Exchange & mart
MEYER FORTES
The Elementary Structures of Kinship Claude Levi-Strauss edited by Rodney Needham (Eyre and Spottiswoode 90s) At last we have it: the long-awaited transla- tion of the book with which Levi-Strauss first made his impact on the anthropological world, twenty years ago. Readers who have wrestled with the intricacies of the original will not fail to admire its fidelity and elegance. Rodney Needham and his fellow-translators deserve gratitude for its excellence, for the care with which they have checked references and quota- tions, and for the index. But is this translation, one might ask, not a bit late in the day, more a gesture of homage than a significant service to scholarship? The exegesis and elaboration, criticism and vindication of the hypotheses ex- plored in this book by now add up to a con- siderable library. Has it not fulfilled its revo- lutionary purpose and been superseded? Levi- Strauss does not think so.
To judge by his preface to the French edi- tion (the second) on which the translation is based, he is prepared to modify his original position on such general issues as the oppo- sition he postulates between 'nature' and 'cul- ture' and he has amended the analysis, particularly of the crucial Australian and Kachin marriage systems, in response to criticism and new data. But he remains adamant about the validity of the model of exchange and reciprocity developed to account for the occurrence and functions of the ele- mentary structures of marriage and kinship he investigates in this book.
But what makes an English - translation timely and important is the dialectical (to use a favourite Levi-Straussian concept) composi- tion of this book. The framework of grand theory is developed at a level of generality and with the consistency and rigour we tend to regard as characteristic of the French socio- logical tradition. Its roots go back to Durk- heim and Mauss. But the ethnological data that provide the hypotheses central to the whole theoretical superstructure are taken from the earth-bound researches of, mainly, British and American anthropologists. Kinship and mar- riage have long been major subjects of field research among British and American anthro- pologists, especially since Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. But they have tended to con- centrate on particular tribes or regions and to fight shy of grand theory; and it is partly in reaction against this plodding empiricism that Levi-Strauss's book has been so widely acclaimed among Anglo-American anthropolo- gists. It is meet and important, therefore, that we should now be able to reassess it in English dress.
What, then, is the theory, or rather the con- stellation of method, theory and speculation by which this book made its first impact? Its subject is marriage in primitive and pre-
industrial societies. In such societies, Levi- Strauss declares, women are the most valuable of scarce goods. To maintain a group's con- tinuity the simplest arrangement would be for the men of a family to marry their own sisters and daughters. But the incest taboo precludes this. Like some earlier scholars, Levi-Strauss accepts the incest taboo as the attribute that (in a formula previously used by Malinowski) marks the transition of mankind from 'nature' to 'culture.'
The common view is that the taboo is a sexual prohibition calculated to eliminate inter- generational comgetition and thus to ensure the discipline on which the transmission of culture and the inculcation of social norms depend. Levi-Strauss harks back to E. B. Tylor and contends that its real purpose is to ensure out- marriage. It compels men to marry off their sisters and daughters to men of other families. The result is the process of exchange which underlies tribal marriage systems. This, how- ever, is a variety of gift-giving which springs from the universally effective principle of reciprocity, on the regular fulfilment of which the integration of every society depends.
The ingredients of this theory have long been familiar. It is in their fusion, and in the eleva tion of reciprocity and exchange to the status of almost Newtonian laws of social motion, that Levi-Strauss's innovation lies. This is behind the criticism that the theory is tautologous, and too general to account for particular patterns of social behaviour or forms of social institutions.
Controversy has focused more on Levi- Strauss's analysis of marriage systems than on the theory as such. What he terms the e1ep.; mentary or prototypical structure of marriage is best represented in the classical area of Aus- tralia. In the Kariera tribe everybody is classi- fied as related by kinship to everybody else, and marriage must therefore take place be- tween kin. The tribe is divided into two halves, A and B, corresponding to a rule by which all the women of a man's own generation are classified as either his sisters, who include the daughters of father's brothers and mother's sisters, and are in his moiety, or his cross'. cousins, the daughters of father's sisters or mother's brothers, who are in the opposite moiety. Since sisters are prohibited by the incest taboo, a man must marry a cross-cousin. To achieve this, A men exchange their sisters for the sisters of B men and vice versa in a pro- cess which Levi-Strauss calls 'restricted ex- change.'
A further development is 'generalised ex- change,' which arises by the emergence of a rule that is as fundamental as the incest taboo. Marriage with the paternal cross-cousin is for- bidden and the maternal cross-cousin thus becomes the prescribed bride. This necessitates at least three intermarrying groups, A giving their daughters to B, B to C and C to A in a circle of exchange. With larger numbers and greater cultural complexity, the circle is ex- panded, elaborated and embellished to accom- modate such features as differences of rank or political status and intermediate valuables like a bride price; but this signifies only the deferment of exchange.
Thus from the simplest structure of pre- scribed cross-cousin marriage to the most complex there is a continuity of principle. It reflects the ineluctability of the rule of ex- change which, governed by the law of reci- procity, ensures the integration of the social group. This, Levi-Strauss claims, is distinctive
of prescribed marriage with the maternal cousin; in the rarer cases of prescribed paternal cousin marriage, the result is oscillating ex- change which is not conducive to long-term social integration.
This summary does no justice to the learning, the technical virtuosity and the range of the argument. Some of the most exciting ideas appear to be thrown off incidentally, as in the comparison of marriage exchange with a communication system and in the apposition, in a way that foreshadows the later develop- ment of Levi-Strauss's thought, of the two types of cousin marriage in their unconscious as well as conscious implications. In fact, taken as a whole, what the book indirectly presents is a theory of the basic structure of human society as it is revealed in the marriage pat- terns of pre-industrial people, rather than simply of the foundations of kinship and marriage.
The theory of elementary marriage structures has been criticised for invoking 'final causes' instead of, in proper scientific spirit, seeking out the 'efficient causes'; for inadequately speci- fying the constitution of the groups that are supposed to carry out the exchanges; for over- looking the legal character of the rules cited; and for its uncritical handling of the ethno- graphic facts. A vast amount of research, in which some of the most distinguished anthro- pologists of our time have taken part, has been inspired by this book. But the questions raised by it still remain open. More generally, it is a book that will have to be read by anyone who wishes to understand the development of Levi-Strauss's thought and procedures of, scholarship in the past twenty years.
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