Dialectical Societies (Review Article) Dialectical Societies: The Ge and Bororo of Central Brazil.

by David Maybury-Lewis Review by: Peter Riviere Man, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Sep., 1980), pp. 533-540 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2801349 . Accessed: 20/01/2013 09:38
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DIALECTICAL

SOCIETIES

Review Article
PETER RIVIiRE

University ofOxford

theGe and Bororo societies: MAYBURY-LEwIs, DAVID (ed.). Dialectical ofcentral Brazil. xvi, 340 pp., illus., maps, tables, bibliogr. Cambridge, Mass.,

London:Harvard Univ.Press, I979.

I5

to social anthropology has The contribution of South Americanethnography been slow in coming, and even very recentlythe editor of a collectionof paperson thatsubcontinent saw fitto subtitle thevolume Ethnology oftheleast forthis, known continent (Lyon I 974). While there maybe a numberof reasons a main one is the slow startmade by ethnographers in the area. undoubtedly Even the pioneeringefforts of Curt Nimuendajiuwent virtuallyunnoticed in the Ge-speaking untilthe fortunate coincidenceof his interest peoplesand his association with Lowie. In the last decade the situationhas changed and while up to I970 therewas a relativedearthof published dramatically, works on Lowland South AmericanIndians,they have since become more numerousand theirqualityhas been of an increasingly high standard. Indeed thedecadeendedin an exceptional simultaneous flourish withthemore-or-less ofStephenHugh-Jones's Thepalmandthe Christine appearance Pleiades, HughFromtheMilk River, both of which deal with theTukanoan Barasana, Jones's and the volume reviewedhere. is dedicatedto thememoryof Nimuendaju,and manyof societies Dialectical thecontributions builton hisearlierefforts. The variousauthors are explicitly are at pains to give him creditwhere it is due, correcthim as necessary, but above all rescue the Ge from the anomalous position into which later commentators had forcedthemin using Nimuendaju'smaterialto fueltheir debates.This volume shouldfinally pointless lay to resttheparalleldescentof the Apinaye and the conjectures and gatherers about why and how hunters with a low level of materialculturehave such complex social organisation. forwelcomingthearrivalof thiscollection, These are good reasons and others will be given below, but first some generaland not uncritical comments are in order. too high forit Perhapsthe long wait forthis volume raisedexpectations cannotbe said thatit hasachievedall it mighthave done. This work is thefirst, and one regrettably the last,combined effort of the membersof the suspects Harvard Central Brazil Project.This programmewhich developed out of David Maybury-Lewis's own researches among the Sherenteand Shavante, involved six Americansand two Brazilians,apart from the project leader
Man (N.S.) I5,
533-40.

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PETER RIVILRE

To begin with, both the Bororo and Nambikwara were included himself. with the Ge, and while the latterhave been excluded the Bororo have held their place-although both Maybury-Lewis and Chris Crocker find it has necessaryto make excuses for their presence.That this is unnecessary recently been demonstrated by research among the Panara (Kreen-Akarore) which has revealedamong theseindisputably Ge-speaking people institutions verysimilarto thosereported fortheBororo (Heelas I980). fortheprojectwas carriedout in the I960's, but by the The basicfieldwork in Ge societieshad emerged so inherent end of thatdecade the factionalism Herein lies the main, if not totally unexpected, among the researchers. There is very little dialogue between the contributors disappointment. The result althoughsome have clearlyco-operatedmore closelythanothers. is thatwe are not providedwith the tightly controlledcomparativestudyof Ge societythatmighthave been hoped for.The authorshave gone theirown to one another's ways,oftenwith only minimalreference work,so thatwhile each article is good in its own right that extra somethinghas failed to This is bestillustrated at a generalexplanation materialise. by thetwo attempts of Ge society, theone by Maybury-Lewis and theotherby TerryTurner.

to the volume. Turner'stwo chapters represent thelargest singlecontribution of thesehe setsout a generalmodel forGe and Bororo societies, and In thefirst are not forthe in the second testsit againstthe Kayapo case. These chapters weak-hearted sincea mixtureof Parsonianand Marxistlanguageoftenmakes to becomethatmoreimpenetrable theargument to follow,and ittends difficult This mystification needsto be clearest. just at the pointswhere the argument to saywhich have is a pitysinceTurnerhas some extremely interesting things outsidetheGe context. importance It is difficult to summarisehis ideas but in briefhe is arguing that the fundamental in Ge societyis uxorilocality, institution by means of which a man'sdominanceover hiswifeand daughters withinthenuclearfamily can be into the controlthatthe wife'sfather exercisesover his daughter's translated husband within the extended family.These extended familiesform the peripheralsegmentsof those famouscircularor semi-circular villages.The mechanismby which the relationships between theseunits,that of spousetransfer(slightly misleadingly called spouse-exchangeby Turner), are maintained is provided by the communal institutionswhich are the feature of Ge social organisation. characteristic However, Turnerargues,the of thesereflect, in turn, thestructure of thehouseholdarrangements, structures and have as their organising principle the pattern of dominance and subordinationbetween senior and junior age-grades.To put it in Turner's words:
basis for this pattern[the relationship of hierarchybetween agealthough the effective and therelationship betweenthewife'sparents grades]is theprincipleof uxorilocal residence

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PETER RIVItRE

5 35

on the one hand and the daughterand daughter's husbandon the other,the extended-family household is not the primarysettingfor the realizationand expressionof the hierarchy of dominance and subordinationgeneratedfromit,just as it is not the primarylocus for the social specification of thestructure of extended-family relations perse. Both theovert relation of dominance and the structure of relationsthroughwhich it is generatedare more directly and fullyexpressedat the communal level of relations(I 67).

This summary does littlecreditto thecomplexityof theargument and the intricacyof the proof. Nor does it draw attentionto the wide range of phenomena, includingtheseasonaltreks, which Turneris able to incorporate in hismodel.The problem,however,is to knowjust how generally applicable the model is. Turnerhimself demonstrates itsadequacy with reference to the Kayapo, but thisis not particularly helpfulsince the model presumably was developed with the Kayapo in mind in the firstplace. Maybury-Lewis expresses some hesitancy about uxorilocality as a mechanismthroughwhich men exercisecontrolbut otherwise none of the contributors passescomment on the model. Without going into the mattertoo deeplyand merelyusingthe Shavante and Kayapo as examples it is possibleto demonstrate some quite significant in theorganisation differences of uxorilocalhouseholds. The Shavantefavour the marriageof a group of brothers with a group of sisters, and such unions must inevitablyweaken the dominantpositionof the father-in-law who is faced with a solidaryset of sons-in-law. Among the Kayapo, it is not only a rulewhich effectively breaksup the prohibited forbrothers to marry sisters, fraternal of restraint between group,but thereis also a conventionalattitude co-sons-in-law ofanyconcerted thatfurther thepossibility prevents opposition to thefather-in-law. It is not obvious thatTurner'smodel can accountforboth cases. thatare worth There are also some observations froma Guiananperspective settlement oftheGuianasthetypical making.Throughoutmuchoftheinterior householdof the Kayapo bears much in common with the extended-family inhabited Guiana villagesareoften and otherGe. Although, forvariousreasons, the tendencytowards uxorilocal residenceprovidesa by bilateralkindreds, in the past formatriliny. The flavourwhich has been mistaken matrilateral father's control over his daughter(for which he oftenhas to rely on the is at the root of emotivetiesbetweenthe women and her motherand sisters) but it is lesscertainthanTurnerappearsto make it among thisuxorilocality theKayapo. This fits withTurner's thatuxorilocality bothgenerates argument and is enforcedby the overarching Such institutions communal institutions. are not foundin theGuianasand villagesthereare much smallerthanthoseof the Ge. Gross (I979) has recentlypointed to the cross-cutting ties of in variousinstitutions and to help explain thesize of Ge villages, membership in some ways this Gluckmanesqueinterpretation underliesTurner'smodel too. At thesame timeit mightbe notedthatwhile TurnermakestheKayapo seem rule-bound, them Bambergerin heraccountof thesame people presents I do not think as havingconsiderable freedom of choice in theirmovements. thisis necessarily a problem since I suspectthatthereare lessonsto be learnt fromthehighlymobile Guianan Indians. about Ge uxorilocality

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forhispart, seesall Ge societies as workingout thepossibilities Maybury-Lewis, of antithesis intrinsic to theprinciples and complementarity. That dualityis a pervasivenotion in Ge thoughtcannotbe denied,and everywriteron these people,and notjustthecontributors to thepresent volume,hasdrawnattention to it. Maybury-Lewis's main focus is on the Central Ge, the Shavanteand Sherente, and he beginsby demonstrating thelatter are bestunderstood within the analytical framework he employedin his accountof theShavante(I967). He takesup the problemof Ge uxorilocality, and while acceptingthatit is a deniesthatit is adaptiveor carriesany practical significant pan-Geinstitution of the advantages.Insteadhe locatesits rationalein the symbolicsignificance whethertheirvillages are circularor semivillage layout. All Ge societies, between the centreassociatedwith men and public life, circular, distinguish and the periphery associatedwith women and domesticlife.So 'when men leave thispublic,male sphereto geton withtheprivate, domesticside of their lives,theygo to do so in their wives'houses'(234). It is notclearthatthisis true forall Ge, as Nimuendaj(u's accountof theessential and continuing importance of the maternal household for a Ramkokamekra man indicates (I 946). However, even if it were true, it is not explained why uxorilocalityis entailedsinceotherarrangements would be equally feasible. necessarily is its association An importantaspect of the centre/periphery distinction with politicalactivity. Among theCentralGe, politicallifetakesplace in the centre,while the NorthernGe try,some with more successthan others, to limit politicalactivityto the relationship betweenextendedfamilies on the thusleaving the centrefreeforceremoniallifeand the creationof periphery, harmoniousrelations.Furthermore, and this point will be returned to, the NorthernGe emphasisethe privateand physicalaspect of the individualas contrasted with his public and ceremonialpersona,the former relatedto the thelatter to thecentreof the village. periphery, Concentricdualism is not the only formof dualism here,and while it is importantamong the Northern Ge in maintainingwhat Maybury-Lewis refers to as two levels (public/private, etc.),in the case of the CentralGe the dominantoppositionis thatbetweenfactions, at leastin principle, recruited, This form of opposition is counterweighted patrilineally. by cross-cutting ofwhichthecriterion moieties formembership is age. It is patriliny among the CentralGe and matriliny among the Bororo which linksthecentrewith the and createsa single,total systemin contrastwith the two level periphery, schemeof the NorthernGe.

Although Maybury-Lewisuses the term patrilinywhen referring to the linkagebetweencentreand periphery among theCentralGe, theword,as he notes,has to be used with extremecaution.In the Ge contextthe conceptof unilineal descentas it is normallyconceived proved useless,even in those societies suchas theShavante, Sherente and Bororo that seemto be characterised by thisnotion.Crockerwrites:

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Bororo societydoes reston a categoricalantithesis between male and female, which has its expressionin nativeconceptualization of the radicallydifferentiated natureof the relationof a child with his father and thatwith his mother.But theepistemologicalfoundation of these relationsis not a 'physical',genealogical referent, but a symbolic,moral one. To anticipate laterarguments, theBororo clan is indeedperceivedas based on common substances, but ones of logical identity, not physicalstuff (256).

AlthoughCrockergoes on to writethatforvariousreasons theBororo do not entirelycontradicttraditional anthropological premisses, they by no means present a straightforward caseofmatrilineality. This is even moreso in thecase of the NorthernGe who, in thepast,were classified as matrilineal, but are in factcognatic.This pointdeserves some attention. As mentionedabove, the NorthernGe conceive of the individualas being a physicalbeing and a social persona, derivedfrom composed of two aspects, sources. On thisscoretheGe arenotalone in Lowland SouthAmerica. different For example, among some people of the Guianas the so-called couvade is concernedwith the problemof creating a physicaland non-physical directly in termsof are structured statedthat'the societiesof the continent recently fromEuropeanand African symbolicidioms that-and thisis the difference of groupsand the transfer of symbols-have no concernwith the definition of thebody' goods,butwiththeconstruction of thepersonand thefabrication (I979: io). The pointis well made,but a two-wayflowis involved,as theGe in certain materialmakes clear. The social personaresults fromrecruitment of individuals. groupswhich thusmaintainthemselves by theenrolment is regarded as deriving from substance the Among theNorthern Ge physical parents(theremay be more than one genitor),but the source of the social personavariesin an interesting way. Thus among the Kraho and the Krtkati, a boy receives hisname(s),and withit hissocialroles, a man who belongs from to therelationship whichincludesthespecifications mother's brother category and grandfathers. An Apinayeboy likewisereceives hisname froma member of the mother'sbrotherand grandfather categoryalthoughin thiscase it is themediationofsomeone,ideallya father's who becomeshis through brother, a boy to public adoptive father. Among the Kayapo, the taskof introducing lifefallsdirectlyto an adoptive or 'false' father. These differences are by no meansethnographic minutiae becausetheythrownew light, or shadow,on the whole vexed questionof Crow-Omaha terminologies. Althoughit will not, theGe material shoulddemonstrate, foronce and forall, thespuriousvalidity of thistypology. theNorthern Despitethelack of unilinealdescent, Ge groupsemploywhat are commonlycalled Crow-Omaha terminologies. Thus the Kayapo have an Omaha terminology, the Kraho a Crow terminology, while the Apinaye oscillatebetweenboth types. This variationis not relatedto any institutional differences since these groups all share a common set of institutions. The traditional hasbeengenealogical, but approachto Crow-Omaha terminologies Lave (with reference to the Krlkati)shows thatthismethodis inappropriate untouched because it leaves a whole and vital partof the social organisation in and unexplained.It is necessary to includethesystem of name transmission

being (RiviereI974:

Riviere& CampbellI977).

have Seegerand others

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PETER RIVItRE

orderto get thefullpicture. This Da Matta does fromthevantagepointof the variable Apinaye system.He focusesattentionon invariantterms in the NorthernGe relationship terminologies and makesthepointthattheseterms are equally capable of generating eithera Crow or an Omaha terminology. The way in whichthesocialpersonais transmitted is thedecidingfactor. In the Kayapo case,theroleofsocialprocreator is takenby an adoptivefather and this gives the terminologyits Omaha features. Among the Kraho, the role is performedby a mother'sbrotherand a Crow systemresults.Among the Apinaye,bothan adoptivefather and a mother's brother are involved,and the is capable of exhibiting system eitherCrow or Omaha features dependingon which of theseindividualsis stressed.

It mightbe askedat thispointiftheNorthern Ge do not in facthave unilineal descentdisguisedas name transmission. Da Matta faces just thisquestionand notes the similarity of the NorthernGe systemto a unilinealdescentone. However, he argues:
it is necessaryto differentiate between a type of social continuityrealized through an of paterand genitor(or between materand genetrix),as in unilinealsystems, identification and the type of continuityachieved by the Northern Ge. ... Although the formalresult mightbe the same,since a singleprinciplecould be seen to operatein both typesof systems, the ideologies of each type are sufficiently different to establish a crucial ethnographic distinction between them. I would say,therefore, in unilinealsystems thatthe continuity is obtained througha continuumordered in temporalterms... while continuity among the NorthernGe is obtainedthroughsubstitution (I 27).

Lave echoes this when she refers to the Krikati name-giverand nameis a highdegree receiver as a 'singlesocialpersonage'. She also stresses thatthere is achievedthrough nametransmission. ofgenealogical and continuity amnesia, based on repeatedshortcyclesrather However, Lave sees thisas a continuity Whetherthisimage is thecorrect one is thansome sortof linearprogression. a query that arisesboth from her own evidence and that of Melatti with and thefactof reference to theKraho. Given thenatureof name transmission in will be a for male names to concentrate there uxorilocalresidence, tendency a of will their names natal household because brothers transfer back to a group their sisters'sons. On the other hand, women's names, which go to their will be dispersedamong the various householdsinto brothers'daughters, This pointis speltout conciselyby Melatti: which the men have married.
When a man leaves his maternalhousehold to take up residencewith his wife,he leaves behind partof his social personality, incarnated in his sister's son, to whom he preferentially his name. Moreover, he takeswith him to his new place of residencepart of the transmits social personality of his sister, whose name is given to his own daughter.In this way, the transfer of namesactslike a compensationforthetransfer of residence. Given thepreferential rules for name transmission, certain male names tend to accumulate in certaindomestic while femalenames,which follow men as theymove from groups or residential segments, one residenceto another,tendto be spreadthroughout Kraho society(77-8).

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cyclesbetweenmother's In theseterms, thesystem appearslesslike one ofshort brotherand sister's son, or spatiallyfromHouse A to House B and back to just as effective as unilineal House A. Rather it is a scheme of continuity, descent, whereby social personae succeed one another in orderly linear progression. Given their socialinstitutions it is quiteeasyto appreciate why theGe might be concerned with the problem of continuity.In the field of kinship deniesit. As Turnerpointsout, uxorilocal residence has certain uxorilocality over virilocality, but only acrossa advantagesin termsof familysolidarity of name small genealogicalrangeand shallow genealogicaldepth.The system forthisfeature transmission of the residential practice. Although compensates Crocker has a different explanationforBororo uxorilocality(which thereis no space to discuss here)to a degreehe seemsto be sayingthesame thingin an earlierarticlewhen he writes:'The two idiomsof blood and name constitute axes runningat rightangles to one another,the first throughtime and the otherthroughspace' (i 977: 255). On the otherhand it mightbe possibleto in predictthatwhere uxorilocal residenceis not combined with an interest suchalternative of transmission would systems social or individualcontinuity be superfluous and probablynot occur.This isjust thecase in theGuianas.

on a rather This reviewhasconcentrated limitednumberofthemes, and others mightusefully have been tackled.For example,therehas been no spaceto deal with the topics of age and sex which most contributors demonstrate to be in the organisation fundamental of Ge society.On the otherhand, principles at the Ge, one cannot help being struckby how peeringout of the forest unimportantmarriageappears to be in the total scheme of things.If the contains a lot ofloose endswaitingto be knotted itdoes volume itself together, for a and indicatethatthe Ge are tailor-made comparativestudy succeedsin of Those who are the greatpotential thisapproach. sceptical demonstrating about whetherany advances have been made in the subject over the last societies with African should compare Dialectical systems generation ofkinship The silent of models as well as manyothertimeandmarriage. African rejection honoured approaches and concepts is the clearest indication that South to thewider Americanethnography hascome ofage and is readyto contribute debate. anthropological

REFERENCES

Gross, Daniel R.

Actesdu XLIIe Congres Crocker, Christopher J. I977. Why are the Bororo matrilineal? desAm&ricanistes, International 245-58. inhonor & W. E. Wagley (eds)M. L. Margolis anthropological perspectives: essays ofCharles New York: ColumbiaUniv.Press. Carter. of Central Brazil. a Ge tribe of thePanara, H. I980. The socialorganization Heelas,Richard Thesis;Univ.ofOxford.
I979.

A new approach to Central Brazil social organization. In Brazil:

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Hugh-Jones, Christine. theMilkRiver:Spatial 1979. From andtemporal processes in northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Univ.Press. Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1979. The palmand thePleiades: initiation and cosmology in northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Univ.Press. Lyon,Patricia J. (ed.) 1974. NativeSouthAmericans: ethnology oftheleastknown continent. Boston: Little, Brown& Co. David I 967. Akwe-Shavante Maybury-Lewis, Oxford: society. Clarendon Press. Nimuendajiu, Curt1946. TheEastern Timbira. & Los Angeles: Berkeley California Univ.Press. PeterI974. The couvade:a problem Riviere, reborn. Man (N.S.) 9, 423-35. Peter & AlanCampbellI977. A field Riviere, oftheOyampiIndians ofAmapa, study North Brazil. Finalreport to theS.S.R.C.on Grant HR276i/i. etal. I 979. A construSao Seeger, Anthony da pessoa nassociedades Boletim doMuseu indigenas. Nacional, Antropologia 32.

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