Cultural systems and social systems

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DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY Inaugural Lecture and
Colloquia 31st October and 1st November
2003 Anthropology at Aberdeen - Lecture by Tim
Ingold 5 p.m. Friday October 31st, Kings
College Colloquium on the Anthropology of the
North Gisli Palsson, Piers Vitebsky, Alex King,
David Anderson 10 a.m. 1 p.m., Saturday
November 1st, Marischal Museum Colloquium on
Art, Anthropology and Visual Culture Susanne
Kuechler, Chris Gosden, Nancy Wachowich,
Elizabeth Hallam 2 5 p.m., Saturday November
1st, Marischal Museum The British Academy
Radcliffe-Brown Memorial Lecture The genealogy
of descent, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, 6 p.m.,
Saturday November 1st, Kings College For
further details, anthropology_at_abdn.ac.uk
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Matriliny vs. Matriarchy
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Nature and Culture
Nature is a symbol. Culturally constructed does
not mean that it doesnt exist. No hotline to
reality. Very few would defend naïve empiricism.
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Family
Natural unit - based on biological givens
(coupleoffspring) Residence is a critical
feature of kinship
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Kinship is everything

• Kinship is the study of relatedness in a given
  society
• Studying kinship requires an understanding of
  what a person is.
• Provides us with an understanding of
• social structures (relationships among persons)
  and
• institutions (politics, economics, religion,
  kinship)

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Key concept in Anthropology
Socialization of patently natural
relations. British Social Anthropology, kinship
was more or less synonymous with anthropology
American cultural anthropology - personality
culture and kinship vied for most
important Lévi-Strauss took center-stage with
his Elementary Structures of Kinship Radcliffe-Br
own, Evens-Pritchard, Fortes, Leach, Geertz,
Murdock, White
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Kinship does not really exist
A Critique of the Study of Kinship,
1984 Schneiders critique it is an artifact of
the anthropologists and their culture more than
it is of the subject cultures they study By 1980
interest had already fallen off.
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Two views of Yapesse society

• Follows the assumptions that it is a kin-based
  society, operating in an idiom of kinship
• Does not make any of those assumptions, looks for
  symbols of sociality and the meaning of those
  symbols from the natives point of view.

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Blood is thicker than water
Fundamental, implicit assumption in kinship
studies. Because blood is thicker than water
kinship consists in bonds on which kinsmen can
depend, are unquestionable, more compelling than
other kinds of relationships. States of being,
not doing Even Lévi-Strauss writes of the
natural links of kinship
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Kinship as an idiom

• Depends on the idea, our assumptions of kinship
• Simple societies can be distinguished from
  complex societies
• Kinship, economics, politics, religion - all
  universal
• Reproduction of human beings. - biology (blood
  ties)

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Doctrine of the Genealogical Unity of Humanity
Biological kinship is usually distinguished
sharply from social kinship Social kinship was
about social facts (following Durkheim), but
biology was relegated to the background, an
assumption. Durkheim, Rivers, Radcliffe-Brown,
Malinowski made biological kinship either an
implicit or explicitly assumption.
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So what?
Kinship is about human reproduction, previous
generations are replaced by new ones. A European
preoccupation - blood is thicker than water This
is not necessarily true for all people.
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Now what?
Anthropology is the study of particular cultures.
The first task of anthropology is to understand
and formulate the symbols and meanings and their
configuration that a particular culture consists
of.
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The problem
First we assume that kinship, economics,
politics, and religion are distinct things. Then
we describe a culture in terms one then another
aspect. All of these institutions are
inextricably interrelated so that in any
particular case they cannot be distinguished. Soc
iety cannot be decomposed into constituent parts.
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The solution
Take kinship as an empirical question. Value
and meaning in the total cultural configuration
must be added to the investigation and analysis.
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Kinship is again a key problem
Not the reigning concept anymore (identity,
power, body, gender, colonialism) Returned as
the debate about the character of social
structure and central to understanding embodied
persons. Schneider remains key symbols, natives
point of view, belonging
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Society no longer partible
Kinship, economy, religion, political
organization, etc. are not constituent parts of
a society or a culture Kinship is a system
not readily demarcated from economic, religious,
and governmental domains. Kinship is certainly
not something relegated to Others. Kinship of
Europe, North America, China, etc.