Kinship I

To explain kinship there is no need of an appeal to a fanciful history of mankind, beginning with Promiscuity or Hetairism, passing through Group-Marriage, Marital Gerontocracy and Anomalous Marriages, and only ending, after many errors and ef forts, in monogamous marriage. Where empirical facts yield a suf ficient explanation hypotheses are superfluous—they are a disease of method. Especially erroneous in these speculations is the neg lect of domesticity and the influences of everyday life in early childhood, combined, as this neglect often is, with an over emphasis on sex. Sex, far from being the principal clue to kinship, plays only a subordinate part in its formation, separated as it is from parenthood by the rule of legitimacy. It is the elimination of sex and not indulgence in it which, through the rules of incest and exogamy, really influences kinship and clanship.

The study of kinship, far from demonstrating the small impor tance of the family, proves the tenacity of its bonds and their persistence through life as a standard for all wider social rela tions. The age-long experience of mankind, which Anthropology alone can unravel, teaches us that the institutions of marriage and family have never been absent in human history, that they form the indispensable foundation for the structure of human society, and that, however they might become modified in the future, they will never be destroyed nor their influence seriously impaired.

(B. MA.) See also AVUNCULATE ; CLAN ; DUAL ORGANIZATION ; ENDOGAMY ; EXOGAMY ; FAMILY ; GROUP MARRIAGE ; MARRIAGE; MATRIARCHY ; RELATIONSHIP TERMS ; SORORATE.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Classical Works: J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht 0860 ; H. S. Maine, Ancient Law (1861); L. H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) ; J. F. McLen nan, Studies in Ancient History (1886) ; A. E. Crawley, The Mystic

Rose (1902 ; new ed. 1927) ; A. Lang, "The Origin of Terms of Human Relationship," Proc. Brit. Acad., vol. 3 (19°7) ; J. G. Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy (191o) ; E. A. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (5th ed., 1921).

Recent Theoretical Studies:

A. L. Kroeber, "Classificatory Systems of Relationship," Jour. Roy. Anthr. Inst., vol. 39 (1909) ; W. H. R. Rivers, Kinship and Social Organisation (1914), Social Organisation (5924) ; R. H. Lowle, Culture and Ethnology (1917), Primitive Soci ety (192o) ; E. W. Gifford, Californian Kinship Terminologies B. Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927) ; R. Briffault, The Mothers (1927) ; B. Z. Seligman, "Marital Gerontocracy in Africa," foam. Roy. Anthr. Inst., vol. 54 (1924).

Descriptive Accounts: A. R. Radcliffe Brown, "Three Tribes of West ern Australia," Jour. Roy. Anthr. Inst., vol. 43 (1913), The Andaman Islanders (1925) ; W. E. Armstrong, Rossel Island (1928) ; B. Malinow ski, The Family among the Australian Aborigines (1913), Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926), The Sexual Life of Savages in North Western Melanesia (1928) ; W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas (1906), The History of Melanesian Society (1914) ; R. Thurnwald, Die Gemeinde der Bcinaro (1921) ; H. A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (1927) ; E. W. Smith and A. M. Dale, The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia (192o) ; R. S. Rattray, Ashanti (1925) ; L. Spier, "The Distribution of Kinship Systems in North America," Univ. of Washington Pub. in Anthropology, vol. 1 (1925) ; A. L. Kroeber, "California Kinship Systems," Univ. of Calif. Pub. in Anthrop., vol. 12 (1917) ; M. A. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia (1914); B. Z. Seligman, "Studies in Semitic Kinship," Bull. School of Oriental Studies (Lon don), vol. 3 (1923).