THE CULTURAL FUNCTION OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY This is perhaps the most debated and the most instructive of all anthropological problems.
The Institutions of Marriage and Family.—Careful in ductive comparison reveals one important fact : marriage and family are almost universal, and can be traced through all types and levels of culture. Their universality can be accounted for by the functional analysis of these institutions. Two functions of paramount importance are fulfilled by any institution which regulates mating and propagation : the maintenance of racial quality and the maintenance of the continuity of culture. Socio logical considerations prove that the individual family based on monogamous marriage provides the best opportunities for effec tive sexual selection. It also supplies the best training for the future cultural work and sociological orientation of the young individual. The importance of the family as the early social and cultural pattern for later life has been independently established by anthropology and psycho-analysis. The family is the link between instinctive endowment and the acquisition of cultural inheritance, in that it permits the biological bonds between parent and infant gradually to ripen into social ties. It also eliminates a number of dangers due to the disruptive factors of the sexual instinct. (A. L. Kroeber; J. C. Fliigel; R. H. Lowie; A. R. Rad cliffe-Brown; B. Malinowski.) Regulated Licence.—The various customs of regulated licence do not allow of a simple and satisfactory solution. As culture advances and larger numbers of men and women come into con tact, the experimental component of the sexual instinct drives people towards indiscriminate mating. Freedom in pre-nuptial intercourse, festive licence, religious prostitution, lewd marriage ceremonies are the rule in savage and barbarous communities, with the exception of those of the lowest level (Schmidt and Koppers). Again, in some tribes the institution of marriage suffers temporary obliteration in the form of wife-lending or exchange, jus primae noctis sexual over-rights of chiefs and magicians and similar relaxations of the matrimonial bond. These customs have been explained as "survivals of primitive promis cuity." That such an explanation is untenable has been con vincingly shown by Westermarck. There are two ways of
regulating intercourse between the sexes : either by suppressing all irregular mating, or by allowing a well-defined and limited licence. Biology and psycho-analytic theory teach that stern repression and rigid sex morals are not a complete solution of the problems here involved. Anthropology, moreover, shows that this problem is especially present at low levels of culture. Ac cording to some authorities, a regulated and limited licence should be considered as an imperfect but effective way of dealing with the disruptive forces of sex. Such regulation, moreover, is in no savage tribe found to be subversive to the fundamental institu tions of marriage and the family which exist in spite of it every where.
At the same time, there is not one single tribe where sexual licence is found untrammelled, where anything approaching pro miscuity obtains. Two forms of regulation are found everywhere: the strict prohibition of the wife's adultery safeguards the bonds of marriage and is only now and then over-ruled by exceptional customs; the prohibition of incest within the household safe guards the integrity of the family. This is very often extended to exogamy which embraces the whole clan.
The Clan (q.v.).—The clan and the classificatory principle of kinship appear on a closer sociological analysis not to be sub stitutes for the family and household, but the outcome of more extended co-operation in matters other than sexual mating and the rearing of children. (See KINSHIP.) The clan functions chiefly in economic, legal and above all in ceremonial matters. It is also closely connected with age-grades, secret societies and men's clubs wherever these exist ; with the ceremonial distri bution of wealth (the kuIa, the potlach or the hakari), with magical specialisation and co-operation. Thus, in its functional definition, the clan represents the non-sexual and non-genetic extension of the kinship principle beyond the household and above the natural function of the family. Exogamy again appears as an additional bond of solidarity—a natural extension of the principle of incest running side by side with the extension of the kinship principle. As the link between the individual and the wider groupings of local and political type, the clan is of special importance.