Kinship vis--vis Myth Contrasts in Lvi-Strauss' Approaches to Cross-Cultural Comparison Author(s): James A. Boon and David M.

Schneider Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Oct., 1974), pp. 799-817 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/674306 Accessed: 20/03/2009 11:36
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist.

http://www.jstor.org

Myth Kinship vis-a-vis in L6vi-Strauss' Approaches Contrasts Comparison to Cross-Cultural

JAMESA. BOON Institute forAdvanced Study, Princeton DAVIDM. SCHNEIDER Universityof Chicago comparativestudies The enormoussecondary literaturewhich relates Levi-Strauss' to different schools of thought has failed sufficiently to emphasize the majordisthe basicmethodological continuity within his own work. This paper characterizes differences in his approachesto "kinship"andto "myth."It then suggestshow, by constructivelyrefine variconcentratingon the kinship/mythdistinction, we maght ous structuralastconcepts, such as distinctive feature analysis and the logical foundations of the "elementary"kinshipstructures.Only by concentratingon the few inconsistencies in Levi-Strauss'remarkablycoherent corpus of work can an adequatecritiqueof hastheoriesof comparisonbe commenced. has made two major contributionsto AT THE MOST GENERAL LEVEL Levi-Strauss anthropology as a comparativescience: (1) a means of interrelatingdifferent reified "societies" by contrastingtheir principles of social differentiationand cohesion, set in relief by humancapacity-the analogical (2) a means of analyzinga particular his concept of marriage; capacity-which characterizesall men, but is more conspicuous (to outside observers)in preliteratetribalmyths. Both contributions are fundamentally ethnological rather than ethnographic. The ElementaryStructuresof Kinshp (hereafterESK) comparesselect groupsaccordingto how their rules and terms involving "cousins" relate to a theory of marriage-as-reciprocity. data sort of ethnographic tendency in a particular Mythologiquesdetects a self-comparativist which, in and of itself, can articulate cross-culturaldifferences. "Myths" are documents translated by fieldworkers which record a differential classification tendency (pensee sauvage).They are the evidence of how a society selects concrete items from experienceto articulate its distinctive features in contrast to other societies. Mythologiques compares select groups accordingto how they have comparedthemselves.This paper emphasizesthe approaches contrast between ESK and Mythologiques,the basic differences in Levi-Strauss' to kinship data and mythological data, which recall traditionalcontrasts between "social" frameworkshave been and "cultural"anthropology. We argue that formal-methodological abstractedfrom these studies prematurely,and that two diversekinds of endeavorhave too First we review and summarizethe kinship/ often been glossed as a single "structuralism." myth opposition. Then we illustrate some areas-"distinctive feature matrixes" and "the with this opposition firmly elementarykinship continuum"-that requirereconceptualizing

Submitted for publication April 1 0, 1 9 7 4 Accepted for publication July 1 0, 1 9 7 4

799

800

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[76,1974

grasped. And throughout the paper we ask what might result if "kinship" were treated more as ''myth.''l KINSHIP/MYTH In his treatment of kinship Levi-Strauss deals with ethnographic matenals, reported by observers who have collected data from native informants, in terms of the following premises: (1) Each society has a distinct kinship system which can be treated apart from other aspects of the society and its culture (ESK, 480-2). (2) Each society is an entity, a whole charactenzed by a particular kinship system, e.g., the Kachin system, the Murngin system. (3) A kinship system can be defined provisionally as a "way of classifying people and defining their nghts and duties in accordance with past marnages and in provision of future ones" (Levi-Strauss, personal correspondence); moreover: kinship systems, marriage rules, and descent groups constitute a coordinated whole, the function of which is to insure the permanency of the social group by means of intertwining consanguineous and affinal ties. They may be considered as the blueprint of a mechanism which "pumps" women out of their consanguineous families to redistribute them in affinal grouFs, the result of this process being to create new consanguineous groups, and so on [Levi-Strauss 1967a:302-303.] (4) The elementary kinship structures are elaborations on the irreducible social bond intelligible in the relations between a man and his sister, his wife and her brother, and offspnng-the avunculate "atom of kinship" (Levi-Strauss 1967:46). The indigenes' own views of their kinship are considered but must be tabled as anything more than a part of the ethnographic material for analysis. In fact, along with anthropologists, natives themselves may be "guilty of methodological contrivance" (ESK, 110). Analytic oppositions are formed not from actual recorded excerpts of native just-so stories about their kinship relations, but from the fixed and presumably universal elements of a social organizational scheme deemed appropriate for all societies and centering on incest prohibition, exogamy, marriage, descent, residence, etc., and related nomenclatures. The symptomatic elementary trait remains the relationship of a given group to either cross-cousin marriage, or rules of exogamy, or dual organization as "so many examples of one basic structure" (ESK, 123). We can gloss this "basic structure" for the kinds of societies at issue approximately as: a man takes a woman from a positively-defined class or genealogical position, which marriage implies an immediate or eventual return of a woman. The basic opposition is between "consanguinity" (the social portion a daughter is married out of) and "affinity" (the social portion a daughter is married in to), with marriage as the basic cohesive operator. Whether the natives do or do not phrase the opposition in terms of "marriage" or even whether any of the three aspects-consanguinity, afElnity, marriage-coincide with indigenous, articulationsJ is only a secondary concern. Accordingly, whether the system has clans or lineages is something for the obsener to decide, for "clan" and "lineage" are technical concepts. Levi-Strauss defines a kinship system as one which specifies the rights and duties of men with respect to the exchange of women between groups, but this exchange is specified as "marriage." The mere exchange of slaves or of hostages is another matter. Such arrangements appear devoid of systematic sociolocal significance, whereas in positive systems the exchange of women as "marriage partners" occurs by perpetual social rule. Moreover, "marriage provisions" are complicated in actuality by children produced by the sexual relations licensed by those marnages. The relationships between men and their wives' brothers are augmented by relationships between the children and mothers' brothers, childrenand fathers, and through fathers to fathers' sisters, etc.

Boon and Schneider]

KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS MYTH

801

Thus, accordingto this approachmamage must entail sexual relationships which in turn must be fecund. Othenvisethe condition, "with respect to past marriages and in provisionof future ones," could not be met. This scheme disqualifiles certain native notions of "marriage" as genuine marnage.g., unions between men and transvestitesin some Plains Indians. Yet the Zulu "marnage"between two women-where the "wife" is impregnated by a designatedmale, while some other male is her "husband" and the "father"of the offspnngapparently qualiEles.Levi-Strauss does indeed note: "It is far from our mind to claim that the exchange or gift of women is the only way to establishan alliancein primitivesocieties" (ESK, 483). He allows for fnendship and homosexuality, but then expressesthese reservations: However, the whole difference between the two types of bond can also be seen, a sufficiently clear definition being that one of them expresses a mechanicalsolidarity (brother), while the other involves an organicsolidarity (brother-in-law, or god-father). Brothers are closely related to one another, but they are so in terms of their similarity.... By contrast, brothers-in-law are solidary because they complement each other and have a functionalefficacy for one another,whetherthey play the role of the opposite sex in the erotic games of childhood, or whether their masculine alliance as adults is confirmed by each providingthe other with what he does not have-a wife-through their simultaneousrenunciationof what they both do have-a sister.The first form of solidarity adds nothing and unites nothing; it is based upon a culturallimit, satisfied by the reproduction of a type of connexion the model for which i8 provided by nature. The other bringsabout an integrationof the groupon a new plane [ESK, 484. ] The "new plane" in LEvi-Strauss' view is the cultural aspect of the humansocial condition, wherein offspnng are morally bonded to their parentsand cross-parental generation,and act
accordingly.2

In short, the facts of humanreproduction,proceedingunderthe orderlyrules of alliance, make "marriage" the critical bond in the system of exchangecalled "kinship"in ESK. For, only fecund marriages can providefor the future of the system by producingthe actors who make the marriages back. The future marriages convert the "atom of kinship"into kinship's "fundamentalquartet" (ESK, 442-443), expressedmost directly to Levi-Strauss in societies
. *

practlclng

cross-cousln

marrlage:

viz., in the older generation,a brotherand a sister,and in the following generation,a son and a daughter,i.e., all told, two men and two women; one man creditor and one man debtor, one woman received and one given. If we were to envisagethis quartet as constructed in a system of marriagebetween parallelcousins, an essential difference would appear.The quartet would then include an unevennumberof men and women, i.e., three men and one woman in the case of marriage between cousins descended from brothers.... In other words, ... the structureof reciprocity could not be set up [ESK, 443] . Throughout ESK there persists an ambiguityin the argumentarisingfrom Levi-Strauss' distinction between two different kinds of function. There is "use-function"in the British functionalistsense involvinghow one part of a social system integratesthe other partsand facilitates cohesion of the whole. The other kind of function is a kind of "algebraic" function, the systematic relationship among sets of meaningful parts, illustrated in the forumla A:B::X:Y (Levi-Strauss 1950:xxxv, ff).3 For Levi-Strauss two differentapproaches are needed in the study of kinship. Use-functions involve the organizationof groups, the actual exchange of women and the different kinds of social cohesion which follow from these. But in ESK "algebraic-function" argumentsappearonly at the comparativelevel of the interrelationsof the sociologlcal use-functionsthemselves,not at the level of isolating the actual customs and rules analyzed (see below). In studies of myth these two functions are merged,not because there is no use-functionin myth but becausethe use-functionis the algebraic-function. Because myth has no function besidesestablishingorderlinessamongthe

802

ANTHROPOLOGIST AMERICAN

[76,1974

of concrete experience it selectively reduces,Mythologiquesappearssolely preocelements with algebraic-functions. cupied In ESK, however, the primaryconcern is the use-function and the secondaryconcern although incest and the logic of the elementarystructuresthemselvesare algebraic-function, all turn on the algebraically.The problemsof cross-cousinmarriage conceptualized partially questionof how social cohesion is providedfor (althoughnot necessarilyrealized) by marriagenorms and how a particularsocial organizationis structured.It is shown that there are inherent limitations in direct exchange than in generalizedexchange, and that there greater are greater limitations- to an analytically imposed theory of social cohesion and group dynamics-in patrilateralthan in the matrilateralcross-cousinmarriage.The latter elemensystem allows the greatestrangeof social segmentsto be includedby non-contarymarriage provision. The analysisasks which men, organizedin what way, exchange marriage flicting which women with which other men, by what rules to achieve what kind of "functional" cohesion.Witnessthis decidedly functionalistpassage: a human group need only proclaim the law of marriagewith the mother's brother's daughterfor a vast cycle of reciprocity between all generationsand lineages to be organized, . . . whereasmarriagewith the father'ssister'sdaughterforces the interruptionand reversalof collaborationsfrom generationto generationand from lineage to lineage. In one case, the overallcycle of reciprocityis co-extensivewith the groupitself both in time and in space, subsisting and developing with it. In the other case, the multiple cycles which are continually created fractureand di.stortthe unity [conceptual?, actual?-but rules are normative,not empirical] of the group [ESK, 450; our insert]. patrilateral ESK analysis consists in stipulatingthe marriagerules for how social bonds are formed one to among groups or categories.It takes the incest prohibition(i.e., social rulesrequiring of the role the analyze not, "copulatesomewhat out") as a universalgiven, thereforeitneed where Systems systems. all in role constant its only but incest prohibition in each system, alternative(eithermythically or for a select few) kinds of incest are conceived as a marriage are dispensedwith (e.g., ESK, 487). ESK assumesthe use-functionof genealogyis constant for all systems and classifiespeople by biological parentagebefore askingwhat "biological" parentageculturally consists of in each ease. ESK only tangentiallydiscusses"cultures"as systems of symbols and meanings for particularspace-time isolates. Culturalquestions of cases, whetheradoption is equated symbolic interrelationsip-whatincest meansin particular a sword or a tree, etc,-are of "marry" can one with "blood relationship" and how, if are effected only by comparisons and society, reified each analyzing in secondary salience applied Mauss'principle of reciprocity using a social cohesion etic framework.Levi-Strauss systematically to show how an analyticallycomplete range of social cohesion-types-from needs simultaneously(directexchange) to many two groupssatisfying each other's marriage systems)-was implicit in dif(matrilateral eventually alliance of cycle a completing groups ferent positive marriagerule alternatives.ESK documents the ways different kinds of total elementarystructure systems achieve different forms of social cohesion. And the particular certain societies cohesion social of degrees the affecting adopted is viewed as a constraint, etc. setting, ecological demography, as important as least at achieve, employs a use-functiontheory based on To summanze aspects of ESK: (1) LEvi-Strauss genealogy, incest prohibition, residence, descent, definitions of kinship and marriage, needs of social cohesion. He fulfill to interrelated are these all assumes which etc., exogamy, uses actual native textual materials only insofar as they mesh with this theory. (2) His and not with problemsof "cultures."The concernis with problemsof "social organizations" interrelationof different social rules as algebraic its in rests study the of "structuralism" most directly intelligible in cross-cousinmarriageprinciples. Thus the major "culture"in ESK is the "culture" of the theory of social organization variants. (3) The innovation

Boon and Schneider]

MYTH KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS

803

LEvi-Strauss introduced into the study of kinship-in a self-proclaimed direct line from R. Lowie-was his application of "exchange" as a central and irreducible element in social organization. Mauss' concept of exchange is explicitly related to the fundamental we/they social unit (the necessarily-different-but-interrelatable-as-differentiated unit familiar in Durkheim's concepts of mechanical/organic solidarity). The social unit in ESK is seen as fundamentally coded by the avunculate and marriage rules centering on it which pronounce different portions of society marryable. (4) Here are Levi-Strauss' early attempts to develop techniques of structuralism-the use of opposition, mediators, and operators, arising around the nature of the avunculate relationship perpetuated through the generations-which are later developed in the Mythologiques series. In Levi-Strauss' approach to myth the "algebraic-function" eventually achieves prominence. In "The Structural Study of Myth" he studies myths for the same reasons any comparativist folklorist might: Mythology confronts the student with a situation which at first sight appears contradictory. On the one hand it would seem that in the course of a myth anything is likely to happen. There is no logic, no continuity. Any characteristic can be attributed to any subject; every conceivable relation can be found. With myth, everything becomes possible. But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions. Therefore the problem: If the content of a myth is contingent, how are we going to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar? [1967a:203-204]. This early article glosses a simplifying technique for discovering the logic of mythic organization of materials. The technique is pronounced preliminary and the Oedipus example inappropnate. Even so, it is already clear that no simple theory of myth-analogous to the "elementaxy structural" kinship theory derived from cross-cousin marriage provisions or concepts of dual organization enables us summarily to compare the whole of one group's "mythic materials" to another group's. Levi-Strauss' comment that classicists might dispute the basic units he detects in Oedipus suggests that no privileged portion of myth limits the form an entire mythic system can take, as he feels the privileged portion of kinship known as "marriage rules" limits the form an entire kinship system can take. This technique is applied to a traditional anthropological problem in Totemism,is related to various Western philosophical traditions in The Savage Mind, and in Mythologiquesis expended to demonstrate something about the texts now to be studied as a corpus. His thesis is a simple one: that New World preliterates display a "common conception of the world": From the start then, I ask the historian to look upon Indian America as a kind of Middle Ages which lacked a Rome: a confused mass that emerged from a long-established doubtless very loosely textured syncretism, which for many centuries had contained at one and the same time centers of advanced civilization and savage peoples, centralizing tendencies and disruptive forces . . . [the set of myths] such as the one studied here, owes its character to the fact that in a sense it became crystallized in an already established semantic environment, whose elements had been used in all kinds of combinationnot so muchs I suppose, in a spirit of imitation but rather to allow small but numerous communities to express their different originalities by manipulating the resources of a dialectical system of contrasts and correlations within the framework of a common conception of the world [Levi-Strauss 1970:8; our italics]. He argues this thesis by drawing algebraic analogies (pensee sauvage) between concrete referents in the texts.4 He demonstratesthe "common conception of the world" of Indian America by mouing throughits manifestationsin myths, using the sarne logical processes by which, he suggests, this ongoing conceptualizing of the world occured. Levi-Strauss states

804

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[76,1974

initially that the only means to verify his interpretations is: (1) to transformthe constallation of algebraicanalogiesbetween the referentsin one text, (decoded in light of extensive social contextual and environmentaldata) into those of other texts (this is essentiallywhat Volume II does for I); (2) to move acrossthe whole corpus eventuallyencompassed,finally to analyze its extreme reaches, and then by similar transformations to relate these distant myths back to the first parts of the corpus considered (this is what Volumes III and IV do for I and II). It is an essential, not merely a convenient, starting point of Mythologiquesthat all texts are translatable.Something of their bizarre contents is presened even in translationsinto Indo-European languages.Only if part of their internallogic is translatable can "structural" mythic analysis begin. There is good ethnographicreason to suspect that texts have (at a more complex level than "motifs") moved across different New Worldlanguageswithout sacrificingcertain principles of consistency, and a myth is vaiiantswhich seem related have been documentedacross especially valuable if multiple space and languages.Whatappear translatable are combinations,juxtapositions,and sequencesof outlandishcomposite images. But never is mythologicaldata restatedin termsof an externalanalytic (as in ESK)involving residence,descent, affiliation, cohesion, etc., although myths can in fact employ actual ethnographic facts in their systematic signification.Mythic units remainthingslike stinking opossums, fishermen-in-whale-stomachs, incentuous-downstream-aunts, etc.-i.e., complex concreteimages. Levi-Strauss adopts no motif index and finds no differentiationby social functionnecessary."Agricultural myths," "solar myths," "rites of passagemyths," "origin myths" are all simply myth. Levi-Strauss assumesthat a group'smyths approximatea recordof its selective reduction of its sensory environmentinto orderly arrangements. But a group'smythic corpus is not simply a direct encoding of the members'sharedsensory experience;it is ratheran encoding that is itself differentiatedfrom neighboring groups'codes, and from the same group'scodes intimes past. Only twice does Levi Straussexamine more thoroughly the myths and contexts of particulartribes (in Vol. I and the Salishin Vol. IV); but even these are not intended as exhaustive.Mythologiquesrathertracesdifferentiationsacross groups,which is a perfectly sound strategy for detecting the "semanticenvironment"implicit in equivalencesand contrasts that New World preliterateshave used to distinguish themselves from their natural surroundings and from their cultural neighbors. Someone else may attempt the definitive study of particular tribes' myths, or of the way these myths relate to other social and economic matters. L6vi-Straussdoes not preclude these projects, but he chooses not to achieve them and opts for an internalanalysisof "myth." Thus, most simply Mythologiquescorrespondsto an extended exercise in provingseemingly disparateelements are transfonnedmembersof the same "set." But the anthropological significance of the exercise increasesif it can be shown: (1) that a particularkind of general logical process correspondsto this analogicalset-building; (2) that, empincally,vari ous populations have employed the process extensively to identify themselves and differentiate their experiences from their neighbors'.Then the indigenous analogizing can be reanalogized into Mytholog:ques; Levi-Strauss provideshis own best summary: The Salish-speaking peoples. . . often speak their myths of a deceitful genie who, whenever a problem puzzles him, excretes hisin two sisters imprisoned in his bowels, whereupon he demands their advice by threatening them with a torrentialdownpour: they, being excrement,would disintegrate. Now, in Salish myths, the same genie for himself two adoptivedaughters,out of raw salmon roe. When they're fully creates grown, he desires them. Testing his position, he pretends to call them by mistake"my wives"instead of "my daughters." They promptly take offense and leave.

Boon and Schneider]

KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS MYTH

805

Finally, the Salish tell of a third pair of supernaturalwomen. These women are marriedand are incapableof expressingthemselvesin articulatespeech. They live at the bottom of naturalwells and upon request,send up dishes of hot, well-cookedfood to the surface. These three motifs cannot be understoodapart from one another.On the other hand, once you compare them, you notice their common origin. All the women are relatedto water: either, as in the case of the well women, to stagnantwater, or to runningwater for the two other pairs. The latter are distinct from one anotherin that the salmon-roedaughterscome from a positive, earthly source of water-salmon streams-and the excrement-sisters are threatened with destruction by a negative,heavenly source of watethe disintegrating rain. That's not all: the salmon-roedaughtersand excrement-sisters are the products of either raw (in the first case) or cooked (in the other) food, while the well-womenare themselves producers of cooked food. Further, the well-women,if you permit me, are "marrying-types"as wives and good cooks. The other two pairs are "non-marrying types," whether because they are labeled as sisters or because they avoid incestuous marriagewith their foster father. Finally two pairsof women are endowed linguistically: one for their wise counsel, the other because they catch on to a half-spoken,improper hint. In this way they contrastwith the thirdpair,the well-women,who cannot speak. Thus from three meaninglessanecdotesyou extract a system of pertinentoppositions: water, stagnant or moving,from the earthor sky; women createdfrom food or producing it themselves,raw or cooked food: women accessibleor opposed to marriage depending upon linguistic or non-linguisticbehavior.You arriveat what I'd call a "semantic field" which can be applied like a grill to all the myths of these populations, enablingus to disclose their meaning[ 197 la: 48-49 ] . Mythologiques maps one version of such a gnll for North and South Amencan Indian groups. Only secondanly does it employ the gnll to reachnon-mythologicconclusions.But the full circularsignificanceof the four volume study is this: the Salish myths compose a vast sociological, economical and cosmological system establishing numerous correspondencesbetween the distribution of fish in the water network, the various markets where goods are exchanged, their periodicity in time and during the fishing season, and finally exogamy: for, between groups, women are exchangedlike foodstuffs. The enjoyment of a diversified diet functions in myths as a sign of how open each small society is to the outside world, an indication of the degree to which these various societies are willing to engage in maritalexchanges, and thus to communicatewith one another.... The myths . . . referredto are the same ones which in South Americaserveto account for the passagefrom nature to culture,symbolized by the acquisitionof cooking fires, to man's benefit. But in these North Americanpopulations, which engagedwidely in intertribal exchanges,mythic imageryaccentuatesthat aspect which, to them, constitutes the distinctive trait of civilized life. Accession to culture is no longer indicatedby the simple art of cooking meat, but by the founding of commerce, giving this term a social and economic sense . . . [ 197 la :49 ] . Mythologiquesfrustratesthe more sociologically minded readerbecausedifferentgroups cannot be contrasted by the ways they handle "myth" (except perhaps in terms of prevalenceversus nearabsence). No solid perspectiveby use-functionis gainedby "myth" as for "kinship," where direct exchange societies contrast holistically to patnlateral crosscousin societies, etc. Another frequent criticism is that Mythologiquesoverlooks the actual living groups that have created the textual materialsunder analysis. Yet both complaints seek to deny Levi-Strauss what he is most tryingto demon.trate. He purposefullytreats the texts not insofar as they are constitutive of the affect- aden, self-identity of particular groups,ratheras they establishdiacriticalrelationsacrossvariousgroups-groupswhich need never be wholly isolated or reified. This procedure is not to imply that myths are never

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 806 [76,1974 codifiers of positively integrated identity (and certainly the Salish myths as analyzed come near being this), but only that the differential or diacritical aspects of the texts can be emphasized and in fact constitute their peculiarly "mythic" quality: every myth is by nature a translation, originating either in another myth issuing from a neighboring but foreign population, or in an anterior myth of the same population, or in a myth that is contemporary but the property of clan, lineage, family, brotherhoodFanother myth another social subdivision (clan, subthat translating it in his fashion into his personal or tribal an auditor seeks to plagiarize in language, as much to appropriate it as to contradict (dementir) it, thus inevitably deforming it. Rarely seized upon at their origin and in a state opposition between myths emerge vigorously from a of vitality, these relationships of philological study of myths does not constitute an comparative analysis. If thus the [our emphasis], the reason for this lies in what one indispensable preliminary approach Each of the myths' transformations results from might call myths' diacritical nature. a dialectical opposition to another transformation, and their essence resides in the irreducible opposition. Considered from an empirical point of view, face of translation by and for every myth is at once pristine (primitif) in relation to itself, and derived in relation to other myths; it is situated not in a language and in a culture or sub-culture, but at the point of articulation of cultures with other languages and other cultures. Myth is thus never in its language (de sa langue), it is a perspective on another language . . . lLevi-Strauss 1971b576-577; our trans. ] . In fact, in Volume III we see that if individual texts begin to take on a strong internal integrity, a serial plot-line consistence or a literal reflection of the life experience of the groupnarrating them, they become more oral "novel" or literature and less "myth." Mythologiques demonstrates the diacritical aspect of preliterate semiotic activity. The ultimate comparativistintegrity of myth is a negative, constrastive one. Myths express intertribal, cross-cultural, cross-language differential stereotypes. Totemic representations create anidentity for a set of clans by delineating in concrete forms what each is not, what each mustnot do, eat, etc. In a similar way group identities achieved by myths are not positive, hermeneutic ones but differential, structuralist ones. Myths portray the relations between thenatural world and the social world-real or imaginary-in a way which enables members of societies to take cognizance of themselves as much for not replicating in their actual practicesthe mythic universe as for occasionally replicating parts of the classifications comprisingthat universe. Most important, myths reveal internal principles of consistencyequivalencefor the sake of equivalence, inversion for the sake of inversion-which can be analyzedwithout isolating each culture area as a mythic type, and without an exterior analytic of the social needs to interrelate factions, establish residence, etc. Living groups do thesethings-no one denies this-but the mythic formulations are at the comparative level independentof such needs. For living groups also stereotype and classify their experience differentially; and this is the subject and object of Mythologiques. 5 To summarize, Levi-Strauss refuses to do with mythic data what he does with kinship data: he says kinship data must pertain to social cohesion needs of actual groups; mythic data need not. He studies myth filrst as independent, meaningfully contrasted sets of significations exchanged through time and across languages and space. Mythologiques seeks to demonstrate there is a discernable order to myth at this level. Only secondarily does he analyze particular, localized elaborations of some selection from this intercontinental semantic universe-where honey codes both sperm and menstrual blood, opossums mark ritual stench, etc.-and describe the dialectic interrelations of certain mythic texts with actual local history and environmental conditions (cf. Levi-Strauss 1967b). For the mythic units reflecting on this experience and basic social needs are pre-constrained, imperfectly coined to directly disclose any social cohesive reality. Simply as "myth" they have an internal logic. One might say Lfivi-Strauss defines kinship (as primarily operated through marriage) as that aspect of social life which pertains to the social cohesion of proximate
-

Boon and Schneider]

KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS MYTH

807

differentiated groups; and myth as that which identifies-by-distingltishing groups according to the sensory codes they have abstracted from their experience. Thus, the pnorities in ESK and Mythologiquesare reversed. And the central question becomes not only, as many critics have asked: "Cannot there be a kinship of myth?"-i.e., use-function constraints on these "mythic" algebraic-function relations; but more to our interest: "Cannot there be a myth of kinship?" By "kinship" we intend those classifications of solidary actors (defined by "descent," marriage rule, and other symbols) which sene comparativelyas diacriticals for differentiating identities across societies, and which sene within a given population to inform its experience, but not in a simple relationship with ecology, demography, or actual social cohesion. And is this "kinship" neglected if one sees use-function as the essential factor in matters of incest and marriage? There is, we suggest, an element of "myth" in "kinship," whereby peoples can handle what analyzers call incest, marriage, kin terms, descent and collateral bonds, etc., independently of hypothetical "social needs" of the group; and ignonng this fact can lead to faulty arguments.

EITHER-OR MATRIXES AND META-MATRIXES Differences between two kinds of analysis-here represented by ESK and by Mythologiques-can be obscured by premature confidence in formal methodologies and analytic paraphernalia such as "bundles of binary distinctions." To argue that an analysis proceeds by isolating sets of distinctive features is not sufficient cause to label it "structuralist" or even one kind of analysis. A case in point occurs in I. Buchler and H. Selby's Kinshipand Social Organizahon,when the authors illustrate two examples of what they call "the same kind of method of explanation," i.e., describing a set of items as a (Jakobsonian) distinctive feature matnx. The first example cited is Levi-Strauss' cross-cultural elaboration of R. Needham's work on Penan "mourning terms." The significant "set" composed of nekronyms (e.g., "eldest son dead"), autonyms (e.g., "John"), and teknonyms (e.g., "Father of John") is contrasted according to the occurrence of two features: (1) statement of relation with a relative, (2) implication of opposition between self and others. In bnef, nekronyms do state (1) but do not imply (2); autonyms are vice-versa; tekonyms do both. Hence the role of proper names in different societies can be compared. Buchler and Selby's second example is the familiar type of analysis stretching from early Kroeber to more recent Componentialists which compares and contrasts assortments of indindual kinship terms, such as English "father" characterized by the features of seniority, consanguinity, masculinity, etc.; "mother" by seniority, consanguinity, but not masculinity; "son" by consanguinity, masculinity, but not seniority, and so forth. The authors' assertion that these two examples are the same kind of method based on a distinctive feature matrix overlooks a critical difference in the two examples. Nekronyms pertain to a relation with another relative as opposed to having nothing to do with such a relation. This is indeed a classification according to the presence or absence of the feature; yet if the feature is absent (as in autonyms), it is not automatically known what else is present; that would take further investigation.6 In such a distinctive feature matrix, then, we learn what nekronyms are about without learning at that level what they are contrastively not about. Moreover the analysis starts not from a set of terms but a pre-analyzed set of types of terms. Let us designate the product of such an analysis a meta-distinctive-featurematrix.

808

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[76,1974

In the other example the term "father"pertainsto "masculinity"as automaticallyopposed fo "femininity," to "seniority" as opposed to "juniority," to "consanguinity"as opposed to "affinity," etc. The inverseof the featureis positively defined by the analyzer's prerssumption-so-called common sense. Not pertaining to masculinity is pertaining to femininity; all terms must be either masculineor feminine. Such ComponentialAnalysisof closed domains (e.g., kinship genealogies)does begin with actual native termsbut describes them accordingto a pre-analyzedgrid. It is assumed,for example, that universallynot-male is equivalent to female (rather than neuter, or at another level "animal");consanguinity opposes "affinity" (ratherthan "adoption" or many other possibilitiessuggestedby crossculturaldata). Ihus let us call this an either/or-distinctive-feature-matrix. By means of this pedestriancontrast in types of matAxes we can succinctly distinguish ESK and Mythologiques.ESKresemblesan either/or classification; its axioms allow an array of either/or distinctions to be made: such as restrictedversusgeneralized,patrilateral versus matrilateral-one side the positively defined (loaded) inverseof the other. ESK achieves an either/or matrix by pre-assigning the oppositional feature based on a theory of social cohesion; yet in other ways it differs. It is unlike many ComponentialAnalysesbecauseit does not analyzeactual nativeunits or categories,but analytic glossessuch as cross-cousin/parallel cousin, descent/residence.(ESK of course employs native termsbut analyzes them only after glossingthem accordingto its prescriptivemarriagetheory). Moreoverits locus of approach is not relations of principlesfor distinguishing lexical items, but relations of principlesfor distinguishing reified groups.Yet ESK cannot properlybe deemed a "Componential Analysis of social cohesion types," because although Levi-Strauss always detects either/or features based on a concept of marriage, he repeatedlyacknowledgesthat any single either/or opposition is good only at a particularlevel. This aspect of the study makes it at least semi-structuralist and constitutes its major advance over Lowie's Primitive Society. That is, LeviStraussdoes not simply chart a distinctive feature matnx of marnageformulas;he jumps aroundin the matnx to ponderits implications.Considerthis summarypassage: Can the reason be given for [the contamination of generalizedexchange by restricted exchange]? Undoubtedly, yes, if we . . . consider that the three elementarystructuresof exchange, viz., bilateral, matrilateraland patrilateral,are always present to the human mind, at least in an unconscious form, and that it cannot evoke one of them without thinking of this structure in opposition to-but also in correlationwith-the two others. Matrilateral and patrilateral marriage representthe two poles of generalized exchange,but they are opposed to each other as the shortest and the longest cycles of exchange, and both are opposed to bilateralmarriageas the generalto the particular.... At the same time, bilateralmarriagehas the characteristic of alternationin common with patrilateral marriage,whereasit resemblesmatrilateral marriage in that both allow a generalsolution, and not a collection of partial solutions, as is the case with patrilateralmarriage. The three forms of exchangethus constitute four pairsof oppositions [ESK, 464]. HereESK skews toward the algebraic. All elementary structures are described as always potential; there is no compromisingsuggestion of axiomatic needs of social cohesion which oughtto determinewhen which structureprevails.This structuralist skewingof ESKat once distinguishes it from earlieruse-functionalanalyses,and that makesit somethingmore than a Componential Analysis.The set of elementarystructuresis seen here as algebraic-type logical altematives(the above "fundamental quartet") always in principle open to "groups" establishing themselves as distinct social units cross-referenced by marriagerules to other groups.But insofar as this algebraic quality holds, arguments in ESK of functional-use potential of different elementarysystems remaininappropriate, unspecifiable-vestigesof an earlier anthropology. On the other hand, Mythologiqlles does not even partly resemble a Componential Analysis. Rather, it is a meta-distinctivefeature matrix, and representsa completely dif-

Boon and Schneider]

KINSHIPVIS-i-VIS MYTH

809

ferent kind of comparative research. Oppositions in the series are complemented by searching textual materials to detect possible inverse categones. What in the corpus of New World mythic texts is the opposite-complement of fire? smoke? earth?, no water; . . . all water? . . . no, stagnant water, as itself opposed to falling or running water. Thus in myths "hot" does not simply, common sensically, oppose "cold." For if myths were constructed according to a presumed-to-be-natural common sense, they would be unnecessary to indigenes and certainly not a problem for anthropology. In short, Mythologiquesdiscloses how mythic texts encode features selected from expenence in different, yet related, ways from other features selected; just as a nekronym encodes features of "alter relative" and "self" in an inverse way from an autonym. Yet Mythologiquesis at once more impressive since it only glosses preliterate images according to other preliterate images presumably in the same "semantic field." This is why the analysis can be corroborated only by attesting more and more encodings that rely on principles related to the initial code. We can then construct a simple distinctive feature matnx to compare and contrast roughly ESK, Mythologiques,and along the way Componential Analysis: Basic Data functional etic (social-cohesive genealogy)

actual native terms or images

analytic giosses

ElementaryStr7lctures of Kinship Mythologiques

Componential Analysis

+
+

The chart could be rephrased as three different strategies of translation of cultural phenomena: (1) Componential Analysis begins with arbitrary sets of native language terms and differentiates them according to an imposed functional analytic (e.g., attributes of a genealogical grid) to discern their "meaning." (2) Mythologiquesbegins with common sense translations of striking native composite images (e.g., genie defecates disolvable sisters) and more adequately translates them by mapping differential relations to other such images from a related cross-cultural textual corpus. (3) ESK begins with a functional theory of social cohesion, selects customary complexes (e.g., the avunculate and cross-cousin marriages) and nomenclature clusters that pertain to the theory, and translates their meaning as the interrelated set of types of elemenawy structures-the structural logic of the functional theory. An obvious conclusion is that one should never expect either/or conclusions to issue from a meta-matrix, or vice versa. Each of the three approaches rests on differing assumptions as to the meaning of social phenomena; what, for example, is "kinship" about? Is it about social cohesion needs of groups, per part of ESK? Is it about formal elegance and efficiency, per Componential Analysis? Or is it about that peculiar human tendency to differentiate yet interrelate complex categories of experience to order social life without being directly determined by non-conceptual parameters, per Mythologiques?It might be about all three of these, or others; but the last has been most neglected by comparativist theories of kinship. Finally, we should pause to appreciate this either-or/meta contrast in the simplest "structuralist" analyses of cultural data employing distinctive feature techniques, before rushing to adopt any formal apparatus as anthropology's own.

810

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST BEYONDTHE ELEMENTARY CONTINUUM

[76,1974

One flaw in ESK was an understandable failure (in 1949) to pinpoint with consistency the locus of the "models" at issue. Societies do not havepatrilateral or matrilateral systems; rathergroups or parts of groupsrevealideas of such marriages which might be carned out to variousextents. One could, as many have urged,hypothesize the necessaw "externalconditions" which determinewhich marriages will charactenzea givenpopulation,but this is not necessarilya prerequisiteto mapping the logic of attestable marnage-ideas independently. The confusing element in ESK (monumenWized in the prescriptive/preferential debate) remainsthe scatteredclaimssuch as "a humangroupneed only proclaimthe law of marriage with the mother's brother'sdaughterfor a vast cycle of reciprocitybetween all generations and lineages to be organized"(ESK, 450). For marriagerules are not laws, rathernorms. And norms are normative, not actual. Marriage systems are ideallyorganizedby marriage rules. In fact marriagerules interest structuralistsbecause they can be describedas a closed set, and this fact derives from their relativeindependenceof concrete facts. The properly structuralist argument is that marriagerules constitute a logic generally independent of, althoughpossibly relevantto, other levels of experience. Only by stressing this independence of marnage rules-we would call it their "cultural aspect"-can other elementary-looking rulessuch as patriparallel cousin marriage preferences be comparedat all. For patriparallel cousin systems do not achievea system of reciprocityof greaterscope between groups; to the contrary, they use marriageideals to scale down the possibility of reciprocity cycles between social units interrelatedthroughsomething other than marnage. Yet such systems exist, survive,and thrive in contexts as distinct as Arabia and Bali. Moreover,complex systems need not be conceptualizedmerely as the breakdown of elementary structures, as an intrusion first of the time dimension (in Crow-Omaha systems), then of the individualisticdimension.7 The degenerationargumentin ESK about complex systems-like its avoidance of parallel cousin marriageprinciples-arises from a misplacedargumentabout the use-functionof elementarystructures. By preservinga social cohesion argument Levi-Strausscompromisedhis more original structuralist position concerning the mutual occurrence of "elementary structures" in human social thought (i.e., their logical inter-implication).Without the social cohesion theory, Levi-Strauss might have portrayedincest more exclusively as an axiom basic to the "socio-logic" characterizing l'esprithumain.It would never have been even indirectly implied that incest-as-tabooedis a universallyactualamalgamatorof groups, but only that incest is always a conceivable and implicitoptioninsofar as tabooed.This would in fact be perfectly consistent with arguments in ESK describingeach elementary structure as the negationof the next and incest as the logical extreme of "elementariness" for each structure. In the following passage the locus of elementarystructuresis cultural.Marriage rules conceptualize variablesolidarities as opposed to relative senses of incest, and an elementary structural tendency is always covert in human groups as they identify and differentiate themselves: Ghosts are never invoked with impunity. By clinging to the phantom of patrilateral marriage,systems of generalizedexchange gain an assurance,but they are consequently exposed to a new risk, since patrilateralmarriageis not only the counterpartof matrilateral marriagebut also its negation. Within systems of reciprocity, marriagewith the father's sister's daughter-short cyclis to marriage with the mother's brother's daughtelong cycle what incest is to the entirety of systems of reciprocity.To speakin mathematicalterms, incest is the 'limit' of reciprocity, i.e., the point at which it cancels itself out. And what incest is to reciprocity in general, such is the lowest form of reciprocity (patrilateralmarriage)in relation to the highest form (matrilateral marriage). For groups which have reached the subtlest but also the most fragileform of reciprocity, by means of marriagebetween sister's son and brother's daughter, marriagebetween

Boon and Schneider]

KINSHIP VIS-A-VIS MYTH

811

sister's daughter and brother's son represents the omnipresent danger but irresistible attraction of a 'social incest', more dangerousto the group, even, than biologicalincest, which latter will never compromise the security of the system because it cannot be conceived of as a solution. It may be understood, then, how it is that in all the abovementioned formulas both types of marriageare associatedas well as opposed; that the reasons for proclaimingthe excellence of the one are the same as those for abhorring the other .... For a system of generalizedexchange,to marrythe father'ssister'sdaughteror to sleep with the sister is, on the same grounds,to reversea cycle of reciprocity,which is tantamount to destroying it, 'makingwater flow up to its source'; in a word, it is incest [ESK 454; our italics]. If we regardthe incest taboo as the logical axiom (as in the above passage)for conceiving of social differentiation,and each form of elementarymarriagerule as the relativelyincestlike negation of the next higher form, need we adopt any sense of an incest taboo (or exogarny) as a universal agent in establishing actual social cohesion?The structuralist's interest in the incest taboo is not that it functionally interrelatesactual social groups but that any such presumedmechanisticresults are achieved variably,that the tension inherent in the logic of incest taboos echoes the tension in distinctionsbetween cross/parallel and at another level between matnlateral/patrilateral, and that such incest taboo-like cultural principlesto marry-out-within-limits are appliedto social life at new levels. By avoiding any social cohesion theory, the socio-logic concept of incest is clarified. Moreover, a new way appears to approach the individualismof "complex systems." We suggest that individualismin spouse selection is the logical oppositecomplement, or (to borrow Levi-Strauss' expression concerning "social incest") "the omnipresentdangerbut irresistible attraction," of any prescribed marriage, including cross-cousin systems and parallel cousin systems as well. In this view individualchoice is most generallythe perfect opposite of socio-logic incest. Incest is ultimately the relative in-marriage in conflict with any positive out-marriage rule, and individualchoice is ultimatelyan out-marriage in conflict with any preferredrelative in-marriage; the sensationalindividualmarriageis inevitablyone that is too "out"-out of class, or race, or community. To clarify this position, let us consider Levi-Strauss' views on complex sytems. He has generally argued: (1) these systems are less individualisticin practice than their ideals suggest, since (racial, sectarian, national, etc., endogamies aside) endogamous pockets tend somehow to form; he sees this as a more natural,less "categorical," operationof an elementary proclivity, even when positive marriagecategoriesremainunspecified(ESK,xxxvi); (2) one must computerize any way to handle these systems' enormous variables,since no cultural categoriesprescribesuitable partners; real marriages must apparentlybe tracedwith no native scheme to explain any divergencefrom total randomness;he has left the task to others. This view of complex systems perhapsappearsmost clearly in Levi-Strauss' brief remarkson swayamoara marriage,which in Indic legends"consists,for a personoccupyinga high social rank in the privilegeof givinghis daughterin marriageto a man of any status" (ESK, 475), preferably her chosen hero. Levi-Strauss speculates that such an idea was significantin the histoncal developmentof individualistic marriage (complex systems) out of a degeneratedgeneralizedexchangesystem: Since generalized exchange engenders hypergamy, and hypergamy leads either to regressivesolutions (restrictedexchange or endogamy), or to the complete paralysisof the body social [!], an arbitraryelement will be introduced into the system, a sort of sociological clinamen, which, wheneverthe subtle mechanismof exchangeis obstructed, will, like a Deus ex machina, give the necessary push for a new impetus. India clearly conceived the idea of this clinamen, although it finally took a different path [i.e., hypergamyleads to caste] and left the task of developingand systematizingthe formula of it to others. This is the swayamraramarriage,to which a whole section of the Mahabharatais devoted [ESK, 475].

812

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[76,1974

But if elementary exchange patterns are non-statistical models (cf., ESK, xxxii-xxxiii), any actual surplus of women at the top of an hypergamous system and the deXlciency of brides at the bottom is-even without arguing from particular ethnographic cases-a spurious issue. There are multiple cultural ways of handling any real shortage or surplus of circulating women, without breaking down the hypergamous marriage ideals: redefining more women into the bottom ranks, female infanticide (cf. Dumont 1970:118), religious sanctions on female celibacy at the top ranks. There is not necessarily any "paralysis of the body social" translated in India into epical reflection; and swayamvara marriage can as readily be portrayed as the extreme positive expression of the cultural inhibition on marrying-in negatively established in ESK theory by the incest taboo. Swayamoara is not necessarily a mere secondarily formulated set of literary ideals made to patch a faltering system of positive exchange, whereby the "three basic characteristics of modem European marnage [freedom to choose unprohibited spouse, equality of sexes, and individualization of the contract] were introduced in . . . a furtive secret and almost fraudulent manner" (ESK, 477). For to be consistent with the structuralist impulse of ESK, swayamoara marriage should represent not the degradation of prescriptive marriage systems, but a logical foundation, i.e., the axiomatic inverse that inevitably in the socio-mystique (per ESK, 454) sustains the values, through unconscious but conceivable contradiction, on any prescribed union or on any incestuous one as tabooed. In short, why are individualistic marriage contracts any less the "omnipresent danger but irresistible attraction" which (along with incest), through implied negation of preferential rules, underpins the whole of elementaxy structures? If patrilateral marriage is incest-like vis-a-vis matrilateral marriage, and restricted exchange is incest-like vis-a-vis these, and (we should say) parallel cousin marriage is a viable social option which is incest-like vis-a-vis even restricted exchange; then all these elementary structures are themselves incest-like vis a-vis systems based ideally on individualistic contracts. This point (again, per ESK, 454) is another way of saying the inherent cultural possibility of "individualism in mariiage," the above-mentioned swayamoara, is itself the opposite side of the "social incest" axiomatic basis of elementary kinship theory. There are two cultural stop-gaps against marrying-too-in: one is taboos on "social incest"; the other is positive sanctions on marrying into unsystematically deElned categories. To be perfectly consistent, a proponent of ESK stnJcturalist theory might say that, like the avunculate (see below), swayamvara does not emerge in human societies, but is "present initially." These issues can be backtracked to LEvi-Strauss' initial formulation of the "atom of kiIlship,'' where he adroitly shifted from "elementary families" to the relations implicit in an avuncular (MB) relationship, in light of the brother-sister and parent-child incest taboo. He generalizes: In order for a kinship structure to exist, three types of family relations must always be present: . . . a relation of consanguinity, a relation of affinity and a relation of descent [filiation]-in other words, a relation between siblings, a relation between spouses, and a relation between parent and child [Levi-Strauss 1967a:43]. And later: In human society a man must obtain a woman from another man who gives him a daughter or a sister [as refined in ESK, directly or indirectly, and categorically, not actually]. Thus we do llot need to explain how the maternal uncle emerged in the kinship structure: He does not emerghe is present initially. Indeed, the presence of the maternal uncle is a necessary precondition for the structure to exist [Levi-Strauss 1967a: 44-45 l By mismatching a theory of social cohesion to his cultural (Durkheimian) theory of marriage nsles as codes to differentiate and interrelate social categories, Levi-Strauss eliminated many interesting possibilities of his own atom of kinship, even at the diagrammatic level of

Boon and Schneider]

MYTH KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS

813

idealized models. The positive alliance prescription joining category A through marriage to B logically rests not only on the axiomatic opposite-complement of denying marriage of A with A (i.e., incest) but also of denying marriage beyond the A-B social universe, that is denying individual marriage at this level. The defense that such an implied opposite-complement (individual marriage) cannot properly obtain at an elementary logic level, that this would be mixing real actors for idealized models, is merely a means of protecting the artifically isolated, axiomatically primary avunculate. We see this again in Levi-Strauss' position that the only recourse if the "sibling" is tabooed is the cross-relation; for this requires assuming that these consanguineous/affinal (A/B) categories are indivisible wholes, rather than seeing them as populated (divisible) categories. And it is precisely in systems where the "blood" sibling category might be tabooed but the so-called classificatory sibling (i.e., the parallel) category is not, that an alternative to the elementary logic of out-marriage is implicit from the start. In other words if the "atom of kinship" is consistently a model of ideal cultural categories, and not actual social groups, then implicit within that model is not only determining the descent category of sexually differentiated products of the original A/B categories, but also the social-unconscious "flirtation" with the possibility of marrying within one category (this much is granted in Levi-Strauss' notion of the "irresistible appeal" of social-incest) but across the multiple members of that category. The rationalist tabularasaobscures both this point and the implicit, but tabooed, logical possibility of marrying-out of the system of organic solidarity altogether. To restate our argument in Levi-Strauss' axiomatic, avuncular sociologic: the atom of kinship assumes as its very first principle not the avunculate or cross-relation, but the Durkheimian oppositional identity of groups, i.e., social A/B descent categories cut across by the cross-relation, the affinity relation. This model disregards cases where the affinity relation does not cut across the descent-identity relation-i.e., parallel cousin marriage systems. Moreover, if a tabula rasa can be populated with one set of idealized descent, affinity, and consanguineal relations, it can be populated with two or more sets. And then a logical alternative, given the prevalence of two necessarily interrelatable but distinct social categories (A/B) is an affinal relationship outside the A/B categories, an individualistic contract, not positively categonzed from the A/B categones' point of view, with other means of balancing or denying any exchange. If A/B is the social universe of organic solidarity, then it must be contrastable as a whole to not A/B, and in not-A/B will be found the source of marriages not encompassed by positive prescription or prohibited by incest. Many societies build systems on this option, and it is unclear why these any less elementary than prescriptive systems given the many cultural devices for interrelating social categories other than marnage. In sum, we can salute the lasting contribution of ESK: a theory of the interrelation of the ideal systems produced by marrying different kinds of cross-cousins. Yet simulatneously we can reconsider assumptions that holistic systems of positively defined marriage categories are "elementary"-than other systems, and reject any implications that logically priomore swayamoaraand individualized mamage unions in general are temporally secondary to more mechanistic exchange systems. Implicit in this conclusion is a rejection of R. Fox's claim that Levi-Strauss' approach "does enable us to put all kinship systems on one continuum and discuss them as variations on the 'alliance' theme" (1967:24). Patnparallel cousin marriage rules most effectively point up shortcomings in the alliance theme; as V. Dass has argued: the difference between the [Pakistani] systems I have been describing and systems of prescriptive alliance . . . cannot be expressed in terms of an opposition between "parallel

814

ANTHROPOLOGIST AMERICAN

[76X1974

between systems and "cross-cousin"marriage.The opposition is rather cousin marriage" systems that achieve alliance and marriage through group the of exclusion achieve that between groupsthroughmarriage[1973:4 2 ] . does not ally anythingor even such systems, rangingat least from Arabiato Bali, marriage In between in successivegeneramarried new categories ideally to be perpetually distinguish to salvagea functionalist tnes one If itself. on in unit ratherit ideally closes a social tions; cement factious basis for "marriage"by saying that patriparallelcousin unions cohesion social unit certain a that "marriage" then one implies a culturalprinciplebeyond agnates, between alliance an as seen be could be perpetuated. In that case "marriage" should in ESK by occupied level analytic the to hoisted is unit only if the endogamous "groups," as occurringbetween but then we are forced to see any non-endogamousunions "society"; apart. falls "societies,"and the cohesion argumentagain different about bounded "groups"and Thus the issue basically involves theoretical assumptions differentiated and ESK assumes the existence of distinct societies internally "societies." emphasizes marriage by marriagerules. More recent work even on cross-cousin interrelated both a articulate thus and priorlyuncategorizable sets of kinsmen can effect a marriage how apply subsequently rules marriage the which and the "society" within cross-relationship cross-cousin in actors words, other In effected).9 is (unlessa new, undefined marriage them after new systems might frequentlyshift their categorizedaffines, readjusting actualsocial marnage the of arguments This flexibility againchallengesfunctionalist marriages. actual of positively categorized utilityof different elementaw systems. Apparently the creation across generations partnersby extending properties of the avunculaterelationship alliance through repeatedly but kinship" of not just on the rarifiedtabula rasa of the "atom occurs compli of out rules marriage by articulated be can history.Different so-called "societies" involving implications secondary its but fact, this suggest ESK catedsocial fields. Parts of might often be corrected to socialcohesion obscure how even cross-cousinmarriagerules not so categorized.Our were before categonzefresh exchange partnerswhich a generation groups (actually or cohede "marriage" of rules altemativeto insisting that by definition social units or close interrelatable ideally)is to say marriagerules conceptually differentiate other than "marvalue some by one social unit in on itself in a field of units interrelated individualistic involving systems handle to us riage."The latter viewpoint would enable structures." "elementary as contractsand parallelcousins as readily CONCLUSIONS studies of symbols and Mythologiques and other developments in anthropological Eleldcan be liberated from sociosemiotica illustrate how domains of a cultural semantic analyzablein its own nght. But, functional prerequisitesand reveal an autonomousintegrity achieved this com Mythologiques work, own remainingnow strictly within Levi-Strauss' analytic pigeonpre-conceived into terminologies of tales parativiststance by not forcing nomenclatures" "kinship of holes, whereas ESK assumed not only that certain varieties be isolated and can nomenclature such pertain essentially to marriagerules, but that each nomenclatures kinship if as proceeds ESK that merely analyzed as a closed set. Our point is not, as in and societies distinct in interrelated directly normally and marriagerules are more to a pertain might rules of images Mythologiques,as if aspects of nomenclaturesand not kinship their formulated have groups that cross-societalcorpus of categories,suggesting ? limits.l to semantic just accordingto the needs of concrete groupsbut according that this is by definition the use-functions, display must "kinship" granted Even if one precipitouslyexcluded types has Strauss Levi institutional nature of kinship-cum-marriage, do not fit with the systems-that "complex" so-called of systems-parallel cousin endogamy,

Boon and Schneider]

KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS MYTH

815

theory of marriageas a social integraterof groups or part-groups. None of this is to imply that "kinship"does not do something.But to assertmerely that universally kinshipcohedes all "societies" does not get us very far. Since some reductionand abstractionis necessaryfor comparison,it can be more interestingto comparethe symbolic meaningsof kinshipthan its "use," for these vary widely but would seem to enjoy limiting principles. Given that all groups are not charactenzedby genealogy-based organization,given that "real"incest (i.e., biological near-consanguinal coitus) is practiced by many groups, given that many societies do marry relatively "in," then every item on the kinship record (not just nomenclatures) should be approached as value, ideal, distinguishingcultural feature articulatingvarying solidarities among classified actors and not as a response to naturalor social needs. This would bringa comparativist kinshipstudy much closer to Mythologiquesthan ESK. ESK assumes everyone makes closed systems out of genealogically-defined people. In light of the subsequent development of Mythologiques, Levi-Straussmight better have defined kinship as a subset of myth. Kinship interrelatesdiverse categoriesof enduringly solidary people, sometimes by descent, sometimes by marriagerules, sometimes by other symbolic devices. "Myth" remains the grandersystem schematizingthe entire social and natural expenence in light of other constrainingschemes. In short, kinship studies might profit by joining Mythologiques in backing up to the question of what sort of analogical systems people make out of whatever they make them out of, instead of assumingthey make them out of genealogicalkin. In studies of myth the materialof native classifications is not posited axiomatically, but is discoverableonly be careful investigationsof the mythic texts themselves.If each myth were analyzed as an either-ormatrix,then each myth would automaticallyappearas a closed system, keyed directly to a socially useful moral,or representing the real experience (e.g., subsistence pattem) of the group, rather than as easily representingconceivable contrastingsystems. Levi-Strauss instead analyzes myths as metadistinctive-feature-matrixes, claiming that this allows whatever system there might be to dose itself, if and when it actually does so. In myth man'sanalogicalcapacity-his tendency to establish systems out of concrete signifilers-is portrayed as being dependent on its materialsonly insofar as it must have something (and it reallyseems anythingwould do) to work with. In light of evidence on adoption, ideal and actualincestuousrelations,taboos on copulation and/or marriagebased on decidedlyun-genealogicalconsiderations(e.g.,teacherpupil), etc., we might relax our preconceptionsas to the genealogicaland social organizational natureof "kinship"data as well. NOTES 1A preliminaryversion of part of this study was presentedin the symposium on "Dialectics in StructuralAnthropology"at the 70th AnnualMeetingof the AmericanAnthropological Association, New York, 1971. Our aim is not to review the extensive secondary literatureon Levi-Strauss, but to consider closely two internal variantsof his own structuralism and to suggest the kinship/myth contrast as a focus for future theoreticaldiscussions. 2To point up provisionallythe genealogicalbias in this position on marriage(i.e., the in-law bond) as the foundation of organic solidarity, one might ponder if a teacher-pupil relation markedby a taboo on sexual relations between the teacher-lineand the pupil-line, with both the positive content of the relationshipand the taboo perpetuatedin succeeding generations (as in Hindu Bali; cf. Boon 1973) would not constitute a "new plane" of complementary functionally-efficacious "organic solidarity" by some means other than "kinship"as defined by "marriage." 30bviously use-function parallels"social organization"and algebraic-function parallels "culture" in the classic Rivers/Kroeberdistinctions. But Levi-Strauss' usages are slightly more formalized. 4"Savagethought is essentiallyanalogicalthought" (Levi-Strauss 1966).

816

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[76,l974

sFor a Mythologiques-orientedreconsideration of the whole of Levi-Strauss' ethnological program, see Boon (1972). His structuralismis discussed within the context of alternative anthropological approaches to symbols and classification systems in Boon (1973b). 6 Determiningthat "John" does not name a relative along with namingego, does not alert us of the cultural possibility that "John" might implicitly refer to other cultural domains, e.g., "Saints," and that one might find significantlymore "Johns" with brothers named"Matthew"than with brothersnames"Myron." 7For a note on parallelsin the way Levi-StraussconceptualizesCrow-Omaha kinship systems and a certain stage of breakdown in New Worldgroups' use of myths, see Boon (1970). Concerningthe locus of models in ESK, when pushed by more empirical-minded critics such as Needham (1962) and Leach (1961), Levi-Strausshas shifted his kinship models to their proper culturallevel, but has left the vestigialsocial-cohesionargumentsin the book. For a review of such issues, see Buchler and Selby (1968). The most recent empirical-minded denunciationof Levi-Strauss is Korn (1973). 8Levi-Strausshas recently (1973b:105) reaffirmed the "atom of kinship" as "the quadrangleof relations between brother and sister, husbandand wifes father and son, and maternaluncle and nephew .... " He also points out the translationerrorthat led Leach to accuse him of mistakingfiliation for descent. Wherewe, following the Englishtranslationof StructuralAnthropology, talk of the "descent" dimension of the "atom of kinship"we are merely refering to the verticle, opposite-complement of the alliance dimension, and we might as easily have used "filiation,"since descent and filiation cannot fully contrastwithin the logical limits of the atom. 9N. Yalman has argued the point in reconsideringthe preferential-perscriptive debate and contrasting the nature of Kurdishpatriparallelrules to Singhalesecross-cousinrules (1970 :614-615). l ?For example, in so-called "AmericanKinshipterms" are found domestic and religious "fathers";figurative,in-lawed,blood, play, sentimental,and friendship"aunts,"etc. On this aspect of kinship nomenclatureand why theories of metaphoricalextension cannot adequately explain them (and for alternativeways of conceptualizing"complex systems") see Schneider(1965a, 1968,1969,1972a, 1972b). REFERENCES CITED Boon, JamesA. 1970 Levi-Strauss and Narrative . Man5: 702-703. 1972 From Symbolism to Structuralism:Levi-Straussin a Literary Tradition. New York: Harper and Row. 1973a Dynastic Dynamics: Caste and Kinshipin Bali Now. UnpublishedPh.D. dissertation, Universityof Chicago. 1973b Further Operationsof "Culture"in Anthropology: A Synthesis of and for Debate. In The Idea of Culture in the Social Sciences. Louis Schneider and Charles Bonjean,Eds. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. Buchler,Ira R., and HenryA. Selby 1968 Kinshipand Social Organization. New York: MacMillan. Das, Veena 1973 The Structure of Marriage Preferences:An Account from PakistaniFiction. Man 8: 30-45. Dumont, Louis 1970 Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. MarkSainsbury,trans.Chicago: Universityof ChicagoPress. Fox, Robin 1967 Kinshipand Marriage. Baltimore:PenguinBooks. Korn,Francis 1973 ElementaryStructuresReconsidered.Berkeley:Universityof California Press. Leach, Edmund 1961 RethinkingAnthropology.London: Athlone. Levi-Strauss, Claude 1950 Introduction a l'oeuvre de MarcelMauss.In Sociologie et Anthropologie.Marcel Mauss.Paris:PressesUniversitaires de France.

Boon and Schneider]

MYTH KINSHIPVIS-A-VIS

817

1966 The SavageMind.Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress. 1967a Structural Anthropology. C. Jacobson and B. Grundfest Schoepf, trans. New York: Anchor Books. 1967b The Story of Asdiwal.In The StructuralStudy of Myth and Totemism.Edmund Leach, Ed. London: Tavistock. de Table (MythologiquesIII). Paris:Plon. des Mannieres 1968 L'Origine 1969 The Elementary Structuresof Kinship. James Harle Bell and John Richardvon Sturmer,trans. Rodney Needham,Ed. Boston: BeaconPress. trans. 1970 The Raw and the Cooked (MythologiquesI). John and DoreenWeightman, New York: HarperTorchbooks. Diacritics,Fall 1971. 1971a Interviewof ClaudeLevi-Strauss. 1971b L'HommeNu. (MythologiquesIV). Paris:Plon. trans. 1973a From Honey to Ashes (MythologiquesII). John and Doreen Weightman, and Row. New York: Harper 1973b AnthropologieStructuraleDeux. Paris:Plon. Needham,Rodney 1962 Structureand Sentiment.Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress. Schneider,DavidM. 1964 The Natureof Kinship.Man217:180-181. 1965a American Kin Terms and Terms for Kinsmen: a Critique of Goodenough's ComponentialAnalysisof Yankee KinshipTerminology.In FormalSemanticAnalysis. E. A. Hammel,Ed. AmericanAnthropologist67(5, pt. 2):288-308. 1965b Some Muddles in the Models: Or, How the System Really Works.In The Relevance of Modelsfor Social Anthropology.London: Tavistock. 1968 AmericanKinship:A CulturalAccount. EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1969 Kinship, Nationality and Religion. In Forms of Symbolic Action. V. Turner,Ed. Proceedingsof the 1969 AnnualSpringMeetingof the AmericanEthnologicalSociety. pp. 116-125. 1972a Whatis KinshipAll About?InKinshipStudies in the MorganCentennialYear.P. DC: AnthropologicalSociety of Washington. Reining,Ed. Washington, 1972b American Kin Categories.In Echanges et Communications.Jean Pouillon and Eds. The Hague:Mouton. PierreMaranda, Yalman,Nur 1970 The Semantics of Kinship in South India and Ceylon. In Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 5: Linguisticsin South Asia. Thomas A. Sebeok, Ed. The Hague: Mouton.