (and his "true" brothers) are wai to one another. Wai should observe particular care in their relations with one another, avoiding embarrassing situations and "speaking carefully," with a certain degree of deference being shown by the prospective groom and his brothers. The forms of the interdict are slightly more permissive, though no less significant, between baze, including the prospective groom (and his "true" brothers) on one hand, and the siblings of the prospective bride on the other. This is a careful protocol,


which combines mild joking with a certain amount of deference to the bride's brothers (to whom Daribi occasionally refer as "true" baze). Female w?i and baze are potential and even preferred (additional) marriage partners, though this does not affect the protocols of interaction with them during betrothal. Female wai and baze are distinguished by a combination of the terms with the word we ("woman," "wife"), as in w i-we, baze-we. Offspring of male baze, who stand in the yage protocol in relation to the prospective groom and his brothers, and

offspring of male yage, who are reciprocally yame to them, are likewise fairly unimportant during the betrothal stage of the interdict, and the protocols are

relatively unconstrained. Female yage and yame are potential preferred marriage partners, but like wgi-we and baze-we, this potentiality of their role is held in

abeyance during betrothal.

Betrothing a woman is often spoken of by Daribi as noma' sabo ("takes the soul," that is, "soul taking"). Noma' ("soul") can be understood as the moral and social

persona. In this usage the noma' can be approached on an analogy with the Maori hau, the spirit of a gift that demands reciprocation (Mauss 1954:8-9). Taking the soul then amounts to acquiring a pledge, the moral "self" of a woman, to be

requited later by the passing over of the woman. During the course of the betrothal,

generally when the betrothed reaches the age of eight or ten, she is obliged to visit the prospective groom's people and is then placed under the care and tutelage of her prospective husband's mother, whom she calls auwa ("grandmother," reciprocal: wai', "grandchild." She calls her auwa's husband wai', here "grandfather," which carries the same reciprocal.) The purpose of this visit, which is to see that the

prospective groom is assembling the bridewealth so that she may return to tell her father, is significant. For the bridewealth is linked to another use of the term

noma', the ogwanoma' (literally "boy soul," but spoken as a single word). The

ogwanoma' is the ceremonial attire assumed by the groom and four or five other members of his line for the presentation of the bridewealth, which constitutes the

wedding ceremony. It consists of a covering of charcoal over the entire visible body, a black cassowary plume worn on the head, and contrasting white shell ornaments. This is also the traditional battle dress of men. The wedding consists of the men, so

attired, standing at rigid attention in single file before the door of the bride's father's house. In their left hands the men hold pearlshells belonging to the brideprice, and in the right they each hold a bow and a bundle of arrows. The bride then emerges from the house, splendidly attired, walks down the file of men, and takes the pearlshells from each. She then takes them to her father. As they are relieved of the shells, the men grasp one of the arrows in the left hand and resume their rigid stance. It is

highly significant in terms of male contingency that the female soul is taken, whereas the "boy soul" is merely "shown" and retained, and that this "showing" is done in a martial posture.

This ceremony, we kqbo, literally the "tying" or "fastening" of the woman (as

opposed to merely "taking her soul"), might also be viewed as the explicit and self-contained assumption of parallel, vertical "flows." The groom's party moves into the residential locus of the bride's people and "shows" but also contains its

ogwanoma' in a rigid, armed manner. This manifests and exemplifies an ideal of sober male assertiveness, while at the same time presenting the bride's people with

pearlshells of the same sort as those worn by the groom and his accomplices. In

sum, the ceremony amounts to an assertion and mutual recognition of the self-image of male substance that is proper to each party. But the "tying" of the woman also means that she is separated (that is, "taken" and "fastened") from her own line, who


are henceforth known as her "pagebidi"-"base-people"-a tie that is explicated and substantiated through the tracing of pagekamine. Prior to the "tying," her principal links of substantial analogy were traced both through paternal and maternal substance. But presentation of the brideprice commutes this linking analogy to a single tie with her natal line, viewed as a link of maternal substance by the groom's people and as an extension of their own paternal substance by the bride's. Thus the latter are obliged to give over a certain portion of the bridewealth as a quitclaim to the bride's mother's people, given more or less to validate assumption of her pagebidi's role.

We can understand a kind of analogy to be manifest between the givers and takers of souls, women, and pearlshells, and this analogy can indeed be said to relate them. Yet the terms of the interdict are such that this kind of analogy is not embodied in internal, substantial "flow," but in the kinds of "detached" or "detachable" things (souls, women, pearlshells) that are being presented and accepted. For it is these detachable things, used as mediators in lieu of substantial flow, that are used socially to "mark" and confirm, to establish and substantiate, the setting up of parallel substantial flows. There is a flow of meat, women, and pearlshells just precisely where there is no flow of substantial analogy, because the exchange of these detachable markers in one direction is the means by which substantial flow is emphasized (and hence created) in another. This is why Daribi say that "we marry those with whom we do not eat [that is, share] meat." It is a self-contained statement, a model "of" and a model "for."

In sum, then, the exchange of detached, partible things amounts to deliberate, controlled analogy-the manipulated "flow" that is substituted for internal, substantial flow by the imposition of the interdict. Like the interdict itself, it is the aspect of kin relationship for which human beings take direct responsibility. Unlike internal, substantial flow, which, as the "given" residuum of previous exchanges, prompts certain kinds of appropriate human action (such as "sharing"), the interdict and the exchange that it leads to is predicated upon immediate human action. The restrictions and distinctions made here, whether "behavioral" (as with avoidance and respect) or "structural" (as with exchange and marital protocols), are the subject of great care and discretion. They call to mind the painstaking restrictions surrounding food and pollution that Dumont emphasizes in Homo Hierarchicus (1970) as the very core of the Hindu caste system. As in Dumont's analysis, it is not necessary to adduce literally constituted "groups" (or even "societies") here: all that is necessary is for people to observe the niceties of the interdict and its concomitant exchanges and prerogatives, and the sociality (and its analogies of substantial flow) will take care of itself.

The "flow" of controlled analogy through exchange is thus constitutive of the whole relational matrix. But we have seen that this constitutive action must respect the exigencies of the substantial analogies (that is, male and female flows, as perceived by the respective parties) that it sets up. Most significantly, this involves the obligations of male contingency-giving meat and male wealth to the pagebidi to make restitution for their perceived loss of male flow. For Daribi (whose usages are fundamentally asymmetrical in this respect, in contrast to those of some other Papuan peoples) the morality of this obligation extends beyond individual marriages and becomes a binding consideration for the two linealities involved. Thus, insofar as these linealities are set up through interdict and exchange, they will be constituted in terms of a unidirectional "flow" of controlled analogy, one being "wife giver" and the other "meat giver," so to speak. Additional wives may be given in the direction of the original marriage but should not be given in the reverse direction. In those few


cases where sister exchanges do take place (owing, as the Daribi say, to a lack of wealth on the part of the exchangers, who are often criticized on moral grounds), informants insist that any meat exchanged may not be consumed by the exchangers themselves.

It would seem, indeed, that the protocols regarding meat here are even more crucial than those relating to the giving of women themselves. But this is just what we should expect, given the predominant significance of male contingency, for meat is the externalized, partible equivalent of seminal fluid, kawa. We can then apprehend the asymmetrical and unidirectional character of exchange as being itself a kind of

analogue of male lineality: as the flow of kawa, male relational analogy, passes from father to son, so the "flow" of its external equivalent passes horizontally in one direction only. Exchange and descent, affinity and consanguinity, become metaphors for one another.

Like all metaphors, however, this one works both ways. As there is a "flow" of meat between linealities that replicates descent, so we also find a "flow" of women within these linealities on the model of unidirectional or asymmetrical exchange. This is the junior levirate, which for Daribi is generalized to include the inheritance of wives from father to son and among those who regard one another in broad, idiomatic terms as "brothers." The moral emphasis, however, is on the transference of wives from elder to younger males, and this is clearly reflected in various kinds of relational

terminology. The eldest of a set of male siblings is referred to as the gominaibidi, literally the "head-man" or "source-man," on the analogy of a wQ-gomo, the

"water-head," or high point at the source of a stream. As the water flows downward from this point, so the wives flow from the gominaibidi to his younger siblings. A man and his elder brothers' wives, who are potential spouses under the levirate, are sare to one another and may not joke or act in other ways that betoken familiarity, such as calling one another by name. A man and his younger brothers' wives, whose

potential marriage is not encouraged by the levirate, are wai' to one another. This

indulgent, nonrestrictive relationship is also that of grandfather and grandchild and of a wife and her husband's father.

It may be incidental to the central idiom of this discussion, but it is nevertheless

helpful to note that leviratic transfer is involved in a significant fraction of all Daribi

marriages. Table 1, based on marital histories collected from roughly half of the Daribi married males in 1968-1969, indicates that wives are obtained leviratically in 46.8

percent of all cases. Certainly this high incidence is the result of diverse situational

factors, including especially the practice of betrothing very young girls to older men.

Early widowhood, and a plurality of widows, is an expected feature of such an

arrangement. Thus we find that, statistically, the internal, "lineal" flow of wives is almost as frequent as the external, interlineal flow. Significantly, however, the marital rites of we kQbo, with their dramatic "defense" of male contingency, are not performed in cases of leviratic transfer.

The external, horizontal "flow" of women from wife givers to wife takers is also, of

course, very much an ongoing affair, particularly since Daribi usages require that small prestations of meat and wealth be passed along continually in the opposite direction. Another measure of this "flow" is the prerogative or expectation of the

groom, or wife taker, to receive further wives from the lineality of the wife givers. This includes women who are w,i we, baze-we, yage, and yame to him, but usually focuses more particularly on the wife's sister, or baze-we. It is clear that the

"obligation" is not always honored by wife givers, who may have other obligations or inclinations regarding their sisters, daughters, and father's sisters. But the prerogative


Table 1. The prevalence of leviratic transfer.

Marriages Initiated by Betrothal Number Percent

following original betrothal 209 29.8 betrothal inherited leviratically at death* 32 4.6 betrothal inherited leviratically without death* 56 7.9 betrothal transferred nonleviratically 55 7.9

Marriages Not Initiated by Betrothal

married without betrothal or transfer 46 6.6 wife inherited leviratically at death* 207 29.5 wife inherited leviratically without death* 34 4.8 wife received nonleviratically 63 8.9

total 702 100.0

* Total marriages resulting from leviratic transfer 329 (46.8%). Total marriages without leviratic transfer 373 (53.2%).

is often "pushed" by Daribi men, especially influential ones. I have several times been

approached by anxious Daribi tultuls (government-appointed village leaders) who had forcibly detained their wives' sisters (married elsewhere) and were fearing the

consequences. Others, learning that my wife had a sister, wondered aloud why I did not quit New Guinea and go off in hot pursuit of her.

Table 2 presents some statistical measures of continuing marriage with wife givers, calculated as a percentage of all marriages contracted and of all marriages completed after the first. The categories baze-we (including wife's sisters and half-sisters) and

yage, taken in the strictest sense, account for about 15 percent of all later marriages; taken together with wife's other lineage mates, this yields a total of between 30 percent and 35 percent of all marriages after the first resulting from the continuing horizontal "flow" of meat and partible analogy.

The metaphorical equivalence of vertical lineality and horizontal exchange, however subliminal and implicit it may be from the standpoint of participants, is highly significant for my central argument. For it is an analogy drawn between two rather different forms of analogy, one of them assumed as a part of the nature of things, and the other brought about by human action. More specifically, it can be seen as a kind of inveterate "slippage" or "dissonance" in the terms of the interdict, which was set up

Table 2. The prevalence of continuing marriage with wife givers.

All contracted marriages after the first All completed marriages (includes dissolved betrothals) after the first

Relationship Number Percent Number Percent

Baze-we 58 9.5 40 11.0 Yage 30 4.9 18 4.9 Wai-we 3 .5 3 .8 wife's other lineage

mates 93 15.2 67 18.3 other marriages 427 69.9 238 65.0

total 611 100.0 366 100.0


through the mediation of horizontal "flow," to counteract and abolish any substantial flow between the two linealities. What happens is that the means of imposing the interdict come to model, and to be modeled by, the thing that is interdicted. This

effect, coming about gradually in the years after marriage (in the allocation of widows and the organization of polygyny), is the first step in the obviation of the interdict.

This effect is paralleled by an even more significant compromising of the interdict: that brought about by the birth of children, who manifest the substantial flow of both linealities-that of the mother and that of the father-in a single social persona. Terminologically and in every other way, Daribi men regard their sisters' children as their own. From the respective viewpoints of the two linealities, indeed, the child stands in an analogic relation of paternal substance to each of them. Thus the child becomes itself a point of analogic relation between the two linealities: relationship has "happened" to the original demarcation between them. Because the same social

persona stands in an analogic relation to both, the two are related analogically to one another. It is important, too, to remember that every single individual in the society manifests such a confluence of linealities, and that every expression of lineality as a clear-cut social construction is compromised by the implications of this effect.

If the expression of distinct linealities is to be maintained as a viable social construction beyond the point of marriage-if, in other words, the child is to be

regarded as analogically "belonging" to one or another of its two linealities-then a mediation must be effected. Moreover, this mediation must satisfy the claims of male

contingency that both linealities make upon the child. Once again, this is accomplished through the presentation of detached and partible equivalents of substantial flow. These are given, in a series of payments called pagehabo (from pagehaie "to pay the

pagebidi") by the father of the child to the child's pagebidi. Because the latter regard the child as an analogue of their own paternal lineality, the detachable analogic elements can be accepted (or negotiated for) as a legitimate substitution. Because the father's lineality regards that of the mother as the child's pagebidi, analogues through maternal substance, pagehabo becomes for them an act of defending male contingency

against female sufficiency; for the pagebidi are believed to exercise, through the

special qualities of maternal blood, a power of cursing the child with death or illness. Thus male contingency is the chief moral consideration on both sides, though it becomes a truly pressing issue for the father's lineality, since for them male

contingency is opposed to female sufficiency. This difference makes paternal affiliation a moral issue, for in the absence of pagehabo payments the father's line would be indeed contingent in the face of the pagebidi's position of sufficiency-the paternal side must supplement its maleness and the claims based upon this maleness. The

pagebidi, for their part, need not supplement their claims, but they claim the right (which is sometimes exercised) of taking possession of the children themselves in the event of nonpayment.

Pagehabo is often subject to negotiation; payment often is delayed until a child survives its vulnerable early years, or the payments for one child or even several are tendered in a single "lump" sum. Customarily, too, it is only demanded for a woman's first three children, though this again is often a matter of negotiation. What is

important, regardless of the circumstances of giving, is the mediation that is effected, for this is a moral issue bearing upon health and lineality. Pagehabo is given a few

years after birth, at initiation for males or marriage for females, and again at death. But adult males should also, as a matter of some moral consequence (for example, what

a man "who understands well" would do), pair off with one of their awa pagebidi (the so-called awa mu, or "true maternal uncle") in an ongoing exchange relationship.


Female lineality, that is, should morally be transmuted into a flow of partible analogy throughout a man's life.

In terms of our broader understanding, pagehabo is a kind of reimposition of the interdict, a deliberate (though motivated) definition of lineality. But it is also, as I have observed, compromised in a way that the original interdict is not, for inasmuch as the persona for whom the payments are given belongs simultaneously to both linealities, and relates them, the mediating payments that define this lineal affiliation are exchanged within a single lineality. They are "shared" as well as exchanged, and to this extent the linealities that they serve to define are rendered less distinct. Thus the identification between horizontal and vertical flow, between lineality and exchange (or act and circumstance), encountered in the levirate and in continuing marriage with wife givers and compounded in the begetting of children is carried forward in a cumulative fashion. It qualifies the redefinition of lineality in pagehabo, and its effects grow even more pronounced as the child grows older.

Most Daribi exchanges, including those made at betrothal and marriage, as well as

pagehabo, involve the passing back of a smaller prestation called sogwarema by the receivers of the main prestation. In the case of pagehabo given for a male child, however, the sogwarema wealth is often withheld by the pagebidi until the child grows up and begins to assemble his own brideprice. The youth then has the right to go to his pagebidi and request a contribution to the bridewealth he is assembling, and the accumulated sogwarema wealth will be turned over to him for this purpose. Even if the sogwarema wealth has not been withheld, however, the youth's request should be honored. The right to ask for such a consideration and the contribution itself are tokens of the young man's affiliation with his maternal lineality, over and above the definition of his lineality effected bypagehabo. Withholding the sogwarema prestations has the effect of conserving the definition of lineality, though it renders the transference of wealth, when it occurs, more ambiguous, for by honoring the youth's request with sogwarema wealth the pagebidi both "exchange" with the youth's paternal lineality and "share" with the youth himself.

Precisely this sort of ambiguity, exchanges, expectations, and protocols, simultaneously honoring the canons of "sharing" and "exchanging," suffuses the relations among cross-cousins, the offspring, respectively, of the erstwhile "wife givers" and "wife takers." Daribi say that cross-cousins, or hai', "are the same as siblings," meaning that they should think of each other and treat each other as siblings. But of course they are not siblings, but hai'. Hai' are siblings to the extent that lineality and exchange, "sharing" and "exchanging," are collapsed into one, for then the paternal linealities of their fathers are merged into a single flow of meat given in exchange and kawa passed down generationally. Hai' are not siblings to the extent that the lineality of the matrilateral cross-cousins is regarded by the patrilateral cross-cousins as female or maternal rather than male, because female lineality emphasizes lineal obligation. Thus the moral injunction to regard hai' as siblings is in fact a restatement of the primacy of male substantial flow, a further resolution of male contingency. Hai' as siblings are related by the analogy of male substance, a condition that leads Daribi to say that one's patrilateral hai' are "true hai" in contradistinction to one's matrilateral hai', for the latter may also be regarded as pagebidi.

Because the hai' relationship is itself developed out of the paradoxical confrontation of two analogous but distinct semiotic modalities, it emerges as the crucial point in the self-creation and self-limitation of Daribi kin relationships. Because the vertical and horizontal modes of analogic construction are interdependent as well as fundamentally


opposed to one another, relating to one's hai' is always a matter of playing one set of relational injunctions against another. We might say that hai' impersonate or dramatize the conflicting implications of lineality and exchange in their relations with one another. For this reason the responsibilities and obligations, what we might wish to call the "norms" of the relationship, are restricted closely to bivalent usages, those that

satisfy simultaneously, though ambiguously, the canons of sharing and exchanging. As "siblings," male hai' should contribute to one another's brideprices and are

entitled to a share in the bridewealth received for their respective female hai'. As

"brothers," male hai' may exercise a claim (rated as being just below that of a younger brother in priority) on the inheritance of one another's widows. But because hai' are not siblings and because matrilateral hai' are also dwano pagebidi, "little pagebidi," and hence exchangers, these rights and obligations of sharing are always worked into the idiom of exchanging, so that expressions of lineality as well as exchange take the same external form. The leviratic claims that hai' make as siblings must generally be validated by equilateral exchanges among the prospective co-heirs-should the

surviving hai' not receive the widow thus "paid for," he may legitimately demand the return of his wealth. Otherwise, of course, the matrilateral hai' receives somewhat more wealth than his patrilateral counterpart in the exchanges that pass between them, for he is a "creditor" of the latter in the pagebidi relation.

Viewed as expressing sharing through the idiom of exchanging, the hai' relationship approximates the generationally "skewed" one of "child" and pagebidi, even though the pagebidi here is of the same generation as the "child" and is a "little pagebidi." As in the case of the awa pagebidi, or maternal uncle, the hai' pagebidi retains the sanction of cursing ego, and, also as in that case, ego is often paired off with a

particular hai' pagebidi in a permanent exchange relationship (that of hai' mu, or "true hai' ") when he reaches adulthood. Viewed as expressing exchanging through the idiom of sharing, the hai' relationship approximates that of siblings, generationally equivalent, with a slight implication of leviratic seniority on the part of the patrilateral partner. (It is said that the patrilateral hai', if a gominaibidi-the eldest male of his

sibling series-should not inherit the widow of his hai' pagebidi, "because his mother came from there," and a gominaibidi is felt to be closer to his mother than his younger siblings are.) Figure 2, which lists leviratic transfers statistically according to the kin

category of the source, illustrates graphically the prevalence of transfers from

patrilateral to matrilateral kin for a number of relationships, including hai'. The effect of the moral injunction to regard hai' as "siblings," and hence to

express exchanging through the idiom of sharing, is that of countering and neutralizing the structural superiority of the matrilateral hai' as pagebidi. Thus the injunction of

siblingship among hai' is self-fulfilling as regards equivalence; matrilateral and

patrilateral hai' become equals through the balancing out of two rather different sorts of inequalities, the ostensible "generational" superiority of the former and the

putative "lineal" seniority of the latter. The fact that matrilineal hai' receive more wealth and, statistically, more widows can thus be accounted for either in terms of their

superiority or their inferiority. It is, like virtually everything else in the relationship, ambiguous, and it acquires this character precisely because the relationship, qua relationship, is constituted by the summing together and mutual modeling of the two

aspects. Terminological usage accords with the injunction to regard hai' as siblings. Were

this not the case, were the pagebidi aspects of the relation to be emphasized, then we might expect the normalization of an "Omaha" terminology to apply here (Wagner 1970). In fact the term hai' is used almost exclusively-dwano pagebidi being invoked


Patrilateral elder

number percent younger ama' 59 14.8 number percent (brother) ama' 5 '1.3

aia 33 8.3 (brother)

(father) ogwa 4 1.1 Total 92 23.1 (son)

Total 9 2.4

ama'

(half brother) ama' (first cousin) ama'

(second cousin) Total

hai' (FZS) hai'

("classificatory" FZS) Total

number percent 41 10.3

39

14

9.8

3.4

94 23.6

^""" ama' K%%h (half brother)

ama' % (first cousin)

ama' _^ (second cousin)

Total

number percent 1 5 1.3

4 1.1

1 .3

10 2.7 number percent

19 4.8 number percent ^^ hai' 15 3.8

11 2.8 . (MBS) hai' 6 1.5

30 7.6 , ("classificatory" MBS) Total 21 5.3

number percent Total: preferred source of wives Total: permissible but not preferred source

Genealogically "distant" ama' No kin category identification provided Inheritance from ogwa or awa (pagebidi) Grand total

1 216 54.3 40 10.4 97 24.4

29 7.3

L 397100.2

Figure 2. Leviratic transfers according to kin category of source (preferred "flow" of wives shown graphically by arrows).

only occasionally as a descriptive gloss. Moreover hai' are expected to use affinal terms and relational modes with one another's siblings and to gloss them descriptively as hai' bare affines (one's hai's wife's brother, for instance, is one's hai' bare baze).

In the following generation, that of the children of hai', the distinction between male and female analogical flow following upon the initial interdict is completely abrogated. One relates to one's father's male and female hai' as aia ("father") and na' ("father's sister") respectively and to one's mother's male and female hai' as awa ("mother's brother") and ida ("mother") respectively, with corresponding relational

usages for those related through them. In each case, the distinctions contingent upon the parent's pagebidi relationship are elided and subsumed within an all-embracing "patrilateral" flow. Because hai' are "siblings" and because the injunction to relate to hai' as siblings invariably puts a patrilateral (male analogical) construction on the relationship, the differential aspect of the wife givers' lineality (male vertical flow


Matrilateral

in their own eyes, female flow in those of the wife takers) disappears. In a broader

perspective, the identification of "sharing" with "exchanging," of lineality with

exchange, among hai' in the parental generation obviates the lineal distinctions that the original exchanges (via the interdict) had set up. Of course, an individual's own lineal relationships through his or her parents may color relationships with the

respective parental hai', but these more recent analogical constructions bear upon other loci of responsibility. Parents' hai' are relationally parents' siblings.

They involve, in any case, essentially weak relationships. If they permit a generally unconstrained flow of analogy irrespective of strong lineal bias, it is only because the force of a strongly motivated lineality has gone out of them. There are, barring adoption by one's father's hai' through widow inheritance, few obligations or perquisites attached to them. It is said that one should not marry offspring of one's parent's hai', as one should not, in general, marry those of a parent's siblings. But one may marry the grandchildren of parental hai'. Primary parties to the original interdict (the

point of reference in the grandparental generation of the children of hai') are related to as wai' and auwa, reciprocal relationships differentiated by the sex (respectively male and female) of the senior partner. But these relationships are broadly indulgent and diffuse.

All Daribi kin relationships can be seen to be generated by the interdict imposed at the incipience of a marriage, and by its consequences. The impression of tremendous complexity, indeed, the impression of a naturally or an innately imposed differentiation of "kinds" of relatives, is an illusion fostered by the contrapuntal and

overlapping implications and consequences of innumerable past, present, and projected impositions of the interdict, and their consequences. Daribi create their world of relatives and kin relationships even as their perceptions and conceptions of kin and kin relationship are created by this world. Nevertheless, a strong argument can be

made, supported by their own notions of priority and responsibility, that the kin

relationships of the Daribi constitute a self-generative means of analogical construction. Such a regime of semiotic construction can be understood and explicated as a

phenomenon in itself, tangent to other, similar constructive regimes but not necessarily predicated upon such other imputed theoretical orders as political or economic interest or the solidarity of the group. To be more specific, there is no necessity to adduce corporate interest here; lineality as analogic flow and its associated premise of male contingency are quite sufficient to account for "recruitment" and other

solidarity-oriented issues. Lineality as open-ended analogic flow, as a quantity that

changes its value with time and with position within the relational matrix, is far more consistent with observable events and attitudes among the Daribi (and many other

highland Papuan people) than lineality as normative dogma or lineality as idiom for social interest.

Lineality "on the ground" is imprecise and multivalent; like the analogies elicited in Daribi naming, it is negotiable and capable of infinite elaboration and extension. Often enough invoked within and between human aggregates, it is but a part, and a transient part, of the whole of kin construction. The obligations of "sharing meat"

among hai' are another part of this whole and are drawn upon quite as much as

lineality in the articulation of human aggregates (for example, what I have called elsewhere "communities"). What is important is not that these analogies are used, or that they exist, but how they are invoked and compelled. And the evidence for this indicates that we need not look beyond the confines of kin construction to find a

satisfactory accounting. More generally, this study leads to two orders of conclusions regarding kin


relationships, both of them, of course, interrelated. The first has to do with kin differentiation and the role of constraint and restriction in eliciting and distributing relational analogies. The second has to do with the consequences of analogic construction, the flow of analogy that comes to motivate and qualify successive restrictive and differentiating efforts until the force of the initial distinctions is obviated.

The range of potentially recognizable analogies existing among any set of human semiotic constructions is virtually limitless. Only a very small number of them is ever selected for the purposes of social construction. The analogies that are actualized in this way are selected and controlled through acts of overt discrimination, or differentiation. The analogic approach that I have assumed here recognizes an identity between the terms that are used to differentiate relatives and the respective analogical relationships obtaining between those relatives and their reciprocals. If we speak of differentiation alone, we may regard the entailed relational aspect as a "flow" of

analogy between any ego and its relatives so differentiated. And because the entailed

relationships link relatives to relatives, because the points of differential reference become themselves relational operators, certain kinds of analogic flow can be seen to connect an ego with particular sets, or chains, of relatives or to associate relatives in such sets exclusive of an ego. The strength of this approach is that, obviating the distinction between the dyadic ("kinship," "filiation") and transdyadic ("descent") categories of homological approaches, it permits a central focus on the symbolic dimensions of a conceptual world.

Let us first consider the broad implications of the analogic approach for kin differentiation. I shall list these as a set of conclusions.

1. The means by which relatives are differentiated from one another and the means

by which they are differentiated from an ego (reciprocal) are one and the same. My mother is a mother to me and she is also my mother in contrast to other relatives, who are aunts, and so forth. This point is sometimes complicated, but not necessarily contradicted, by terminological usages (that is, separate terminologies for "address" and "reference"). We differentiate relatives, broadly speaking, by the same criteria that specify our relationship to them.

2. The differentiation of relatives constitutes a differential and distributive restriction of relational analogy, via the means of eliciting it, into a range of contrastive roles, or

protocols. Borrowing an idiom from Levi-Strauss, we might say that an (unrealizable) ideal of total analogy is detotalized and distributed over a range of partial realizations, each corresponding to a kind of relationship. A kind of relationship (designating the

particular kinds of relatives proper to it) can then be considered as an analogue of

relationship in general, diminished and restricted in certain dimensions so as to control and channel the flow of relational analogy.

3. The essence of "kinship" is restriction, and the opposite of "kinship" is therefore total, unrestricted analogy, or (in its behavioral aspect) complete familiarity and lack of constraint. The core of any regime of kin relationship is, therefore, the set of affinal relations (as implied, for instance, in Levi-Strauss 1969) which is also its

(generative) beginning point. The assumption that analogical connections might be taken as analytically prior or might be considered the more significant aspect (as in the writings of Fortes and the "descent theorists") is something of a nativistic fallacy. Analogy, taken in and of itself as a primitive analytic term, can only generate viable models ("segmentary lineage systems" and the like) when invoked in the context of an assumed "natural" or "given" kin differentiation.

4. Precisely because it is "the opposite of kinship," complete or total familiarity will often be invoked in the context of kin relationship to "prove," elicit, or emphasize kin


restrictions. Thus "joking relationships" frequently entail the mimicry of an unseemly familiarity on the part of one or both "sides" so as to provoke a "disqualification" of the behavior and a consequent realization of the relationship (if the behavior, as a

burlesqued "denial" of the relationship, is taken as a joke, then the relationship itself

emerges as a serious matter). A Daribi father is relatively "free" and familiar with his

children, and although the familiarity will be reciprocal when the children are very young (this indulgence can be taken as a paternal claim to complete analogy-a supplement to male contingency), older children and adults must show considerable

respect to their fathers. This balancing of familiarity on the part of the father with constraint on that of his offspring emphasizes and coincides with the directional

emphasis of analogic flow, which moves from father to offspring but not vice versa. Likewise the custom of ritual "snatching" among the southern Bantu peoples described in Radcliffe-Brown's classic discussion of "The Mother's Brother in South Africa" (1952) coincides with the direction of horizontal analogic "flow." A sister's son can treat his maternal uncle with a certain familiarity because the marriage cattle have already been delivered to the maternal lineality, and it is the maternal uncle who assumes the

obligation for his sister's fertility and productivity. Among the Daribi the obligation for continued payment rests with the wife takers (since the marriage wealth is given over in "installments"), and the maternal uncle retains rights of "snatching" from his sister's children.

5. Incestuous relations acquire their often cited moral repugnance by threatening to expand the conditional familiarity of intensely focused (that is, "close") analogical relationships into the total familiarity of nonkinship. This is why they are so often linked with "familial" or "substance" relations. They mark the tolerance limits of socially sanctioned familiarity.

6. "Kinship" expands an essentially simple and unitary disposition ("relating"), formless and characterless in itself, rather than ordering and simplifying an array of

particularistic and otherwise hopelessly complex kinds of relatives. The contrast that is often made between "given" or natural kin differentiation and "normative" kin classification or relationship, between "natural fact" and "social contract," as it were, is a gratuitous projection of Western categorical constructions, and one that leads to

illusory problems and pseudoinstitutions such as the "incest taboo" (Wagner 1972a). Kin differentiation and analogic flow are interdependent simply because they have

been defined in contrast to one another, and the single most significant methodological constraint upon their application and exemplification as analytic categories is that this contrast be maintained in the most stringent possible terms. When one of them is

singled out as the primary focus of an inquiry, as I have done here with differentiation, then the other will subsume the implications of this focus as a dialectical antithesis. Let us then review the analogical implications of kin differentiation as a set of conclusions.

1. The initial assumption of the basic similarity of all kin relationships (and, via the

implications of this assumption, all "kinds" of relatives) can be said to ground this

discussion, both in an interpretive (analytical) sense and in an operational sense. Since,

moreover, I have argued that the Daribi themselves understand the differentiation of relatives and relationships to be a province of human responsibility, the analogical equivalence of all kin relationships to one another can be said to ground their own

approach to kin differentiation and relationship. 2. Unless they are consistently and continually interdicted, the implicit analogies

obtaining among kin relationships (and between the "kinds" of relatives to which they


correspond) will tend to assert themselves, forcing themselves into perception and expression and coloring the resultant social realizations accordingly. The contrasts between sharing and exchanging, between wife givers and wife takers or between paternal and maternal lineality are not mysteriously "given" facts, but differentiating social assertions. When sharing begins to be taken as the same thing as exchanging, when the distinctions between wife givers and wife takers, or between paternal and maternal lineality become eroded, then something of the assumptional basis of the whole constructive effort is realized, and the restrictions of "kinship" are to that degree obviated.

3. Although they elicit analogic flow, the differentiating distinctions and restrictions of "kinship" are themselves carried forward by this flow. But this very interdependence renders kin differentiation vulnerable to the dissolution of the particular into the general that flow entails. What we call "reproduction" or "generation" is modeled entirely by analogic flow: offspring are related by some kinds of analogy to either parent or parental lineality (perhaps this is what Fortes meant by the "universal bilaterality" of filiation) and hence draw an analogy between them. If a new differentiation, or a redifferentiation is applied here, the resulting kin construction takes on a "lineal" character; if not, the resulting construction becomes generally "cognatic" or "bilateral." If the original differentiation between "wife givers" and "wife takers" is reapplied in the alignment of offspring, the resulting construction conforms to what Levi-Strauss (1969) terms an "elementary structure," its specific form depending upon the specifications of wife giving and wife receiving restrictions (sometimes very complex, as among many Australian peoples). In such cases usages like those of "restricted exchange" or "cross-cousin marriage" may become, at least in normative terms, highly desirable, for they serve to reestablish the interdict in its original force. If a new differentiation, between paternal and maternal linealities, is introduced, as in the "child price" usages of the Daribi and many African peoples, then the construction becomes what Levi-Strauss has termed a "complex structure."

4. Thus "elementary structures" are those that maintain and continually reinvoke the interdict, the idiom of affinal differentiation, in certain categories so as to stave off the effects of obviation. This may be viewed as a means of "alliance" and continuing connubium, or it may be interpreted in less sociocentric terms as a moral effort to conserve "kinship." "Complex structures" emerge as all those regimes of kin construction that are realized through the progressive obviation of distinctions and restrictions, including "cognatic" regimes. "Complex" regimes may be seen as conservative of lineality, broadly speaking, rather than of kin restriction.

5. The diachronic integrity of a regime of kin construction can be understood in terms of a tension between differentiation and its analogic consequences. Such a regime can always be shown to have a systemic character (as in Levi-Strauss's "atom of kinship") if only because the component relationships are differentiated by contrast to one another, as complementary facets of a single human disposition. Understood in its own (internal) terms, qua system, this complementarity lends itself to the reification of ethnographic particularism. Approached as an instrumentality for the creative evocation and temporal realization of a total social construction, however, the systemic aspect of "kinship" emerges as a function of a larger constructive intention. Such traditionally recognized phenomena as the (systematic) differentiation of relatives and kin relationships, lineality, and reciprocal exchanges are indeed parts of such a self-actualizing intention; so, too, is the generalization that no single realization of kin construction (an imposition of the interdict and its consequences) seems to persist beyond three or four generations.


references cited

Dumont, Louis 1970 Homo Hierarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Eggan, Fred, Ed. 1937 Social Anthropology of North American Tribes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Levi-Strauss, Claude 1962 Totemism. R. Needham, Trans. Boston: Beacon Press. 1963 Structural Anthropology. C. Jacobson and B. G. Schoepf, Trans. New York: Basic Books. 1969 The Elementary Structures of Kinship. J. H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, Trans., and R.

Needham, Ed. Boston: Beacon Press. Lounsbury, Floyd G.

1964 A Formal Account of Crow- and Omaha-Type Kinship Terminologies. In Explorations in Cultural Anthropology. Ward Goodenough, Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 351-393.

Mauss, Marcel 1954 The Gift. I. Cunnison, Trans. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1952 Structure and Function in Primitive Society. New York: Macmillan.

Spencer, Baldwin, and F. J. Gillen 1968 The Native Tribes of Central Australia. New York: Dover Publications.

Wagner, Roy 1967 The Curse of Souw: Principles of Daribi Clan Definition and Alliance. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press. 1970 Daribi and Foraba Cross-Cousin Terminologies: A Structural Comparison. The Journal

of the Polynesian Society 79(2):91-98. 1972a Incest and Identity: A Critique and Theory on the Subject of Exogamy and Incest

Prohibition. Man 7(4):601-613. 1972b Habu: The Innovation of Meaning in Daribi Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Date of Submission: May 20, 1977 Date of Acceptance: June 16, 1977


Documents

WAGNER, Roy. Analogic Kinship. a Diribi Example