The clan is always due to the over-emphasis of one side of kinship—an over-emphasis necessary to eliminate any ambiguity in the transmission of hereditary rights and obligations. This has been aptly summed up by Dr. Lowie in his terminology of bilateral and unilateral kinship. The clan appears therefore as the natural result of the two influences which come into the fore ground as culture advances ; the continuity of tradition on the one hand and the extension of co-operation on the other. The clan allows of the establishment of greater cohesion within each generation and across succeeding generations. The explanation here given accounts for the institution, neither by an accident, nor by specific ideas, nor by a hypothetical primitive communism in sexual matters, but by reference to certain deep-seated in fluences of cultural progress working before our very eyes. With all this although the clan is of great benefit for society and culture, it never becomes an absolute necessity like the family. It is rather a symptom of advancing social differentiation than its inevitable effect. Thus, although the family and marriage are found to be universal, there exist tribes without any sub-divisions into clans, moieties or matrimonial classes. Further, since the clan is associated with the general scheme of development, it cannot be regarded as a fortuitous index of this or that culture.
Mother-right and Father-right (q.v.).—The correlated phenomenon of unilateral kinship also plays a very important part in diffusionist schemes. Mother-right and father-right respectively have been taken by Ankermann, Graebner, Rivers, W. Schmidt and Koppers as principal indices in their classification of cultures. But the question arises, is either mother-right or father-right an independent element, or are they both always linked together? It seems in fact that mother-right and father-right are never found in isolation, but always co-exist—one of them empha sised by the tribal law and the economic arrangements, the other, though subordinate, never completely absent. Until the problem thus raised has been solved, until the proof is given that mother right and father-right can exist as exclusive, sharply defined stages or sociological principles, their use as indices of culture, and evidence of its spread must remain meaningless. Here again, functional analysis of the methods of reckoning descent leads to a clear definition of such concepts, indispensable for their use in any speculative construction. (Cf. B. Malinowski, Sex and Repression, Pt. iv.) Problem of Sex.—Thus the family, the clan, sexual restric tions, as well as sexual liberties, are not the stages of a trans formation nor fortuitous indices of cultural type or cultural stratum, but correlated, component parts of one big institution; the institution which controls the mating of sexes, the procre ation of offspring and the education of the young, and fulfils the integral function of racial and cultural continuity. The nature of
its component elements is explained by the part which they play within this integral scheme. The functional method might also be extended to all the other aspects of organisation—territorial, political, legal and economic. Each is related to an essential need of human society, its distribution over the locality, defence, maintenance of order, and the production of necessaries and values.
Until the recent researches of anthropologists in Melanesia, in New Zealand, in North-West America, in Africa, and in Micro nesia revealed a wealth of material, and theoretical students (M. Weber, K. Buecher, R. Thurnwald, R. W. Firth, B. Malinowski) laid stress on the cultural importance of primitive economics, there reigned in anthropology the simple occupational view of primitive husbandry. Schemes of occupational stages or types, the collecting of food, hunting, fishing, the tending of herds, the raising of crops and industrial production were set forward as the only subject matter of descriptive or analytical economics, as it is called.
In all such views, primitive man is regarded as having but simple elementary needs, and proceeding reasonably and naturally to satisfy them. The little spare time he has left over he devotes to the casual production of superfluities, and to the satisfaction of his hobbies, which latter activities, however, are usually placed outside the domain of economics. Thus we read in an authori tative work, Notes and Queries in Anthropology (Edn. 1912, p. 26o) "The first essential of maintenance is a supply of food; and in many simple communities the actual food quest and operations arising from it . . . occupy by far the greater part of the people's time and energy, leaving little opportunity for the satisfaction of any lesser needs." And again, we are told by another writer (Buxton) that generally the savage "has no means to acquire more wealth than he can carry about on his person or on the persons of his family." The main questions cut short by such a priori assumptions are those of the incentives to pro duction, of the organisation of labour and of the primitive forms of the apportionment of wealth.