Izdevums sagatavots ar Korejas studiju akadēmijas Seed programmas (AKS-2018-INC- 2230004) finansi... more Izdevums sagatavots ar Korejas studiju akadēmijas Seed programmas (AKS-2018-INC- 2230004) finansiālu atbalstu.
I N.J. Allen has recently investigated the possibility of modelling transformations from tetradic... more I N.J. Allen has recently investigated the possibility of modelling transformations from tetradic society – which he devised as a model of prehistoric human kinship and is intimately linked to his scholarship – to what are conventionally known as Crow-Omaha systems, themselves the subject of a recent collection reappraising the problems associated with them (Trautmann and Whiteley 2012). Allen’s chapter appears in this volume and is immediately followed by a typically sceptical chapter by R.H. Barnes (2012), which should remind us of the controversy surrounding Crow-Omaha not only over what this hyphenated category of analysis actually means, but also over whether it actually means anything at all, even for the Crow and Omaha themselves (two Native American peoples of the USA). However, I am not concerned with these controversies here, which broadly speaking revolve around two more general concepts: kinship terminology and systems of affinal alliance. These two concepts can, of cour...
Introduction This is an article about kinship, and more particularly the meaning of kinship, an i... more Introduction This is an article about kinship, and more particularly the meaning of kinship, an issue that has characterized practically the whole history of anthropology from Lewis Henry Morgan’s pioneering studies, including the influential dismissals of kinship as a universal category by both Rodney Needham and David Schneider in the mid-twentieth century and the prominence given to Janet Carsten’s notion of ‘relatedness’ as part of the neo-Schneiderian revival of kinship study since the 1990s. Here I want to revisit the issues involved by bringing in notions of transcendence from religious studies, and in particular images of the transcendence of difference as a way of overcoming social division and disharmony. My starting point is that not only religion but also ideas about kinship can be used to express the internal unity of social groups or categories, often in opposition to other such groups and categories. In respect of kinship, these ideas are often expressed in terms of l...
IN a previous publication (Parkin 1990), I suggested a new way in which the conventional division... more IN a previous publication (Parkin 1990), I suggested a new way in which the conventional division of kinship systems in India between north and south might be viewed. At first sight this division seems radical, opposing as it does the prescription of the south with the non-prescription of the north. I argued that previous attempts to minimize the difference by such figures as Barnett, Carter and above all Dumont were unsatisfactory, principally because they viewed the system synchronically and neglected the diachronic dimension. Synchronically, the two systems could only be brought together by invoking extra-kinship factorsespecially caste and certain ritual observances connected with it-or by comparing like with unlike, for example northern address terminologies with southern reference terminologies in Dumont's attempt (1966) to prove that the former were as classificatory as the latter. I advocated instead a diachronic approach that sought to find in the past the correlations ...
I have not read Bamford's volume, and given existing commitments I'm unlikely to do so. However, ... more I have not read Bamford's volume, and given existing commitments I'm unlikely to do so. However, in the context of this comment and Read and El Guindi's original review of Bamford, I think it would be opportune to remind ourselves briefly of how the relationship between gender and kinship in anthropology-and to an extent, therefore, between structure and culture-has evolved. This is because the arrival of gender in the discipline was historically associated with the elevation of culture as an explanation for kinship (in the supposed but increasingly maligned Schneiderian revolution), and that was no coincidence. In this respect, of course, gender arrived late at the table, much later than kinship, largely because most early ethnographers were men, and accordingly they had better access to male than female informants. Only later, as part of a struggle to establish gender more decisively as an anthropological topic, did authors such as Yanagisako and Collier (1987) and Howell and Melhuus (1993) start advocating a fusion of gender and kinship, both having been influenced by the cultural turn associated with David Schneider. There were also occasional voices advocating a rapprochement between culture and structure, including Janet Carsten, who also admits to problems with the culturally focused notion of 'relatedness' with which she is most identified (2000: 4-5; a response to Holy 1996: 169-72), and, in a more extended and perhaps rather more forthright manner, myself (Parkin 2009). Of course, to say 'gender' tends to suggest 'women' in practice, despite more recent work on so-called 'masculinities' (e.g. Vale de Almeida 1997). That must be avoided, as we are no longer in the early period when the previous failure to include women sufficiently in the ethnographic mix needs to be 'compensated' for by giving the pendulum an extra push in their direction.
The best known example of oblique marriage, i.e. marriage between an ego and an alter in adjacent... more The best known example of oblique marriage, i.e. marriage between an ego and an alter in adjacent genealogical levels,1 involves the marriage of a man with his ZD, to whom he himself is MB.2 There are a number of discussions of this phenomenon (Rivière 1969, Lavé 1966, Good 1980; also Parkin 1997: 106-8), but in general it is probably best interpreted as a variant of bilateral cross-cousin marriage in which a man takes his ZD as a wife not for his son but for himself. One property of the model is that, assuming lineage exogamy, such marriages are ruled out where there is matrilineal descent, as ZD and MB would then be in the same matrilineage (e.g. Good 1981). Accordingly the model of such systems is usually constructed in patrilines, even where descent in the society concerned may be cognatic. However, a recent work by Ian Walker on the island of Ngazidja in the Comoro Islands shows how a similar model can be constructed in matrilines (2010: 122, Fig. 3.11). As this has some theore...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1997
REVITALIZATION OR CONTINUITY IN EUROPEAN RITUAL? THE CASE OF SAN BESSU Jeremy MacClancy & Robert ... more REVITALIZATION OR CONTINUITY IN EUROPEAN RITUAL? THE CASE OF SAN BESSU Jeremy MacClancy & Robert Parkin Oxford Brookes University This article argues against Boissevain's thesis that many European rituals have recently under-gone revitalization after a ...
This is a study of kin terms and kinship terminologies in Indo-European (IE) languages. There is,... more This is a study of kin terms and kinship terminologies in Indo-European (IE) languages. There is, of course, no shortage of such studies already (e.g. Delbrück 1889, Hocart 1928, Galton 1957, Friedrich 1966, Szemerényi 1977, Kullanda 2002), which go back to the nineteenth century. By and large, however, most of them are concerned with reconstructing
The aim of this article is to consolidate accrued knowledge and understanding of the ways in whic... more The aim of this article is to consolidate accrued knowledge and understanding of the ways in which patterns of kinship terminologies may change over time. Study of this topic, as of terminological patterns generally, goes right back to Lewis Henry Morgan’s pioneering work in the middle of the nineteenth century, and we now have sufficient data and understanding of the issues involved to attempt grander paradigms than have been possible in the past. I wish to broach this issue here as a first step in this direction, while also acknowledging some of the problems involved. The discussion will inevitably be quite technical and specialized and will assume that the reader already has a degree of knowledge and understanding about these issues. First, however, some preliminaries are in order. The study of transformations of kinship terminologies clearly invites an evolutionary approach, and Morgan himself counts as one of the great evolutionists of the nineteenth century. Typical of his tim...
Th is is for the first time that the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA) decided to ... more Th is is for the first time that the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA) decided to publish a text of the annually held Ladislav Holý Lecture, hoping that future guest lecturers will also contribute with their texts. The editors would hereby like to thank to Dr. Elizabeth Hallam of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for her invaluable advice related to the design of peer review in the case of lecture texts.Text of the 2019 Ladislav Holy lecture, delivered in Prague on 12 January 2019 at theinvitation of the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA).
Izdevums sagatavots ar Korejas studiju akadēmijas Seed programmas (AKS-2018-INC- 2230004) finansi... more Izdevums sagatavots ar Korejas studiju akadēmijas Seed programmas (AKS-2018-INC- 2230004) finansiālu atbalstu.
I N.J. Allen has recently investigated the possibility of modelling transformations from tetradic... more I N.J. Allen has recently investigated the possibility of modelling transformations from tetradic society – which he devised as a model of prehistoric human kinship and is intimately linked to his scholarship – to what are conventionally known as Crow-Omaha systems, themselves the subject of a recent collection reappraising the problems associated with them (Trautmann and Whiteley 2012). Allen’s chapter appears in this volume and is immediately followed by a typically sceptical chapter by R.H. Barnes (2012), which should remind us of the controversy surrounding Crow-Omaha not only over what this hyphenated category of analysis actually means, but also over whether it actually means anything at all, even for the Crow and Omaha themselves (two Native American peoples of the USA). However, I am not concerned with these controversies here, which broadly speaking revolve around two more general concepts: kinship terminology and systems of affinal alliance. These two concepts can, of cour...
Introduction This is an article about kinship, and more particularly the meaning of kinship, an i... more Introduction This is an article about kinship, and more particularly the meaning of kinship, an issue that has characterized practically the whole history of anthropology from Lewis Henry Morgan’s pioneering studies, including the influential dismissals of kinship as a universal category by both Rodney Needham and David Schneider in the mid-twentieth century and the prominence given to Janet Carsten’s notion of ‘relatedness’ as part of the neo-Schneiderian revival of kinship study since the 1990s. Here I want to revisit the issues involved by bringing in notions of transcendence from religious studies, and in particular images of the transcendence of difference as a way of overcoming social division and disharmony. My starting point is that not only religion but also ideas about kinship can be used to express the internal unity of social groups or categories, often in opposition to other such groups and categories. In respect of kinship, these ideas are often expressed in terms of l...
IN a previous publication (Parkin 1990), I suggested a new way in which the conventional division... more IN a previous publication (Parkin 1990), I suggested a new way in which the conventional division of kinship systems in India between north and south might be viewed. At first sight this division seems radical, opposing as it does the prescription of the south with the non-prescription of the north. I argued that previous attempts to minimize the difference by such figures as Barnett, Carter and above all Dumont were unsatisfactory, principally because they viewed the system synchronically and neglected the diachronic dimension. Synchronically, the two systems could only be brought together by invoking extra-kinship factorsespecially caste and certain ritual observances connected with it-or by comparing like with unlike, for example northern address terminologies with southern reference terminologies in Dumont's attempt (1966) to prove that the former were as classificatory as the latter. I advocated instead a diachronic approach that sought to find in the past the correlations ...
I have not read Bamford's volume, and given existing commitments I'm unlikely to do so. However, ... more I have not read Bamford's volume, and given existing commitments I'm unlikely to do so. However, in the context of this comment and Read and El Guindi's original review of Bamford, I think it would be opportune to remind ourselves briefly of how the relationship between gender and kinship in anthropology-and to an extent, therefore, between structure and culture-has evolved. This is because the arrival of gender in the discipline was historically associated with the elevation of culture as an explanation for kinship (in the supposed but increasingly maligned Schneiderian revolution), and that was no coincidence. In this respect, of course, gender arrived late at the table, much later than kinship, largely because most early ethnographers were men, and accordingly they had better access to male than female informants. Only later, as part of a struggle to establish gender more decisively as an anthropological topic, did authors such as Yanagisako and Collier (1987) and Howell and Melhuus (1993) start advocating a fusion of gender and kinship, both having been influenced by the cultural turn associated with David Schneider. There were also occasional voices advocating a rapprochement between culture and structure, including Janet Carsten, who also admits to problems with the culturally focused notion of 'relatedness' with which she is most identified (2000: 4-5; a response to Holy 1996: 169-72), and, in a more extended and perhaps rather more forthright manner, myself (Parkin 2009). Of course, to say 'gender' tends to suggest 'women' in practice, despite more recent work on so-called 'masculinities' (e.g. Vale de Almeida 1997). That must be avoided, as we are no longer in the early period when the previous failure to include women sufficiently in the ethnographic mix needs to be 'compensated' for by giving the pendulum an extra push in their direction.
The best known example of oblique marriage, i.e. marriage between an ego and an alter in adjacent... more The best known example of oblique marriage, i.e. marriage between an ego and an alter in adjacent genealogical levels,1 involves the marriage of a man with his ZD, to whom he himself is MB.2 There are a number of discussions of this phenomenon (Rivière 1969, Lavé 1966, Good 1980; also Parkin 1997: 106-8), but in general it is probably best interpreted as a variant of bilateral cross-cousin marriage in which a man takes his ZD as a wife not for his son but for himself. One property of the model is that, assuming lineage exogamy, such marriages are ruled out where there is matrilineal descent, as ZD and MB would then be in the same matrilineage (e.g. Good 1981). Accordingly the model of such systems is usually constructed in patrilines, even where descent in the society concerned may be cognatic. However, a recent work by Ian Walker on the island of Ngazidja in the Comoro Islands shows how a similar model can be constructed in matrilines (2010: 122, Fig. 3.11). As this has some theore...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1997
REVITALIZATION OR CONTINUITY IN EUROPEAN RITUAL? THE CASE OF SAN BESSU Jeremy MacClancy & Robert ... more REVITALIZATION OR CONTINUITY IN EUROPEAN RITUAL? THE CASE OF SAN BESSU Jeremy MacClancy & Robert Parkin Oxford Brookes University This article argues against Boissevain's thesis that many European rituals have recently under-gone revitalization after a ...
This is a study of kin terms and kinship terminologies in Indo-European (IE) languages. There is,... more This is a study of kin terms and kinship terminologies in Indo-European (IE) languages. There is, of course, no shortage of such studies already (e.g. Delbrück 1889, Hocart 1928, Galton 1957, Friedrich 1966, Szemerényi 1977, Kullanda 2002), which go back to the nineteenth century. By and large, however, most of them are concerned with reconstructing
The aim of this article is to consolidate accrued knowledge and understanding of the ways in whic... more The aim of this article is to consolidate accrued knowledge and understanding of the ways in which patterns of kinship terminologies may change over time. Study of this topic, as of terminological patterns generally, goes right back to Lewis Henry Morgan’s pioneering work in the middle of the nineteenth century, and we now have sufficient data and understanding of the issues involved to attempt grander paradigms than have been possible in the past. I wish to broach this issue here as a first step in this direction, while also acknowledging some of the problems involved. The discussion will inevitably be quite technical and specialized and will assume that the reader already has a degree of knowledge and understanding about these issues. First, however, some preliminaries are in order. The study of transformations of kinship terminologies clearly invites an evolutionary approach, and Morgan himself counts as one of the great evolutionists of the nineteenth century. Typical of his tim...
Th is is for the first time that the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA) decided to ... more Th is is for the first time that the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA) decided to publish a text of the annually held Ladislav Holý Lecture, hoping that future guest lecturers will also contribute with their texts. The editors would hereby like to thank to Dr. Elizabeth Hallam of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for her invaluable advice related to the design of peer review in the case of lecture texts.Text of the 2019 Ladislav Holy lecture, delivered in Prague on 12 January 2019 at theinvitation of the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA).
Uploads
Papers