Analogic Kinship - Wagner

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Analogic Kinship: A Daribi Example

Author(s): Roy WagnerReviewed work(s):Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Nov., 1977), pp. 623-642Published by: Wileyon behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/643623.

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analogic kinship: a DaribiexampleROY WAGNER-University of Virginia

Let us begin with the proposition that all human relationships are analogousto one another. This includes those relationships that anthropologists have calledkin relationships, which, for that reason, will form the subject matter of ourdiscussion. This means that kin relationships, as well as the relatives identifiedthrough those relationships, will be considered as basically alike in some importantway. Note that I am making this assumption purely for analytic reasons; I donot mean to imply that this basic quality of analogy or alikeness is somehowgiven, or innate in the nature of things. I am merely introducing the propositionas a foil to the traditional anthropological assumption of the innateness of kindifferentiation-the notion that the genealogical breakdown into father, mother,and so forth, is a natural fact, and that it is a human responsibility to integratethem into particular kinship systems (or discover such integrations).Consider, then, a situation in which all kin relations and all kinds of relativesare basically alike, and it is a human responsibility to differentiate them. Theresponsibility of doing so will be our task in understanding kin relationships,as it is man's role in perhaps the majority of human societies. A mother is anotherkind of a father, fathering is another kind of mothering; a sister might bea better sister for the fact that she is a little mother to her siblings, and agood father is often like a brother to his sons. A certain solicitude (perhapsepitomized by Schneider's enduring, diffuse solidarity ) is quintessential to allideal kin relationships, regardless of how they may be defined or in what formsthe solicitude is expressed. And this solicitude represents, as well as anything canrepresent, what I mean by the basic analogy of all kin relationships to one another.From the standpoint I have chosen, I might as well speak of one essential kinrelationship, which is encompassed and varied in all of the particular kinds ofrelationships that human beings discern and differentiate. This essential similarityflows between and among the latter, in spite of every effort one may make todifferentiate them.

And it is for precisely this reason that man's obligation and moral duty is todifferentiate, and to differentiate properly. For if the appropriate distinctionsare drawn, and the proper modes of avoidance, respect, deference, and evenburlesque are observed, then the resulting flow of similarity will be realized,

Kin relationship may be approached in the traditional manner asthe classification or the sociopolitical relating of genealogicallydifferentiated relatives, or it may be seen as the purposive differentiationof relational categories to compel a flow of analogical relatednessamong them. Analysis of a New Guinea relational system in the latterterms, beginning with the interdict on relations with the wife'smother, reveals a set of operant concepts for the understanding ofkinship in symbolic terms, as well as a set of general conclusions asto the nature of kinship.

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perceived as an expression of inner morality. But if these distinctions are notdrawn, or drawn improperly, or if the wrong or inappropriate ones are made,then the flow of similarity will appear as a kind of contagion, a moral degeneracyspreading from one kinsman to another. This is what the celebrated incesttaboo, which has been identified by so many anxious classifiers in so manydiverse societies, seems to be all about. For incest-treating a mother or sisteras a wife or lover or treating a son or brother as a lover or husband-is a morallyundesirable flow of similarity.The relational aspect of kinship is thus always understandable as a kind ofanalogic flow -that is what we mean by being related, and this flow is alwaysthe consequence of kin differentiation. Western middle-class society, which takesresponsibility for relating in a deliberate sense, perceives differentiation assomething innate. Thus for Western ideology, a proper flow results from theconscious and deliberate performance of legitimate relating : making a legitimatemarriage between compatible people, maintaining and adjusting interpersonalrelationships, learning to like one's affines, doing one's relational duty to kinsmen.And the inappropriate flow of incest is seen by Westerners as going againstnature, an abrogation of natural differentiation that allegedly brings aboutdisastrous natural consequences. For Western society, appropriate flow is definedand promoted by natural differentiation, and the task of the individual and ofsociety is that of comprehending this natural fact and accommodating ouractions to its precepts. We draw the creative distinctions by perceiving themin nature, and we perceive the consequent flow as a potential for rightor wrong performance. Others perceive the flow of relationship as a giventhat prompts appropriate differentiation.But in both cases the flow of relationship, and ultimately lineality-analogyacross the generations-is integrally linked to differentiation. Lineality is not aseparate, political consideration, a matter of group recruitment, but is alwaysan aspect of a totality that includes differentiation as well. The creativity ofkinship in the West is centered on an act of collective joining, the marrying oftwo people, for it is from this act that appropriate differentiation (into husband,wife, mother, father, and so forth) eventuates. But the creativity elsewhere,and especially in tribal societies, is based on an act of appropriate differentiation,one that will assure a proper relational flow. Marriages, in our sense, are notmade ; they follow, or flow, from an initial differentiation, from which theconsequences of marriage also flow.Let us then explore this mode of thought and action. All kin relationships andkinds of kinsmen are basically analogous because all incorporate the essenceof human solicitude that we call relating. Every particular kind of relationshipexemplifies this essence in some particular way, and comprises a ( metonymic )part of a potential whole, a totality of which the aggregate of all the kinds ofrelationship represents a homologue. Each particular kind of relationship, since itincorporates the underlying context of relational solicitude, can be seen as an( metaphorical ) analogue of each other kind of relationship. An example takenfrom Levi-Strauss's classic study of totemism (1962) might help to clarify thispoint. Levi-Strauss postulates a homology between a natural series of totemiccreatures and the set of human groupings that they represent, in which it isnot the resemblances, but the differences, which resemble each other (1962:77).Applying this model to Spencer and Gillen's description of the Aranda of CentralAustralia, we find that for certain purposes this homology is significant, whereas

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for others it is collapsed into a series of anthropomorphic analogues. Thusthe totemic groupings in the human series are each responsible for the ritualproliferation of their natural homologues so as to benefit the whole of society.But the Intichiuma rite, which brings this about, requires that each humangrouping synthesize the primordial inapertwa creature that represents a unionbetween man and a natural homologue, an anthropomorphic metaphor standingin an analogous relation to other such metaphors (Spencer and Gillen 1968:167-211,389, 445). This transformation is diagrammed at the top of Figure 1. We can likewisepostulate a homology between the various kinds of relatives traditionally recognizedin kinship studies (or, for that matter, between any particular cultural set ofrelatives) and the totality, or aggregate of kinds of human relationship, as I havestated above. By recognizing the union of each kind of relative with its relationalhomologue, on the model of the Aranda inapertwa creature, I can transformthis traditional conception of kin relationship into the analogical model I havesuggested. The transformation is diagrammed at the bottom of Figure 1. It is ascheme for the differentiation of a kin universe into analogical units.The traditional concerns and problems of functionalist, structuralist, andcognitive kinship studies can be seen as consequences of a homological frame ofreference. The analysis of joking, avoidance, and respect relationships initiated byRadcliffe-Brown (1952) and Eggan (1937) deals with culture-specific homologiesbetween sociological kin roles and a set of given genealogical relatives. Kindifferentiation (the genealogical grid ) becomes an invariant control against whichthe sociological alignments and stresses of various tribal peoples are contrasted.Joking, avoidance, and respect are understood as conventional strategies for

AHomologicalEquivalencenatural human

series seriesEmu o o Emu menKangaroo o o KangaroomenHoney o o Honey AntAnt menWitchetty o o WitchettyGrub Grubmen

HomologicalEquivalencerelational kinds oftotality relatives

paternal o o fathersolicitudematernal o o mothersolicitudefraternal o o brothersolicitudeaffinal o o varioussolicitude affines

BAnalogicalEquivalenceIntichiumaseriesI Emu Emumen I

IKangaroo Kangaroo |men IIHoney Ant Honey AntmenWitchetty WitchettyGrub Grubmen

AnalogicalEquivalencekin relationshipsI aternal fatherIsolicitudematernal mothersolicitudefraternal brothersolicitudeaffinal varioussolicitude affines

Figure1: A comparison of Levi-Strauss's totemism model and its ritual transformationamong the Aranda(Spencer and Gillen 1968)with the model of analogicalkin relationshippresented in this discussion. Boxes indicatecontiguityor incorporation,parallelalignmentindicates resemblances.




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converting a naturally differentiated kin universe into a functioning society, and acomprehensive account of a people's relationship protocols yields their socialhomologue of genealogy.Levi-Strauss's atom of kinship model (1963) achieves an elegant simplification(or oversimplification) of this homological approach. Natural differentiation issupplemented by the constraints of (social) reciprocity to limit the possibleconstellations of kin attitudes among four basic kin types. What Levi-Straussoffers is a limited and rigorous refinement of homology, rather than an alternativeto homology. A set of contrastively defined attitudes (the distinction betweenattitude and relationship is by no means clear) is shown to vary in a regular way inrelation to genealogy and reciprocal obligation. The insistence on a given kindifferentiation, however abstracted, preserves the essentially homological characterof this model.

The character of the homology changes radically in the ethnosemanticapproaches of Lounsbury (1964) and others, which substitute culture-specific kinclassification for mode of relationship or kin attitudes. The homology ofcomponential analysis is neither the explication of a sociological dynamic nor asynthesis of the attitudes induced by reciprocity, but a detailed correspondanceestablished between a native classificatory system and the kinds of relativesspecified by genealogy. Much of the value of this approach comes from the closespecification of particular homological transformations (rather than a demonstrationof how a society is held together); like other homological schemes, however,its usefulness is ultimately contingent upon the validity of the idea of naturalkin differentiation.

For the functionalists and structuralists as well as the ethnosemanticists theproblematic area is demarcated by the empty spaces between boxes in the first columnof Figure 1. For an analogical approach, however, the (homological) correspondence issubsumed by the postulated identity between mode of relationship and kind of relative.Here the kin term or terms (as well as the relatives it identifies) is part and parcel of themode of relationship (see Wagner 1972a), and term and relationship together form a

conceptual entity that is differentiated from other such entities. The problematic areahere corresponds to the empty spaces between boxes in the second column of Figure 1and involves the flow of analogy or similarity between kin relationships.The dynamic of explanation for an analogical analysis of kin relations is radicallydifferent from that traditionally assumed in homological approaches. The traditionalgenealogical method, with its kinship diagrams and terminological kin types,is basically synchronic and emphasizes the systematic deployment of relationalcorrespondences across an invariant grid. What we might call the temporalfactor can be located as one of a number of logical implications subsumed inthe total constellation. But an analogical analysis is of necessity diachronic andsequential: concerned with relationship as the analogical consequence ofcontrived differentiation, it exhausts a terminological-relational series throughtemporal sequence rather than logical systemization. Each differentiation has itsconsequences and is reestablished or altered diachronically.There is another, perhaps more subtle, implication of an analogical approachthat deserves clarification. This is the fact that, having obviated the distinctionbetween natural kin type and cultural kin relationship by subsumingterminology and relationship within a single entity, an analogical approach doesnot incorporate the contrast between mental symbolization and physical fact.Its constructions are intended as simultaneously conceptual and phenomenal; they




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belong to a single universe of apprehended cultural construction (and culturallyconstructed apprehension) that is contiguous with other realms of conceptualization.Kin relationships are not separated as a rigid cultural response to a set paradigmof natural contingency but rather emerge as an integral part of a whollysymbolic conceptualization of things.We begin, not with a grid, but with a conceptual world, and the significanceof kin relationships within this world is a function of their meaningful developmentin terms of its symbols. The beginnings of our analysis should involve an entryinto this conceptual world and a creative apprehension of its meanings, ratherthan the demarcation of a particular domain or department of the totalitythat we might want to designate as that of kinship. This requires that webegin our analysis with some particular conceptual world, and with a set ofassumptions about conceptual worlds in general, rather than a general orientationregarding kinship systems in general. Accordingly, I shall present an analogicalanalysis of kin relationships among the Daribi, an interior Papuan people whose

conceptual world I have already reconnoitered in some detail (Wagner 1967,1972b).The relationships, restrictions, responsibilities, and obligations of Daribi kinsmenall flow from an initial differentiation, or interdiction, that is made with, andsanctioned by, a considerable moral and ceremonial emphasis. For the purposesof this analysis I shall consider the interdiction to be the basic and primarystep (as the Daribi themselves consider it), the maker or creator of kinrelationship. But since the interdiction is made within a conceptual world, onethat presumes the analogical flow resulting from differentiation (since the contextof differentiation is an established society, not an analytical discourse), it will benecessary to consider it in the light of the analogical flow.The interdiction is initiated in the form of a betrothal (orowaie to betroth )and involves the prospective bride and groom as well as certain key relatives oftheirs, notably the prospective bride's mother. We might in fact consider theprospective bride's mother to be the more significant party in a basic dyad, since sheassumes the essential role in the interdict once the betrothal stage has beenpassed. But until this time the prospective bride and her mother are treatedfor most social purposes as the same person. The force of the interdict is tocommute all or most interaction ( relating ) between two sets of persons, focusedon the dyad involved in the exchange of wealth and meat. The abrogation ofrelationship begins prior to the setting up of the betrothal itself, when go-betweensare used to mediate relations between the two parties, and remains in forcewith certain modifications, as long as marital relations exist.The interdiction and commutation of relationships here can be understood interms of differentiation and analogy. What is abrogated is in fact any preexistinganalogical relationships that may be construed to exist among the parties (suchas, for example, their being distant second cousins ), and any familiarity thatmight arise in ordinary social intercourse. We might say that any horizontal ornonlineal analogical relationship is cut off and transmuted into vertical or linealrelationship. This point takes precedence over any implications that may stemfrom our traditional idea of exchange or reciprocity, since exchange isno more admissible as an unaccountable fact than notions like the domainof kinship. In order to realize the significance of this, however, we must considerthe nature of the vertical lineality, for this grounds (and is grounded by) theDaribi conception of sexual differentiation.




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Maleness is considered to be an effect of seminal fluid, kawa, which is containedand developed within a system of tubes (agwa bono) and nodes (agwa ge) thatwe would call the lymphatic system, and is transmitted by a man in sexualintercourse. It forms the outer layer of an embryo, the skin, eyes, teeth, andhair, as well as the lymphatic system and genitalia of a man, and the lymphaticsystem and mammary glands of a woman. Femaleness is considered to be an effectof maternal blood, pagekamine, which is contained within the circulatory systemand provided by a woman in the conception of a child. It forms the inner layer ofan embryo, the bones, viscera, and other internal organs, and the circulatorysystem. Menstruation is seen as the release of pagekamine for reproductivepurposes. Although the heart, lungs, and liver are thought of as places where thesoul (noma') resides and are developed from maternal blood, Daribi says thatthe soul of a man is bestowed by the father, and that of a woman is bestowedby the mother.But the crucial difference between these fluids and the sexual characteristicsthey objectify is the relative contingency of the male and relative self-sufficiencyof the female. Both fluids are necessary for the creation of an embryo, butalthough the blood in a woman's body is sufficient for her role in conception,the seminal fluid that a man receives from his father is never sufficient in quantityfor conception and must be augmented. It is replenished and increased by thejuices and fat of meat that is eaten (in a woman these fluids form maternal milk).Thus meat takes on the considerable significance of an adjunct to maleness andmale reproductive potential: it is the partible and portable accessory to masculinecontinuity. Beyond this, the contingency of maleness amounts to a definitivestatement of moral obligation: man's responsibility should be to retain andsupplement the contingent, to manage and utilize meat resources and exercisesocial force and constraint in such a way as to contain and incorporate malelineality.Viewed in analogical terms, kawa and pagekamine are simply two ways in whichthe vertical flow of analogy resulting from the interdict are represented. Theyamount to the same thing seen, as it were, from different angles, and we shallsee that the whole course of Daribi relational transformation is but a sequentialrealization and acknowledgement of this fact. But the realization is a gradual andsequential one, and the force of the moral obligation is that each party to theinterdict shall represent and perceive its own lineal flow as that of male substance,for its primary concern is the retention and replenishment of this substance.The party of the wife givers will, for this reason, represent and perceive thegiving of its women and their consequent reproductive activities as its own linealflow of male substance. A Daribi man regards and addresses his sister's childrenas his own. But the party of the wife takers will regard the lineal flow of thewife givers as that of female substance, as a flow of blood.What might be described as exchange or reciprocity is in fact an objectified,quantifiable mediation and intermeshing of two views of a single thing. Thewife givers represent their own flow to the wife takers as that of femaleness,giving adjuncts of female productivity (bark cloth, string bags, and so forth) andthe promise of a woman. The wife takers represent their flow to the wifegivers as that of maleness, giving meat and other adjuncts of maleness and maleproductivity (pearlshells, axes, bushknives). Each party acquires an objectifiedincrement of flow consonant with its perception of the flow of the other, but,because the wife givers regard the woman and her apurtenances as part of their




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own male lineality, each party's giving is consonant with its perception of itsown lineal flow. We are always male contingency, by moral precept, and itis always the women, because of their very self-sufficiency, who are obliged tomediate the flow of male lineality.The objectification of parallel male and female flows, as against any single,analogical flow or relationship between prospective wife givers and wife takers,is thus an artifact of the interdict. But because the meat, wealth objects, and,potentially, the woman involved are not merely symbolic tokens like our money,and rather are themselves what they stand for, or represent, we can say thatthe objectification of parallel flows through exchange is the very substance,as well as the artifact of the interdict. Now it should be clear why the full force ofthe interdict involves a male on the side of the takers and a female on that of thegivers: because the interdict and the objectification of parallel flows are one andthe same thing. Betrothal and marriage, via the interdiction and separation of flowthrough which they are constituted, amount to the germinal social differentiationof male and female, a differentiation that motivates the whole of Daribi secularlife. It is a differentiation that is recreated constantly in betrothal and marriageand that owes its social persistance to this recreation. And this perhaps explainswhy, when I asked a group of Daribi men what specific practice had always beentheirs (and not introduced as part of a cult), they replied: it is this, that a manshould never behold, speak to, or utter the name of his wife's mother.The establishment of a betrothal, formalized in the passing over of a sizableamount of male goods to the prospective wife's people and a small returngift, initiates the recourse to affinal forms of interaction between appropriateparties in the parallel linealities-the beginning of the interdict. This amountsto a total, formal abrogation of intercourse and even recognition between theprospective groom on one side and his prospective bride and her mother on theother. They may not speak to each other, see each other, utter one another'sname or the name of the thing it refers to, or hear such a name spoken. (Tothis end Daribi women wear their bark cloaks like a shawl about the face-sothat it may be drawn over the face if the occasion demands this. They will alsostep off a road and turn their backs if there is any possibility of meeting aforbidden person.) There is no terminology of address or protocol for interactionbetween a male and his betrothed. A male and his betrothed's (or wife's) motherare au to each other. Any infringement of the interdict between them must becompensated by a small gift of (male) wealth to the female au. Those consideredtrue bothers (ama' mu) of a groom or prospective groom and all other womenmarried into the lineality of the bride or prospective bride (generally includingwives of full brothers of the woman and the wives of their male issue) are alsoau to each other, though the force of the interdict may not be as emphatic inthese cases.

The terms of the interdict are no less stringent with regard to the father ofthe betrothed, though the forms are different. This man (and his male and femalesiblings) and the prospective groom (and his true brothers) are wai to oneanother. Wai should observe particular care in their relations with one another,avoiding embarrassing situations and speaking carefully, with a certain degreeof deference being shown by the prospective groom and his brothers. The formsof the interdict are slightly more permissive, though no less significant, betweenbaze, including the prospective groom (and his true brothers) on one hand,and the siblings of the prospective bride on the other. This is a careful protocol,




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which combines mild joking with a certain amount of deference to the bride'sbrothers (to whom Daribi occasionally refer as true baze). Female w?i and bazeare potential and even preferred (additional) marriage partners, though this doesnot affect the protocols of interaction with them during betrothal. Female waiand baze are distinguished by a combination of the terms with the word we( woman, wife ), as in w i-we, baze-we. Offspring of male baze, who stand inthe yage protocol in relation to the prospective groom and his brothers, andoffspring of male yage, who are reciprocally yame to them, are likewise fairlyunimportant during the betrothal stage of the interdict, and the protocols arerelatively unconstrained. Female yage and yame are potential preferred marriagepartners, but like wgi-we and baze-we, this potentiality of their role is held inabeyance during betrothal.

Betrothing a woman is often spoken of by Daribi as noma' sabo ( takes the soul,that is, soul taking ). Noma' ( soul ) can be understood as the moral and socialpersona. In this usage the noma' can be approached on an analogy with theMaori hau, the spirit of a gift that demands reciprocation (Mauss 1954:8-9). Takingthe soul then amounts to acquiring a pledge, the moral self of a woman, to berequited later by the passing over of the woman. During the course of the betrothal,generally when the betrothed reaches the age of eight or ten, she is obliged tovisit the prospective groom's people and is then placed under the care and tutelage ofher prospective husband's mother, whom she calls auwa ( grandmother, reciprocal:wai', grandchild. She calls her auwa's husband wai', here grandfather, whichcarries the same reciprocal.) The purpose of this visit, which is to see that theprospective groom is assembling the bridewealth so that she may return to tellher father, is significant. For the bridewealth is linked to another use of the termnoma', the ogwanoma' (literally boy soul, but spoken as a single word). Theogwanoma' is the ceremonial attire assumed by the groom and four or five othermembers of his line for the presentation of the bridewealth, which constitutes thewedding ceremony. It consists of a covering of charcoal over the entire visible body,a black cassowary plume worn on the head, and contrasting white shell ornaments.This is also the traditional battle dress of men. The wedding consists of the men, soattired, standing at rigid attention in single file before the door of the bride's father'shouse. In their left hands the men hold pearlshells belonging to the brideprice, andin the right they each hold a bow and a bundle of arrows. The bride then emerges fromthe house, splendidly attired, walks down the file of men, and takes the pearlshellsfrom each. She then takes them to her father. As they are relieved of the shells, themen grasp one of the arrows in the left hand and resume their rigid stance. It ishighly significant in terms of male contingency that the female soul is taken, whereasthe boy soul is merely shown and retained, and that this showing is done ina martial posture.This ceremony, we kqbo, literally the tying or fastening of the woman (asopposed to merely taking her soul ), might also be viewed as the explicit andself-contained assumption of parallel, vertical flows. The groom's party movesinto the residential locus of the bride's people and shows but also contains itsogwanoma' in a rigid, armed manner. This manifests and exemplifies an ideal ofsober male assertiveness, while at the same time presenting the bride's people withpearlshells of the same sort as those worn by the groom and his accomplices. Insum, the ceremony amounts to an assertion and mutual recognition of the self-imageof male substance that is proper to each party. But the tying of the woman alsomeans that she is separated (that is, taken and fastened ) from her own line, who




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are henceforth known as her pagebidi - base-people -a tie that is explicated andsubstantiated through the tracing of pagekamine. Prior to the tying, her principallinks of substantial analogy were traced both through paternal and maternal substance.But presentation of the brideprice commutes this linking analogy to a single tiewith her natal line, viewed as a link of maternal substance by the groom's peopleand as an extension of their own paternal substance by the bride's. Thus the latterare obliged to give over a certain portion of the bridewealth as a quitclaim to thebride's mother's people, given more or less to validate assumption of her pagebidi'srole.

We can understand a kind of analogy to be manifest between the givers and takersof souls, women, and pearlshells, and this analogy can indeed be said to relate them.Yet the terms of the interdict are such that this kind of analogy is not embodiedin internal, substantial flow, but in the kinds of detached or detachable things(souls, women, pearlshells) that are being presented and accepted. For it is thesedetachable things, used as mediators in lieu of substantial flow, that are used sociallyto mark and confirm, to establish and substantiate, the setting up of parallelsubstantial flows. There is a flow of meat, women, and pearlshells just preciselywhere there is no flow of substantial analogy, because the exchange of thesedetachable markers in one direction is the means by which substantial flow isemphasized (and hence created) in another. This is why Daribi say that we marrythose with whom we do not eat [that is, share] meat. It is a self-contained statement, amodel of and a model for.

In sum, then, the exchange of detached, partible things amounts to deliberate,controlled analogy-the manipulated flow that is substituted for internal, substantialflow by the imposition of the interdict. Like the interdict itself, it is the aspect ofkin relationship for which human beings take direct responsibility. Unlike internal,substantial flow, which, as the given residuum of previous exchanges, promptscertain kinds of appropriate human action (such as sharing ), the interdict and theexchange that it leads to is predicated upon immediate human action. The restrictionsand distinctions made here, whether behavioral (as with avoidance and respect)or structural (as with exchange and marital protocols), are the subject of great careand discretion. They call to mind the painstaking restrictions surrounding food andpollution that Dumont emphasizes in Homo Hierarchicus (1970) as the very core of theHindu caste system. As in Dumont's analysis, it is not necessary to adduce literallyconstituted groups (or even societies ) here: all that is necessary is for people toobserve the niceties of the interdict and its concomitant exchanges and prerogatives,and the sociality (and its analogies of substantial flow) will take care of itself.The flow of controlled analogy through exchange is thus constitutive of the wholerelational matrix. But we have seen that this constitutive action must respect theexigencies of the substantial analogies (that is, male and female flows, as perceivedby the respective parties) that it sets up. Most significantly, this involves the obligationsof male contingency-giving meat and male wealth to the pagebidi to make restitutionfor their perceived loss of male flow. For Daribi (whose usages are fundamentallyasymmetrical in this respect, in contrast to those of some other Papuan peoples)the morality of this obligation extends beyond individual marriages and becomes abinding consideration for the two linealities involved. Thus, insofar as these linealitiesare set up through interdict and exchange, they will be constituted in terms of aunidirectional flow of controlled analogy, one being wife giver and the othermeat giver, so to speak. Additional wives may be given in the direction of theoriginal marriage but should not be given in the reverse direction. In those few




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cases where sister exchanges do take place (owing, as the Daribi say, to a lack ofwealth on the part of the exchangers, who are often criticized on moral grounds),informants insist that any meat exchanged may not be consumed by the exchangersthemselves.It would seem, indeed, that the protocols regarding meat here are even more

crucial than those relating to the giving of women themselves. But this is just whatwe should expect, given the predominant significance of male contingency, for meatis the externalized, partible equivalent of seminal fluid, kawa. We can then apprehendthe asymmetrical and unidirectional character of exchange as being itself a kind ofanalogue of male lineality: as the flow of kawa, male relational analogy, passes fromfather to son, so the flow of its external equivalent passes horizontally in onedirection only. Exchange and descent, affinity and consanguinity, become metaphorsfor one another.

Like all metaphors, however, this one works both ways. As there is a flow ofmeat between linealities that replicates descent, so we also find a flow of womenwithin these linealities on the model of unidirectional or asymmetrical exchange. Thisis the junior levirate, which for Daribi is generalized to include the inheritance ofwives from father to son and among those who regard one another in broad, idiomaticterms as brothers. The moral emphasis, however, is on the transference of wivesfrom elder to younger males, and this is clearly reflected in various kinds of relationalterminology. The eldest of a set of male siblings is referred to as the gominaibidi,literally the head-man or source-man, on the analogy of a wQ-gomo, the

water-head, or high point at the source of a stream. As the water flows downwardfrom this point, so the wives flow from the gominaibidi to his younger siblings. Aman and his elder brothers' wives, who are potential spouses under the levirate, aresare to one another and may not joke or act in other ways that betoken familiarity,such as calling one another by name. A man and his younger brothers' wives, whosepotential marriage is not encouraged by the levirate, are wai' to one another. Thisindulgent, nonrestrictive relationship is also that of grandfather and grandchild andof a wife and her husband's father.

It may be incidental to the central idiom of this discussion, but it is neverthelesshelpful to note that leviratic transfer is involved in a significant fraction of all Daribimarriages. Table 1, based on marital histories collected from roughly half of the Daribimarried males in 1968-1969, indicates that wives are obtained leviratically in 46.8percent of all cases. Certainly this high incidence is the result of diverse situationalfactors, including especially the practice of betrothing very young girls to older men.Early widowhood, and a plurality of widows, is an expected feature of such anarrangement. Thus we find that, statistically, the internal, lineal flow of wives isalmost as frequent as the external, interlineal flow. Significantly, however, the maritalrites of we kQbo, with their dramatic defense of male contingency, are not performedin cases of leviratic transfer.

The external, horizontal flow of women from wife givers to wife takers is also, ofcourse, very much an ongoing affair, particularly since Daribi usages require thatsmall prestations of meat and wealth be passed along continually in the oppositedirection. Another measure of this flow is the prerogative or expectation of thegroom, or wife taker, to receive further wives from the lineality of the wife givers.This includes women who are w,i we, baze-we, yage, and yame to him, but usuallyfocuses more particularly on the wife's sister, or baze-we. It is clear that theobligation is not always honored by wife givers, who may have other obligations orinclinations regarding their sisters, daughters, and father's sisters. But the prerogative




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Table 1. The prevalence of leviratic transfer.MarriagesInitiatedby Betrothal Number Percentfollowing originalbetrothal 209 29.8betrothalinherited leviraticallyat death* 32 4.6betrothalinheritedleviraticallywithout death* 56 7.9betrothal transferrednonleviratically 55 7.9

MarriagesNot Initiatedby Betrothalmarriedwithout betrothalor transfer 46 6.6wife inheritedleviraticallyat death* 207 29.5wife inherited leviraticallywithout death* 34 4.8wife received nonleviratically 63 8.9

total 702 100.0*Totalmarriagesresultingfrom leviratictransfer329 (46.8%).Totalmarriageswithout leviratic ransfer 373 (53.2%).is often pushed by Daribi men, especially influential ones. I have several times beenapproached by anxious Daribi tultuls (government-appointed village leaders) whohad forcibly detained their wives' sisters (married elsewhere) and were fearing theconsequences. Others, learning that my wife had a sister, wondered aloud why Idid not quit New Guinea and go off in hot pursuit of her.Table 2 presents some statistical measures of continuing marriage with wife givers,calculated as a percentage of all marriages contracted and of all marriages completedafter the first. The categories baze-we (including wife's sisters and half-sisters) andyage, taken in the strictest sense, account for about 15 percent of all later marriages;taken together with wife's other lineage mates, this yields a total of between 30 percentand 35 percent of all marriages after the first resulting from the continuing horizontalflow of meat and partible analogy.The metaphorical equivalence of vertical lineality and horizontal exchange, howeversubliminal and implicit it may be from the standpoint of participants, is highlysignificant for my central argument. For it is an analogy drawn between two ratherdifferent forms of analogy, one of them assumed as a part of the nature of things, andthe other brought about by human action. More specifically, it can be seen as a kind ofinveterate slippage or dissonance in the terms of the interdict, which was set up

Table 2. The prevalence of continuing marriagewith wife givers.All contractedmarriagesafter the first Allcompleted marriages(includes dissolved betrothals) after the firstRelationship Number Percent Number Percent

Baze-we 58 9.5 40 11.0Yage 30 4.9 18 4.9Wai-we 3 .5 3 .8wife's other lineagemates 93 15.2 67 18.3other marriages 427 69.9 238 65.0total 611 100.0 366 100.0




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through the mediation of horizontal flow, to counteract and abolish any substantialflow between the two linealities. What happens is that the means of imposing theinterdict come to model, and to be modeled by, the thing that is interdicted. Thiseffect, coming about gradually in the years after marriage (in the allocation of widowsand the organization of polygyny), is the first step in the obviation of the interdict.

This effect is paralleled by an even more significant compromising of the interdict:that brought about by the birth of children, who manifest the substantial flow of bothlinealities-that of the mother and that of the father-in a single social persona.Terminologically and in every other way, Daribi men regard their sisters' children astheir own. From the respective viewpoints of the two linealities, indeed, the childstands in an analogic relation of paternal substance to each of them. Thus the childbecomes itself a point of analogic relation between the two linealities: relationshiphas happened to the original demarcation between them. Because the same socialpersona stands in an analogic relation to both, the two are related analogically to oneanother. It is important, too, to remember that every single individual in the societymanifests such a confluence of linealities, and that every expression of lineality as aclear-cut social construction is compromised by the implications of this effect.If the expression of distinct linealities is to be maintained as a viable socialconstruction beyond the point of marriage-if, in other words, the child is to beregarded as analogically belonging to one or another of its two linealities-then amediation must be effected. Moreover, this mediation must satisfy the claims of malecontingency that both linealities make upon the child. Once again, this is accomplishedthrough the presentation of detached and partible equivalents of substantial flow.These are given, in a series of payments called pagehabo (from pagehaie to pay thepagebidi ) by the father of the child to the child's pagebidi.

Because the latter regardthe child as an analogue of their own paternal lineality, the detachable analogicelements can be accepted (or negotiated for) as a legitimate substitution. Because thefather's lineality regards that of the mother as the child's pagebidi, analogues throughmaternal substance, pagehabo becomes for them an act of defending male contingencyagainst female sufficiency; for the pagebidi are believed to exercise, through thespecial qualities of maternal blood, a power of cursing the child with death or illness.Thus male contingency is the chief moral consideration on both sides, though itbecomes a truly pressing issue for the father's lineality, since for them malecontingency is opposed to female sufficiency. This difference makes paternal affiliationa moral issue, for in the absence of pagehabo payments the father's line would beindeed contingent in the face of the pagebidi's position of sufficiency-the paternalside must supplement its maleness and the claims based upon this maleness. Thepagebidi, for their part, need not supplement their claims, but they claim the right(which is sometimes exercised) of taking possession of the children themselves in theevent of nonpayment.

Pagehabo is often subject to negotiation; payment often is delayed until a childsurvives its vulnerable early years, or the payments for one child or even several aretendered in a single lump sum. Customarily, too, it is only demanded for a woman'sfirst three children, though this again is often a matter of negotiation. What isimportant, regardless of the circumstances of giving, is the mediation that is effected,for this is a moral issue bearing upon health and lineality. Pagehabo is given a fewyears after birth, at initiation for males or marriage for females, and again at death. Butadult males should also, as a matter of some moral consequence (for example, whata man who understands well would do), pair off with one of their awa pagebidi(the so-called awa mu, or true maternal uncle ) in an ongoing exchange relationship.




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Female lineality, that is, should morally be transmuted into a flow of partible analogythroughout a man's life.In terms of our broader understanding, pagehabo is a kind of reimposition of theinterdict, a deliberate (though motivated) definition of lineality. But it is also, as I haveobserved, compromised in a way that the original interdict is not, for inasmuch as thepersona for whom the payments are given belongs simultaneously to both linealities,and relates them, the mediating payments that define this lineal affiliation areexchanged within a single lineality. They are shared as well as exchanged, and tothis extent the linealities that they serve to define are rendered less distinct. Thus theidentification between horizontal and vertical flow, between lineality and exchange(or act and circumstance), encountered in the levirate and in continuing marriagewith wife givers and compounded in the begetting of children is carried forward in acumulative fashion. It qualifies the redefinition of lineality in pagehabo, and its effectsgrow even more pronounced as the child grows older.Most Daribi exchanges, including those made at betrothal and marriage, as well aspagehabo, involve the passing back of a smaller prestation called sogwarema by thereceivers of the main prestation. In the case of pagehabo given for a male child,however, the sogwarema wealth is often withheld by the pagebidi until the child growsup and begins to assemble his own brideprice. The youth then has the right to go tohis pagebidi and request a contribution to the bridewealth he is assembling, and theaccumulated sogwarema wealth will be turned over to him for this purpose. Even ifthe sogwarema wealth has not been withheld, however, the youth's request shouldbe honored. The right to ask for such a consideration and the contribution itself aretokens of the young man's affiliation with his maternal lineality, over and above thedefinition of his lineality effected bypagehabo. Withholding the sogwarema prestationshas the effect of conserving the definition of lineality, though it renders thetransference of wealth, when it occurs, more ambiguous, for by honoring the youth'srequest with sogwarema wealth the pagebidi both exchange with the youth's paternallineality and share with the youth himself.

Precisely this sort of ambiguity, exchanges, expectations, and protocols,simultaneously honoring the canons of sharing and exchanging, suffuses therelations among cross-cousins, the offspring, respectively, of the erstwhile wifegivers and wife takers. Daribi say that cross-cousins, or hai', are the same assiblings, meaning that they should think of each other and treat each other assiblings. But of course they are not siblings, but hai'. Hai' are siblings to the extentthat lineality and exchange, sharing and exchanging, are collapsed into one, forthen the paternal linealities of their fathers are merged into a single flow of meatgiven in exchange and kawa passed down generationally. Hai' are not siblings to theextent that the lineality of the matrilateral cross-cousins is regarded by the patrilateralcross-cousins as female or maternal rather than male, because female linealityemphasizes lineal obligation. Thus the moral injunction to regard hai' as siblings isin fact a restatement of the primacy of male substantial flow, a further resolution ofmale contingency. Hai' as siblings are related by the analogy of male substance, acondition that leads Daribi to say that one's patrilateral hai' are true hai incontradistinction to one's matrilateral hai', for the latter may also be regarded aspagebidi.Because the hai' relationship is itself developed out of the paradoxical confrontationof two analogous but distinct semiotic modalities, it emerges as the crucial point in theself-creation and self-limitation of Daribi kin relationships. Because the vertical andhorizontal modes of analogic construction are interdependent as well as fundamentally




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opposed to one another, relating to one's hai' is always a matter of playing one setof relational injunctions against another. We might say that hai' impersonate ordramatize the conflicting implications of lineality and exchange in their relations withone another. Forthis reason the responsibilities and obligations, what we might wish tocall the norms of the relationship, are restricted closely to bivalent usages, those thatsatisfy simultaneously, though ambiguously, the canons of sharing and exchanging.As siblings, male hai' should contribute to one another's brideprices and areentitled to a share in the bridewealth received for their respective female hai'. Asbrothers, male hai' may exercise a claim (rated as being just below that of a youngerbrother in priority) on the inheritance of one another's widows. But because hai' arenot siblings and because matrilateral hai' are also dwano pagebidi, little pagebidi,and hence exchangers, these rights and obligations of sharing are always worked intothe idiom of exchanging, so that expressions of lineality as well as exchange takethe same external form. The leviratic claims that hai' make as siblings must generallybe validated by equilateral exchanges among the prospective co-heirs-should thesurviving hai' not receive the widow thus paid for, he may legitimately demandthe return of his wealth. Otherwise, of course, the matrilateral hai' receives somewhatmore wealth than his patrilateral counterpart in the exchanges that pass between them,for he is a creditor of the latter in the pagebidi relation.Viewed as expressing sharing through the idiom of exchanging, the hai' relationshipapproximates the generationally skewed one of child and pagebidi, even thoughthe pagebidi here is of the same generation as the child and is a little pagebidi.As in the case of the awa pagebidi, or maternal uncle, the hai' pagebidi retains thesanction of cursing ego, and, also as in that case, ego is often paired off with aparticular hai' pagebidi in a permanent exchange relationship (that of hai' mu, ortrue hai' ) when he reaches adulthood. Viewed as expressing exchanging throughthe idiom of sharing, the hai' relationship approximates that of siblings, generationallyequivalent, with a slight implication of leviratic seniority on the part of the patrilateralpartner. (It is said that the patrilateral hai', if a gominaibidi-the eldest male of hissibling series-should not inherit the widow of his hai' pagebidi, because his mothercame from there, and agominaibidi is felt to be closer to his mother than his youngersiblings are.) Figure 2, which lists leviratic transfers statistically according to the kincategory of the source, illustrates graphically the prevalence of transfers frompatrilateral to matrilateral kin for a number of relationships, including hai'.The effect of the moral injunction to regard hai' as siblings, and hence toexpress exchanging through the idiom of sharing, is that of countering and neutralizingthe structural superiority of the matrilateral hai' as pagebidi. Thus the injunction ofsiblingship among hai' is self-fulfilling as regards equivalence; matrilateral andpatrilateral hai' become equals through the balancing out of two rather differentsorts of inequalities, the ostensible generational superiority of the former and theputative lineal seniority of the latter. The fact that matrilineal hai' receive morewealth and, statistically, more widows can thus be accounted for either in terms of theirsuperiority or their inferiority. It is, like virtually everything else in the relationship,ambiguous, and it acquires this character precisely because the relationship, quarelationship, is constituted by the summing together and mutual modeling of the twoaspects.

Terminological usage accords with the injunction to regard hai' as siblings. Werethis not the case, were the pagebidi aspects of the relation to be emphasized, thenwe might expect the normalization of an Omaha terminology to apply here (Wagner1970). In fact the term hai' is used almost exclusively-dwano pagebidi being invoked




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Patrilateraleldernumber percent youngerama' 59 14.8 number percent

(brother) ama' 5 '1.3aia 33 8.3 (brother)(father) ogwa 4 1.1Total 92 23.1 (son)Total 9 2.4ama'(halfbrother)ama'(firstcousin)ama'(second cousin)Total

hai'(FZS)hai'( classificatory FZS)Total

number percent41 10.339

14

9.8

3.494 23.6

^ ama'K%%h (half brother)

ama'% (first cousin)ama'

_^ (second cousin)Total

number percent1 5 1.34 1.11 .3

10 2.7number percent19 4.8 number percent^^ hai' 15 3.811 2.8 . (MBS)

hai' 6 1.530 7.6 , ( classificatory MBS)Total 21 5.3

number percentTotal:preferred source of wivesTotal:permissiblebut not preferred sourceGenealogically distant ama'No kin categoryidentificationprovidedInheritance romogwa or awa (pagebidi)Grandtotal

1 216 54.340 10.497 24.429 7.3

L 397100.2Figure2. Leviratic ransfersaccording to kin category of source(preferred flow of wives shown graphicallyby arrows).

only occasionally as a descriptive gloss. Moreover hai' are expected to use affinalterms and relational modes with one another's siblings and to gloss them descriptivelyas hai' bare affines (one's hai's wife's brother, for instance, is one's hai' bare baze).In the following generation, that of the children of hai', the distinction betweenmale and female analogical flow following upon the initial interdict is completelyabrogated. One relates to one's father's male and female hai' as aia ( father ) andna' ( father's sister ) respectively and to one's mother's male and female hai' as awa( mother's brother ) and ida ( mother ) respectively, with corresponding relationalusages for those related through them. In each case, the distinctions contingent uponthe parent's pagebidi relationship are elided and subsumed within an all-embracing

patrilateral flow. Because hai' are siblings and because the injunction to relateto hai' as siblings invariably puts a patrilateral (male analogical) construction onthe relationship, the differential aspect of the wife givers' lineality (male vertical flow


Matrilateral



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in their own eyes, female flow in those of the wife takers) disappears. In a broaderperspective, the identification of sharing with exchanging, of lineality withexchange, among hai' in the parental generation obviates the lineal distinctions thatthe original exchanges (via the interdict) had set up. Of course, an individual's ownlineal relationships through his or her parents may color relationships with therespective parental hai', but these more recent analogical constructions bear uponother loci of responsibility. Parents' hai' are relationally parents' siblings.

They involve, in any case, essentially weak relationships. If they permit a generallyunconstrained flow of analogy irrespective of strong lineal bias, it is only because theforce of a strongly motivated lineality has gone out of them. There are, barring adoptionby one's father's hai' through widow inheritance, few obligations or perquisitesattached to them. It is said that one should not marry offspring of one's parent'shai', as one should not, in general, marry those of a parent's siblings. But one maymarry the grandchildren of parental hai'. Primary parties to the original interdict (thepoint of reference in the grandparental generation of the children of hai') are relatedto as wai' and auwa, reciprocal relationships differentiated by the sex (respectivelymale and female) of the senior partner. But these relationships are broadly indulgentand diffuse.

All Daribi kin relationships can be seen to be generated by the interdict imposedat the incipience of a marriage, and by its consequences. The impression oftremendous complexity, indeed, the impression of a naturally or an innately imposeddifferentiation of kinds of relatives, is an illusion fostered by the contrapuntal andoverlapping implications and consequences of innumerable past, present, and projectedimpositions of the interdict, and their consequences. Daribi create their world ofrelatives and kin relationships even as their perceptions and conceptions of kin andkin relationship are created by this world. Nevertheless, a strong argument can bemade, supported by their own notions of priority and responsibility, that the kinrelationships of the Daribi constitute a self-generative means of analogical construction.Such a regime of semiotic construction can be understood and explicated as aphenomenon in itself, tangent to other, similar constructive regimes but not necessarilypredicated upon such other imputed theoretical orders as political or economicinterest or the solidarity of the group. To be more specific, there is no necessity toadduce corporate interest here; lineality as analogic flow and its associated premiseof male contingency are quite sufficient to account for recruitment and othersolidarity-oriented issues. Lineality as open-ended analogic flow, as a quantity thatchanges its value with time and with position within the relational matrix, is far moreconsistent with observable events and attitudes among the Daribi (and many otherhighland Papuan people) than lineality as normative dogma or lineality as idiom forsocial interest.

Lineality on the ground is imprecise and multivalent; like the analogies elicitedin Daribi naming, it is negotiable and capable of infinite elaboration and extension.Often enough invoked within and between human aggregates, it is but a part, and atransient part, of the whole of kin construction. The obligations of sharing meatamong hai' are another part of this whole and are drawn upon quite as much aslineality in the articulation of human aggregates (for example, what I have calledelsewhere communities ). What is important is not that these analogies are used,or that they exist, but how they are invoked and compelled. And the evidence for thisindicates that we need not look beyond the confines of kin construction to find asatisfactory accounting.More generally, this study leads to two orders of conclusions regarding kin




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relationships, both of them, of course, interrelated. The first has to do with kindifferentiation and the role of constraint and restriction in eliciting and distributingrelational analogies. The second has to do with the consequences of analogicconstruction, the flow of analogy that comes to motivate and qualify successiverestrictive and differentiating efforts until the force of the initial distinctions is obviated.The range of potentially recognizable analogies existing among any set of humansemiotic constructions is virtually limitless. Only a very small number of them is everselected for the purposes of social construction. The analogies that are actualizedin this way are selected and controlled through acts of overt discrimination, ordifferentiation. The analogic approach that I have assumed here recognizes an identitybetween the terms that are used to differentiate relatives and the respective analogical

relationships obtaining between those relatives and their reciprocals. If we speak ofdifferentiation alone, we may regard the entailed relational aspect as a flow ofanalogy between any ego and its relatives so differentiated. And because the entailedrelationships link relatives to relatives, because the points of differential referencebecome themselves relational operators, certain kinds of analogic flow can be seento connect an ego with particular sets, or chains, of relatives or to associate relativesin such sets exclusive of an ego. The strength of this approach is that, obviating thedistinction between the dyadic ( kinship, filiation ) and transdyadic ( descent )categories of homological approaches, it permits a central focus on the symbolicdimensions of a conceptual world.Let us first consider the broad implications of the analogic approach for kindifferentiation. I shall list these as a set of conclusions.

1. The means by which relatives are differentiated from one another and the meansby which they are differentiated from an ego (reciprocal) are one and the same. Mymother is a mother to me and she is also my mother in contrast to other relatives, whoare aunts, and so forth. This point is sometimes complicated, but not necessarilycontradicted, by terminological usages (that is, separate terminologies for addressand reference ). We differentiate relatives, broadly speaking, by the same criteriathat specify our relationship to them.2. The differentiation of relatives constitutes a differential and distributive restrictionof relational analogy, via the means of eliciting it, into a range of contrastive roles, orprotocols. Borrowing an idiom from Levi-Strauss, we might say that an (unrealizable)ideal of total analogy is detotalized and distributed over a range of partial realizations,each corresponding to a kind of relationship. A kind of relationship (designating theparticular kinds of relatives proper to it) can then be considered as an analogue ofrelationship in general, diminished and restricted in certain dimensions so as to controland channel the flow of relational analogy.3. The essence of kinship is restriction, and the opposite of kinship is thereforetotal, unrestricted analogy, or (in its behavioral aspect) complete familiarity and lackof constraint. The core of any regime of kin relationship is, therefore, the set ofaffinal relations (as implied, for instance, in Levi-Strauss 1969) which is also its(generative) beginning point. The assumption that analogical connections might betaken as analytically prior or might be considered the more significant aspect (as inthe writings of Fortes and the descent theorists ) is something of a nativistic fallacy.Analogy, taken in and of itself as a primitive analytic term, can only generate viablemodels ( segmentary lineage systems and the like) when invoked in the context ofan assumed natural or given kin differentiation.4. Precisely because it is the opposite of kinship, complete or total familiarity willoften be invoked in the context of kin relationship to prove, elicit, or emphasize kin




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restrictions. Thus joking relationships frequently entail the mimicry of an unseemlyfamiliarity on the part of one or both sides so as to provoke a disqualification ofthe behavior and a consequent realization of the relationship (if the behavior, as aburlesqued denial of the relationship, is taken as a joke, then the relationship itselfemerges as a serious matter). A Daribi father is relatively free and familiar with hischildren, and although the familiarity will be reciprocal when the children are veryyoung (this indulgence can be taken as a paternal claim to complete analogy-asupplement to male contingency), older children and adults must show considerablerespect to their fathers. This balancing of familiarity on the part of the father withconstraint on that of his offspring emphasizes and coincides with the directionalemphasis of analogic flow, which moves from father to offspring but not vice versa.Likewise the custom of ritual snatching among the southern Bantu peoples describedin Radcliffe-Brown's classic discussion of The Mother's Brother in South Africa (1952)coincides with the direction of horizontal analogic flow. A sister's son can treat hismaternal uncle with a certain familiarity because the marriage cattle have already beendelivered to the maternal lineality, and it is the maternal uncle who assumes theobligation for his sister's fertility and productivity. Among the Daribi the obligation forcontinued payment rests with the wife takers (since the marriage wealth is given overin installments ), and the maternal uncle retains rights of snatching from his sister'schildren.

5. Incestuous relations acquire their often cited moral repugnance by threateningto expand the conditional familiarity of intensely focused (that is, close ) analogicalrelationships into the total familiarity of nonkinship. This is why they are so often linkedwith familial or substance relations. They mark the tolerance limits of sociallysanctioned familiarity.6. Kinship expands an essentially simple and unitary disposition ( relating ),formless and characterless in itself, rather than ordering and simplifying an array ofparticularistic and otherwise hopelessly complex kinds of relatives. The contrast thatis often made between given or natural kin differentiation and normative kinclassification or relationship, between natural fact and social contract, as it were,is a gratuitous projection of Western categorical constructions, and one that leads toillusory problems and pseudoinstitutions such as the incest taboo (Wagner 1972a).Kin differentiation and analogic flow are interdependent simply because they havebeen defined in contrast to one another, and the single most significant methodologicalconstraint upon their application and exemplification as analytic categories is that thiscontrast be maintained in the most stringent possible terms. When one of them issingled out as the primary focus of an inquiry, as I have done here with differentiation,then the other will subsume the implications of this focus as a dialectical antithesis.Let us then review the analogical implications of kin differentiation as a set ofconclusions.

1. The initial assumption of the basic similarity of all kin relationships (and, via theimplications of this assumption, all kinds of relatives) can be said to ground thisdiscussion, both in an interpretive (analytical) sense and in an operational sense. Since,moreover, I have argued that the Daribi themselves understand the differentiationof relatives and relationships to be a province of human responsibility, the analogicalequivalence of all kin relationships to one another can be said to ground their ownapproach to kin differentiation and relationship.2. Unless they are consistently and continually interdicted, the implicit analogiesobtaining among kin relationships (and between the kinds of relatives to which they




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correspond) will tend to assert themselves, forcing themselves into perception andexpression and coloring the resultant social realizations accordingly. The contrastsbetween sharing and exchanging, between wife givers and wife takers or betweenpaternal and maternal lineality are not mysteriously given facts, but differentiatingsocial assertions. When sharing begins to be taken as the same thing as exchanging,when the distinctions between wife givers and wife takers, or between paternal andmaternal lineality become eroded, then something of the assumptional basis of thewhole constructive effort is realized, and the restrictions of kinship are to thatdegree obviated.3. Although they elicit analogic flow, the differentiating distinctions and restrictionsof kinship are themselves carried forward by this flow. But this very interdependencerenders kin differentiation vulnerable to the dissolution of the particular into thegeneral that flow entails. What we call reproduction or generation is modeledentirely by analogic flow: offspring are related by some kinds of analogy to eitherparent or parental lineality (perhaps this is what Fortes meant by the universalbilaterality of filiation) and hence draw an analogy between them. If a newdifferentiation, or a redifferentiation is applied here, the resulting kin constructiontakes on a lineal character; if not, the resulting construction becomes generallycognatic or bilateral. If the original differentiation between wife givers andwife takers is reapplied in the alignment of offspring, the resulting constructionconforms to what Levi-Strauss (1969) terms an elementary structure, its specificform depending upon the specifications of wife giving and wife receiving restrictions(sometimes very complex, as among many Australian peoples). In such cases usageslike those of restricted exchange or cross-cousin marriage may become, at leastin normative terms, highly desirable, for they serve to reestablish the interdict in itsoriginal force. If a new differentiation, between paternal and maternal linealities, isintroduced, as in the child price usages of the Daribi and many African peoples, thenthe construction becomes what Levi-Strauss has termed a complex structure.4. Thus elementary structures are those that maintain and continually reinvoke theinterdict, the idiom of affinal differentiation, in certain categories so as to stave offthe effects of obviation. This may be viewed as a means of alliance and continuingconnubium, or it may be interpreted in less sociocentric terms as a moral effort toconserve kinship. Complex structures emerge as all those regimes of kinconstruction that are realized through the progressive obviation of distinctions andrestrictions, including cognatic regimes. Complex regimes may be seen asconservative of lineality, broadly speaking, rather than of kin restriction.5. The diachronic integrity of a regime of kin construction can be understood interms of a tension between differentiation and its analogic consequences. Such aregime can always be shown to have a systemic character (as in Levi-Strauss's atomof kinship ) if only because the component relationships are differentiated by contrastto one another, as complementary facets of a single human disposition. Understood inits own (internal) terms, qua system, this complementarity lends itself to the reificationof ethnographic particularism. Approached as an instrumentality for the creativeevocation and temporal realization of a total social construction, however, the systemicaspect of kinship emerges as a function of a larger constructive intention. Suchtraditionally recognized phenomena as the (systematic) differentiation of relatives andkin relationships, lineality, and reciprocal exchanges are indeed parts of such aself-actualizing intention; so, too, is the generalization that no single realization ofkin construction (an imposition of the interdict and its consequences) seems to persistbeyond three or four generations.




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references citedDumont, Louis1970 Homo Hierarchicus.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.Eggan,Fred,Ed.1937 SocialAnthropologyof North AmericanTribes.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.Levi-Strauss,Claude1962 Totemism. R. Needham, Trans.Boston: Beacon Press.1963 StructuralAnthropology. C. Jacobsonand B. G. Schoepf, Trans.New York: BasicBooks.1969 The ElementaryStructures of Kinship. J. H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, Trans., and R.Needham, Ed. Boston: Beacon Press.Lounsbury,FloydG.1964 A FormalAccount of Crow- and Omaha-Type KinshipTerminologies. In Explorationsin CulturalAnthropology.WardGoodenough, Ed.New York: McGraw-Hill.pp. 351-393.Mauss,Marcel1954 The Gift. I. Cunnison,Trans.Glencoe, IL:The FreePress.Radcliffe-Brown,A. R.1952 Structureand Functionin PrimitiveSociety. New York: Macmillan.Spencer, Baldwin,and F.J. Gillen1968 The NativeTribesof CentralAustralia.New York:Dover Publications.Wagner, Roy1967 TheCurseof Souw: Principlesof DaribiClanDefinitionandAlliance.Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress.1970 Daribi and ForabaCross-CousinTerminologies: A StructuralComparison.The Journalof the Polynesian Society 79(2):91-98.1972a Incest and Identity: A Critique and Theory on the Subject of Exogamyand IncestProhibition. Man 7(4):601-613.1972b Habu: The Innovationof Meaning in DaribiReligion. Chicago: Universityof ChicagoPress.Date of Submission: May 20, 1977Date of Acceptance: June 16, 1977


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Analogic Kinship - Wagner