AVUNCULATE. The rights and duties enjoyed by the maternal uncle (Latin, avunculus) in many primitive societies throw light on the status of relatives in the social order. He may have specific duties at the initiation of his nephew (his sister's son) or take a leading part in his marriage rites or be responsible for his social training.
He may have, and in the case of matrilocal marriages seems to have always, responsibility for choosing the husband or approv ing the husband of the daughter of his sister. In many instances his position owes its importance to the matrilineal matrilocal system by which a woman's brother is necessarily her guardian (see MATRIARCHATE). In matrilineal patrilocal societies he is still his sister's guardian, although on marriage she passes to residence in her husband's community. In many strictly patri lineal patrilocal societies the maternal uncle has a similar position and it is supposed that in most of these cases his privileges are a survival of an earlier, matrilineal order. In some of these societies the institution of cousin-marriage is found by which the maternal uncle's son has by custom a preferential right to his cousin, the daughter of his father's sister, or, more usually, the sister's son has a similar right to his maternal uncle's daughter. Cousin marriage has definite social and economic advantages and creates emphasis on the mutuality which all marriages pro duce and this fact indicates social conditions which enable the maternal uncle to claim and receive special authority in the social life over his sister's children. See R. H. Lowie, Primitive Society,