Rethinking Anthropology – E. R. Leach

RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY capital of the United Kingdom SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCLL ANTHROPOLOGY Managing Editor Anthony Fore The Monographs in on Social Anthropology were established modem The by 1940 and aim to trouble results of anthropo system of logical research of primary interest to unique(predicate)ists. continuation of the series was do possible f fixed storage the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and more(prenominal) recently by a further pass from the Governors of the capital of the United Kingdom a grant in wait on School of Economics and Political Science. re under the direction of an dialog box associated with the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Editorial The Monographs LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY No. 22 Rethinking Anthropology by E. R. LEACH UNIVERSITY OF LONDON THE ATHLONE PRESS NEW YORK HUMANITIES PRESS INC produce by THE ATHLONE PRESS UNIVERSIT Y OF LONDON at 2 Gotcer Street, Distri unlessed by Tiptree London wci Book Services Ltd Tiptree, Essex First edition, 1961 First bound edition with corrections, 1966 Reprinted, 1968, 1971 E. R. Leach, 1961, 1971 U. K. U. K. sB N o 485 19522 4 cloth sB N B o 485 19622 o pieceback U. S. A. s N 391 00146 9 paperback First printed in 1961 by ROBERT CUNNINGHAM AND SONS LTD ALVA Reprinted by photo-litho by JOHN daemon & CO LTD NORTHAMPTON 4- M75 Preface The title of this collection properly belongs exclusively to the low gear essay. On 3 December 1959 1 had the take n single to de experiencer the startle Malinovvski Memorial Lecture at the London School of Economics. The Editorial gore of the London School of Economics Monographs in Social Anthropology enerously offered to publish the textual numerate of my lecture barely added the flattering suggestion that I should reprint a subjugate of my other essays at the like beat. I thrust wherefore appropriated the title of my M ali outrightski lecture for the both(prenominal) in either collection. I do non venture wholly consistent with that The essays extend over a period of xv socio-economic classs and is that the scene touch of the latest (Chapter i) of the earliest (Chapter 2) and there is, I think, a sure continuity of theme and method in al matchless in all of them. When they were source written all these essays were attempts to rethink anthropology.All be concerned with businesss of others, I theory and be based on ethnographic occurrences recorded by my testify contri justion being primarily that of analyst. In each effort lose tried to reassess the kn avow facts in the light of unorthodox assumpSuch heterodoxy seems to me to brook merit for its own sake. Unconventional occupations often turn permit out to be treat plainly provided they provoke discussion they whitethorn liquid demand lasting value. By that criterion each of the essays in this reserve is a possible tindidate for attention. tions. Among kindly anthropologists the is game f bodily structure new theories on the ruins of stresser(a) champions almost an occupational disease. Contemporary arguments in amicable anthropology ar built out of var.ulae concocted by Malinowski, Rad dribe-Brown and Levi-Strauss who in turn were only rethinking Rivers, Durkheim and Mauss, who borrowed from Morgan, McLennan and Robertson- Smith the total outcome of all and so on. Sceptics may think that despite all this ratiocination adds up to genuinely abruptly(p) our pedagogical subt allowies, the diversities of human tailored remain as bewildering as ever. al bingle that we admit.The contemporary well-disposed anthropologist is all too well aw atomic number 18 that he enjoys much less than Frazer imagined that he knew for certain. only when that perhaps is the point. The contributions to anthropological pedan strain put in in this take add little to the sum of human familiarity but if they provoke some trainers to doubt their sense of certainty thusly they exit have served their purpose. A note on the inter clubs mingled with the polar papers draft of Chapter 2 may prove motionless table serviceful. The first was written in 1943 while I was on VI inaugurate and as yet in direct contact with Jinghpaw speakers. ppeared in the 1945 volume of the J. R. A. I, this was not actually published until 1950. These details of dating are relevant because they apologize why my paper contains no fictional character to Chapters 15 and i6 of Levi-Strauss, Les structures fractionaires de la parente (1949) and mutually why the latter work ignores the new have sexledge provided by my paper. Chapter 3, which was ill-manneredly a Curl Prize Essay, was completed in the spring of 195 1 and seems to have been the first English language commentar) on Levi-Strausss magnum opus though, presumably, my paper and J.P. B. de Josselin de Jongs monograph Levi-Strausss Theory o n Kinship and Marriage (1952) were going through the pressure at the comparable time. Although I here criticized Levi-Strauss on the grounds of ethnographic inaccuracy my sympathy with his widely distributed theoretical point of view is very great. prof Levi-Strauss has himself noted the simile between the view of hearty structure implicit in my first Jinghpaw paper (Chapter 2) and his own (Levi-Strauss, 1953, p. 525 n), and in all my subsequent publications my debt to Levi-Strauss is obvious.The kin of Chapter 4 to earlier literature go forth be apparent from the university extension points in the text. Although it was not intended to be controversial it provoked Dr Kathleen Gough into a prompt reply (Gough, 1959). The crucial part of my argument here is that I accent the need to secernate between coincidence regarded as an alliance between corporate kin groups and those indivi triple affinal ties which bind a cross wife to a picky conserve. This theme recurs in C hapter 5 and over again in active military service t Although Chapter i. Chapter 5, as indicated in the text, is linked with a long correspondence which come ined in the pages of Man in 1953 and 1954 but the response which it evoked from my close academic colleagues is only marginally connected with this earlier discussion. Dr Goody has denounced my whole argument as grounded in fundamental error (Goody, 1959, p. 86) and prof Fortes has taken up most of 2 issues of Man to expound my put acrossacies and confusions (Fortes, 1959b).Both these explosions of academic wrath were provoked by a single sentence in my essay, namely Thus Fortes, while recognizing that ties of affinity have comparable importance to ties of cable, disguises the actor under his expression completing filiation (see below p. 122). The exact sense in which this statement is an error is fluid not clear to me for in the course of his denunciation Fortes reaffirms his view that completing filiation is a functi on of affinal relations (Fortes, 1959b, p. 209) which is simply the argument I sought to controvert. Professor Fortes has called his article *a rejoinder to Leach, and readers of Chapter i of this give-and-take need to appreciate that a among other things in it is intended as rejoinder to Fortes. Reference to a short note Man (i960. Art. 6) will perhaps help to thread this clear. The cardinal short papers on time symbolism reprinted in Chapter 6 do PREFACE regularise of Professor Levi-Strauss Vll not form a series with the other chapters of the book though again the is pronounced. Although my Cronus and Chronos appeared in print in 1953 while Levi-Strausss The geomorphologic Study of Myth was only published in 1956, I had in fact already heard Professor Levi-Strausss lecture on this topic originally I wrote my essay.Explorations, the Toronto University publication in which my Chapter 6 was originally published, carried on its tent flap leaf the statement that it was desig ned, not as a permanent reference journal that embalms truth for posterity, but as a publication that explores and searches and questions and some(prenominal)(prenominal) my papers are correspondingly brief and tentative. Nevertheless a number of my friends have suggested that the arguments they contain are of more than ephemeral interest because the reissue here Chapter i contains a considerable amount of matter which was not included in the spoken text of my Malinowski lecture. The other essays appear as originally printed, except for the correction of misprints, and virtuoso or cardinal very minor alterations intended to clarify the argument. The Introductory Notes at the rise of Chapters 2-6 are new. Ac inhabitledgements I am indebted to the Council of the Royal Anthropological constitute of Great Britain and Ireland for permission to reprint the essays published here as Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 and to Professor E. S. Carpenter and the University of Toronto for permission to reprint the two short essays included in Chapter 6.I am indebted to a personal grant in aid from the Behavioral Sciences Division of the Ford Foundation for facilities industrious while preparing * j - these papers for publication. E. R. L. Contents 1. RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY I 2. JINGHPAW KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY THE structural IMPLICATIONS OF MATRILATERAL CROSS-COUSIN MARRIAGE 28 3. 54 4. POLYANDRY, INHERITANCE AND THE DEFINITION OF marriage with special(prenominal) REFERENCE TO SINHALESE CUSTOMARY LAW ASPECTS OF BRIDEWEALTH AND MARRIAGE STABILITY IO5 5. AMONG THE KACHIN AND LAKHER 6. II4 TWOESSAYS CONCERNING THE emblematic REPRESENTATION OF TIME (i) 124 Cronus and Chronos, 124 (ii) Time and False Noses, 132 Rethinking Anthropology my arrogant title. Since 1930 British Anthropology has collective a well defined set of ideas and -objectives which derive directly from the training of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown this unity of aim is summed up in the statement that British soci al anthropology is usableist and concerned with the comparative abbreviation of social structures. alone during the last year or so it has begun to look as if this particular aim had worked itself out.Most of my colleagues are giving up the attempt to make comparative generalizations instead they have begun to write impeccably detailed historical ethno- tET Social me begin by explaining graphies of particular populations. I regret this new tendency for I still believe that the findings of anthro- pologists have general as well as particular implications, but functionalist doctrine ceased to carry conviction? why has the understand what is incident in social anthropology I believe we need to go pay off- return(a) back to the beginning and rethink basic issues really elementary matters much(prenominal) as To hat we crocked by marriage or descent or the unity of effortful siblings, and that is for basic concepts are basic The the ideas one has about them are deeply entr enched and firmly held. One bend of the things we need to recognize is the strength of the semiempirical which Malinowski introduced into social anthropology and which essential means of social anthropology has stayed with us ever since. is understanding of the way of life of a single particular people. This fieldwork is an extremely personal traumatic kind of date and the personal involvement of the anthropologist in his work is reflected in what he produces.When we read Malinowski we get the impression that he is stating something which is of general importance. Yet how end this be? He is s express writing about Trobriand Islanders. Somehow he has so assimilated himself into the Trobriand situation that he is able to make the Trobriands fieldwork a microcosm of the whole primitive world. successors for Firth, Primitive citizen of the And the same is true of his is Man is a Tikopian, for Fortes, he a Ghana. The existence of this prejudice has long been recognized / but we have pay inadequate attention to its consequences.The barrier of achieving comparative generalizations is directly linked with the problem of escaping from ethnocentric bias. 2 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY As is appropriate to an occasion I when we honour the memory of Bronislaw MaUnowski, am going to be thoroughly egotistical. I shall imply there my own is merit by condemning the work of in my closest friends. nevertheless purpose is to distinguish between two quite an similar varieties of comparative generalization, two of which turn up from time to time in contemporary British social anthropology.One of these, which I dislike, derives from the work of Radcliffe-Brown the other, which I admire, derives from the work of Levi-Strauss. It is important that the deviances between these two overturees be properly dumb, so I shall draw my illustrations in sharp line of work, all black and all white. In this harsh and exaggerated form Professor Levi-Strauss method my malice. My top execut ive well repudiate the authorship of the ideas which I am trying to convey. hence my egotism let the blame be wholly mine. My problem is simple.How great deal a modern social anthropologist, with all the work of Malinowski and Radcliffc-Brown and their successors at his elbow, record upon generalization with some(prenominal) hope of arriving at a satisfying finis? My answer is quite simple too it is this By thinking of the organisational ideas that are present in any decree as constituting a numerical copy. The rest of what I have to say that is simply an purification of this cryptic statement. concern is with generalization, not with maintained that the objective of social anthropology was the equality of social structures.In explaining this he asserted that when we distinguish and compare antithetical types of social structure we are doing the same kind of thing as when we distinguish different kinds of sea shell tally to their structural type (RadcliffeBrown, 1953, p. 109). abstract is quite a different kind of mental First let me emphasize my comparison. Radcliffe-Brown operation. Let me illustrate this point. two points eject be linked by a uncoiled line and you back end represent this straight line mathematically by a smG. first put in algebraic equation. either three points can be coupled by a circle and you can represent this circle by a quadratic or second order algebraic equation. It would be a generalization to go straight on from there and say any Any n points in a plane can be joined by a curve which can be represented by an equation of order n-i. This would be conscionable a guess, but it would be true, and it is a kind of truth which no amount of comparison can ever reveal. Comparison and generalization are both forms of scientific activity, but different. Comparison is a matter of butterfly collecting of way, of the rrangement of things according to their types and subtypes. The chase of Radcliffe-Brown are anthropologi cal butterfly collectors and their approach to their data has certain consequences. For example, according to RadclifTe- Browns principles we ought to think of Trobriand family RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY as 3 classification a society of a particular structural type. The might proceed thus principal(prenominal) Type Sub-type Sub-sub-type societies societies societies tranquil of unilineal descent groups. composed of lineal descent groups. composed of matrilineal descent groups in which he married males of the matrilineage live together in one place and apart from the females of the matrilineage, and so on. In this procedure each class preceding it is a sub-type of the class at one time in the tabulation. its uses, but it has very serious has no logical limits. finally discriminated in this way as a sub-type Now I all(prenominal) just agree that analysis of this kind has is limitations. One major error known society can be that it from any other, and since anthropologists are n otably vague about what they mean by a society, this will superstar them to distinguish more and more ocieties, almost ad infinitum. This is not just hypothesis. My colleague Dr Goody has gone to great pains to distinguish as types two adjacent societies in the Northern Gold Coast which he calls LoWiili and LoDagaba. A careful reader of Dr Goodys works will discover, however, that these two societies are distinct simply the way that field Dr Goody notes from two has chosen to describe the fact that his neighbouring communities show some curious discrepancies. If limit Dr Goodys methods of analysis were pushed to the we should be able to show that every village community passim is he world constitutes a distinct society which distinguishable as a type from any other (Goody, 1956b). Another serious remonstrance is that the typology makers never explain why they choose one frame of reference rather than another. RadcliffeBrovsTis instructions were simply that it is necessary to com pare societies the economic system, the with reference to one particular aspect . . . political system, or the kinship system . . . this is equivalent weight to saying that you can arrange your butterflies according to their colour, or their size, or the square up of their wings according to the him of the moment, but no matter what you do this will be science. Well perhaps, in a sense, it is but you essential gain that your forward arrangement creates an initial bias from which it is later extremely difficult to escape (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940, p. xii). Social anthropology is packed with frustrations of it this kind. An obvious Ever since example is the kinsperson opposition direct/matrilineal. has been habitual for anthropologists to distinguish unilineal from non-unilineal descent systems, and writing of the Iroquois, Morgan began among that it the former to distinguish patrilineal societies from atrilineal societies. is These categories now seem to us so primal and obvious extremely difficult to break out of the straitjacket of survey which the categories themselves impose. 4 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY Yet if our approach is to be genuinely unbiased we must be prepared to consider the possibihty that these type categories have no sociological significance whatsoever. It may be that to create a class labeled matrtis as irrelevant for our understanding of social structure as the origin of a class blue butterflies is irrelevant for the understanding of the anatomical structure of lepidoptera.I dont say it is so, but it may be it is lineal societies time that we considered the possibility. J I warn you, the rethinking of basic category assumptions can be very disconcerting. But Let me cite a chemise. Dr Audrey Richardss well-known contribution to African Systems of Kinship and Marriage is an essay in Radcliffe-Brownian typology devising which is rightly regarded as one of the musts of undergraduate reading (Richards, 1950). In this essay Dr Richards asse rts that societies is the problem of matrilineal the difficulty of combining recognition of descent through the oman with the rule of exogamous marriage, and she classifies a variety of matrilineal societies according to the way this problem is solved. In effect her classification turns on the fact that a womans hubby the two men. jointly cause rights in the womans brother and a womans children but that matrilineal systems differ in the way these rights are allocated between is the prior category assumptions. Men have kinds of society, so why should it be assumed from the start that brothers-in-law in matrilineal societies have special prob- What I object to in this ll brothers-in-law in lems which are absent in patrilineal or bilateral structures? really What has personate a matrilineal society, she has decided to restrict her comparative obser-ations to matrilineal systems. Then, having selected a group of societies which have nothing in common except that they are matrilineal, she is of course led to conclude that matrilineal descent is the major factor out to which all the other items of cultural behaviour which she happened here with the Bemba, is that, because Dr Richardss own special knowledge describes are functionally adjusted.Her argument I am scared is a tautology her system of classification already implies the truth of what she call fors to be demonstrating. This illustrates how Radcliffe-Browns taxonomic assumptions fit in with the ethnocentric bias which I mentioned earlier. Because the typefinding social anthropologist conducts his whole argument in terms of tempted particular instances rather than of infer patterns, he is invariably to attach exaggerated significance to those features of social establishment which happen to be prominent in the societies of which he himself has first hand experience. The ase of Professor Fortes illustrates this is same point in rather a different way. His quest not so much for types as for prototypes. It so happens that the two societies of which he has do a close study have certain similarities of structural pattern for, while the Tallensi are patri- RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY lineal 5 and the Ashanti matrilineal, both Tallensi and Ashanti come unfiliation, usually close to having a system of two-base hit unilineal descent. Professor Fortes has devised a special concept, complementary which helps him to describe this double unilineal element in the Tallensi/Ashanti pattern while rejecting the depression that these societies actually possess double unilineal systems (Fortes, 1953, p. 33 1959b). It is interesting to note the circumstances which led to the development of this concept. From one point of view complementary filiation is simply an inverse form of Malinowskis view of sociological paternity as applied in the matrilineal context of Trobriand society. But Fortes has done more than invent a new name for an old idea he has made it the corner stone of a literal body of theor y and this theory arises logically special circumstances of his own field experience.In his earlier writings the Tallensi are often represented as having a somewhat extreme form of patrilineal ideology. Later, in contrast to from the Rattray, Fortes placed an unambiguously matrilineal label upon the Ashanti. view, is The that merit of complementary it is filiation, from Fortess point of a concept which applies equally well to both of these contrasted societies but does not encroach with his thesis that both the Tallensi and the Ashanti have systems of unilineal descent. The concept ecame necessary to him precisely because he had decided at the start that the more familiar and more obvious notion of double unilineal descent was inappropriate. In retrospect Fortes seems to have decided that double unilineal descent is a special development of complementary filiation, the latter being a feature of all unilineal descent structures. That such category distinctions are contrived rather t han natural is evident from Goodys supererogatory discrimination. Goody asserts that the LoWiili have complementary descent rather than a dual descent system.Since the concept of complementary filiation was first introduced so as to help in the distinction between filiation and descent and since the adjective complementary cannot here be given(p) meaning except by reference to the word descent, the total argument is intelligibly tautologous (Fortes, 1945, pp. 134, 20of 1950, p. 287 1953, p. 34 1959 Goody, 1956b, p. 77). Now I do not claim that Professor Fortes is mistaken, but I think he is misled by his prior suppositions. If making and from enthnocentric science. we are to bias we must let escape both from typology turn to a different kind ofInstead of comparison repeat. Generalization us have generalization instead of inductive it butterfly collecting let us have inspired guesswork. Let me is consists in perceiving it is possible general laws in the circumstances of special ca ses guesswork, a gamble, you may be wrong or you may be right, but if you happen to be right you have hold int something altogether new. In contrast, arranging butterflies according to their types and sub-types is tautology. It merely reasserts something you know already in a slightly different form. 6 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY But if you are going is o start guessing, you need I to know how to guess. . d this wliat I am getting at when say that the form of thinking should be mathematical. Functional ism in a mathematical sense is not concerned with the interconnections between parts of a whole but with the principles of operation of partial systems. There is a direct conflict here with the dogmas of Malinowski and Malinowskis functionalism required us to think of each Society (or Culture, as Malinowski would have put it) as a totality Radcliffe-Brown. of a made up kinds number of discrete empirical things, of rather diverse institutions, e. g. groups of people, customs. These thing s are functionally interconnected to form a delicately balanced machine rather like the various parts of a wrist watch. cliffe- The functionalism of Rad- Brown was equally mechanical though the focus of interest was different. RadclifTe-Brown was concerned, as it were, to distinguish wrist watches clocks, whereas Malinowski was interested in the general attributes of clockwork. But hath master took as their starting point the notion that a culture or a society is an empirical whole made up rom grand set out of a limited two societies number of readily specifiable parts and that when we compare we are concerned to see whether or not the same kinds of is parts are present in both cases. This approach a mechanic but appropriate for a zoologist or for a botanist or for it is not the approach of a mathematician nor of an point and, in gineer. my view, the anthropologist has much in common with the en- But that is my private bias. I was originally trained as an target. The entities wh ich we call societies are not naturally existing species, neither re they man-made mechanisms. But the analogy of a mechanism has quite as much relevancy as the analogy of an organism. This is not the place to discuss the history of the organic analogy as a model for Society, but its arbitrariness is often forgotten. Hobbes, who developed his notion of a social organism in a very domineering way, discusses in his preface whether a mechanical or an organic analogy might be the more appropriate for his purpose. He opts for an organism only because he wants to include in his model a meta visible premier(a) mover (i. . God Life Force) (Hobbes, 1957, p. 5). In contrast RadcHffe-Brown employed the organic analogy as a matter of dogma rather than of superior (e. g. Radcliffe-Brown, 1957, pp. 82-86 1940a, pp. 3, lo) and his butterfly collecting followers have hopeed the appropriateness of the accent social organism without serious discussion. Against this complacency I must protest. I t is certainly the case that social scientists must often resort all to analogy but eternity. we are not committed to one type of model making for Our task societies s to understand and explain what goes on in society, how work. If an engineer tries to explain to you how a digital computer RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY bolts. 7 works he doesnt spend his time classifying different kinds of nuts and He concerns himself with principles, not with things. He writes out argument as a mathematical equation of the bound simplicity, somewhat on the lines of o + i = i i + i = 10. No doubt this example is frivolous such computers embody their information in a code which is transmitted in positive and prohibit impulses denoted by the digital symbols o and i.The essential point is that although the information which can be embodied in such codes may be tremendously complex, the basic principles on which the computing machines work is very simple. Likewise I would maintain that quite simple mechanic al models can have relevance for social anthropology despite the acknowledged fact that the detailed empirical facts of social life display the utmost complexity. I dont want to turn anthropology into a branch of mathematics but I believe we can learn a lot by starting to think about society in a mathehis matical way.Considered mathematically society is not an assemblage of things but an assemblage of variables. A good analogy would be with that branch of mathematics known as topographic anatomy, which may crudely be described as the geometry of elastic gum elastic sheeting. If I have a piece of rubber sheet and draw a series of lines on it to symbolize the functional interconnections of some set of social phenomena and I then start stint the rubber about, I can change the manifest shape of my original geometrical figure out of all recognition and yet clearly there is a sense in which it is the same figure all the time.The constancy of pattern is not manifest as an objective emp irical fact but it is there as a mathematical generalization. By analogy, generalized structural patterns in anthropology are not restricted to societies of any one manifest structural type. you will tell me that topology is one of those which mere sociologists had best avoid, but I am not in fact proposing anything original. A very good simple account of the character of topology appears in an article under that title in the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.The author himself makes the point that because topology is a non-metrical form of mathematics it deserves especial attention from social scientists. I Now know that a lot of alarming scientific mysteries The fundamental Any shut curve is arc of a circle is the variable in topology the is the degree of connectedness. same as any other regardless of its shape the same as a straight line because each is open ended. Contrariwise, a closed(a) curve has a greater degree of connectedness than an arc. If of pattern case if we apply these ideas to sociology particular relationships e cease to be interested in and concern ourselves instead with the regularities relationships. is among neighbouring In the simplest possible there be a relationship p which intimately associated with another relationship q then in a topological study we shall not concern ourselves 8 RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY with the particular characteristics of/) and q but with their mutual characteristics, i. e. with the algebraic ratio pq. But it must be understood that the relationships and sets of relationships which are symbolized in this way cannot properly be given specific numerical values.The reader should bear this point in mind when he encounters the specimens of pseudo-mathematics which occur later in this paper. All propositions in topology can also be expressed as propositions in symbolic logic (see Carnap, 1958, chapter G) and it was probably a consideration of this fact which led Nadel to introduce symbolic logic into ow n view is that while the consideration book (Xadel, 1957). of mathematical and logical models may help the anthropologist to order his last My his theoretical arguments in an all this intelligent way, his actual procedure s should be non-mathematical. The pattern relevance of to my main theme that the saTne structural may turn up in any kind of society patrilineal a mathematical approach matrilineal makes no prior assumption that from non-unilineal systems or structures. all unilincal systems are basically different structures from the contrary, the principle of parity leads us to brush off rigid category distinctions of this kind. On Let me try to illustrate I for the occasion shall take my point with an example. To be my example from Malinowski. Malinowski reported, as a ppropriate Most of you will know that fact of empirical ethnography, that the Trobrianders profess ignorance of the connection between copulation and pregnancy and that this ignorance serves as a rational defens e for their system of matrilineal descent. From the Trobriand point of view my preceptor (tama) is not a beginning relative at all but a kind of affinal, *my mothers maintain (Malinowski, 1932a, p. 5). However, aboard their dogmatic ignorance of the facts of life, Trobrianders also maintain that every child should resemble its mothers husband (i. . its father) but that no child could ever resemble a element of its own matrilineal kin. Malinowski seems to have thought it paradoxical that Trobrianders should hold both these doctrines at the same time. He was apparently bem apply by the same kind of ethnocentric assumptions as later led a Tallensi witness to tell Professor Fortes that both parents transmit their blood to their offspring, as can be seen from the fact that Tallensi children may resemble either parent in looks (Fortes, 1949, p. 35 my italics). This is mixing up sociology and genetics.We know, and apparently the Tallensi assume, that physical appearance is geneticall y based, but there is no reason why primitive people in general should associate ideas of genetic inheritance with ideas about physical resemblance between persons. The explanation which the Trobrianders gave to Malinowski was that a father impresses his appearance on his son by cohabiting repeatedly with the mother and thereby moulding (kuli) the child in her womb (Malinowski, 1932a, p. 176) which is reminiscent of the Ashanti . RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY view that the father shapes the body of his child as might a potter (Rattray, 1929, p. 9). This Trobriand theory is quite consistent with the view that the father is related to the son only as mothers husband that is, an affine and not as a kinsman. There are other Trobriand doctrines which fall into line with this. The fathers sister is the prototype of the lawful woman (Malinowski, 1932a, p. 450) which seems to be more or less the equivalent of saying that the father (tama) is much the same sort of relation as a brother-in-law.Aga in, although, as Powell has shown (Powell, 1956, p. 314), marriage with the fathers sisters daughter is rare, the Trobrianders constantly assured Malinowski that this was a very right and proper marriage. Evidently in their view the category tama (which includes both father and fathers sisters son) is very close to that of lubou (brother-in-law) (Mal- inowski, 1932a, pp. 86, 451). The similarity is asserted not only in verbal expression but also in the pattern of economic obligation, for the harvest gift (urignbu) salaried by a married man is due both to his mothers husband tama) and to his sisters husband (lubou) (Malinowski, 1935, I, pp. 386, 413-18). From my point of view this cluster of Trobriand beliefs and attitudes is a pattern of organisational ideas it specifies a series of categories, in a particular relationship and places them with one another as in an was biased by his down to realm empiricism, by European prejudices and by his interest in psycho-analysis, and he refu sed to accept tlie Trobriand doctrine at its face value. Instead he refurbished his concept of sociological paternity which he had originalgebraic equation.But Malinowski ally devised to fit a quite different context, that of patrilineal organization among On to the Australian Aborigines (Malinowski, 19 13, p. 170-83). this earlier occasion Malinowski had used sociological paternity relations show how between parents and children and between spouses derive from customary rules and not from any universal facts of biology or psychology, but in the later application of these ideas to Trobriand circumstances he shifts his ground and the argument becomes entangled by the introduction of naive mental considerations. On the face of t sociological paternity, as used in The Sexual Life of attitudes Savages, seems to mean that even in a society which, like the Trobriands, sociological still denies the facts of biological paternity, pertain to paternity, as zve understand it, which far, may be found. So so good. But Malinowski goes further than this. Instead of arguing, as in the Australian case, that kinship attitudes have a purely social origin, he now insists that social attitudes to kinship arc facts. rooted in universal psychological The paternal relationship contains elements which are necessarily resent in the father/child relationship of all societies, no matter what the circumstances of custom and social structure confusing. may be. This is all very On the one hand the reader is is told quite plainly that the Trobriand child taught to think of his father as a non-relative, as an lO RETHINKING ANTHROPOLOGY individual with the special non-kinship status of mothers husband. But on the other hand the reader is forced to conclude that this IVobriand mothers husband is related to the mothers child as a sociological father, that is to say by ties of kinship as well as by tics of affinity.The argument, as a whole, is self-contradictory. is You may about. well think th at this a yery hairsplitting point to make a fuss How can it possibly make any difference whether I think of a parti- cular male as my father or as is my mothers husband? Well, all I can say that anthropologists do Professor Fortes, Dr Goody and Dr Kathleen Gough on this subject that worry about such things. are so disturbed by my heretical yiews oflF time to try to bruise my owskis argument (Fortes, 1959)-