Showing papers in "Southwestern journal of anthropology in 1967"

Psychological Acculturation in a Tri-Ethnic Community

Abstract: IN A RECENT PAPER BY GOODENOUGH (1964), a distinction is made between the "phenomenal order" of observable events and their regularities, and the "ideational order," or the beliefs, attitudes, and values held by a group's members. In our studies of acculturation, changes in the phenomenal order, since easiest to observe, have received primary attention, while changes in the ideational order, or "psychological acculturation," have been relatively neglected. There is some good pioneer work on which to build, such as Thompson (1948), Vogt (1951), Rapaport (1954), and Caudill and Scarr (1962). But the main thrust of research on the psychological aspects of the acculturation process appears to have focused on the emotionally disturbing influence of culture contact and the level of resynthesis which may occur (Hallowell 1942 and Spindler 1955, for example). Direct psychological acculturation is the focus of this paper: when culturally distinct groups are placed in continuous first-hand contact, can changes in the world view of the minority groups be demonstrated to occur in the direction of those held by the dominant group; and, if so, under what conditions is such psychological acculturation facilitated? This issue has practical as well as theoretical significance, since it is now recognized that aspects of world view widely held in traditional societies may serve as important psychological barriers to effective participation in urban-industrial life (Erasmus 1961; Foster 1962; Goodenough 1963; Graves 1961; Hagen 1962). If so, whatever we can learn about the process of change in such variables may provide a basis for charting effective strategies of planned intervention. THE RESEARCH SETTING

On the relationship between size of population and complexity of social organization

Abstract: SOCIAL SCIENTISTS have long been aware that a relationship exists between the size of a society in terms of population and its degree of socio-cultural complexity. Nearly a century ago Herbert Spencer (1885:449-450) noted that \"as population augments, divisions and subdivisions [in societyj become more numerous and more decided.\" And Georg Simmel (1902:2) observed that \"the sociological structure of a group is essentially modified by the number of the individuals that are united in it. . . .beyond a certain stage in its increase of numbers [a groupJ must develop for its maintenance rtain forms and organization which it did not previously need ... .\"1 Nevertheless, until quite recently, no cultural anthropologist had attempted to determine this relationship precisely. Failure to do so can be attributed, in a general way, to a neglect of evolutionary problems, and, more specifically, to the absence of a quantitative yardstick by which socio-cultural complexity could be measured. However, in 1956, in his pioneer article, \"A Preliminary Index of Social Development,\" Raoul Naroll proposed and applied such a yardstick. By means of it he was able to demonstrate a correlation between size of the largest community in a society and such measures of social complexity as number of craft specialties and number of \"team types\" (Naroll 1956:689, 701). The present paper is an attempt to explore these relationships further. In measuring societal complexity we have employed an index different from Naroll's. The index used here is based on a list of 354 traits elected from the major aspects of culture--subsistence, architecture, economics, political organization, religion, etc.-which was compiled for use in a study of cultural evolution by means of scale analysis (Carneiro 1962; Carneiro and Tobias 1963). Individually, the traits represented qualitatively different cultural features. As a group, they were the kinds of traits expected to show cumulation, that is, retention of earlier, simpler ones along with the adoption of later, more advanced ones. Although the list was not originally devised to measure the level of culture

Archaeological Assumptions and Ethnographical Facts: A Cautionary Tale from New Guinea

Abstract: ARCHAEOLOGISTS are accustomed to reconstruct prehistoric cultures ? from scanty material remains by the use of inferences based on certain assumptions which they make about human behavior. These assumptions are derived from common sense and a passing acquaintance with the ethnographic literature, and they are generally very reasonable. Unfortunately for the archaeological process, cultures are generally quite unreasonable. In this paper I shall present some ethnographic data from one culture, the Dugum Dani of the West New Guinea (Irian Barat) highlands, data which seriously challenge certain common archaeological assumptions. I have selected only the instances from Dani culture which are the most relevant to my argument; but for a more complete picture of the Dani, the reader is referred elsewhere.2 In no sense do I propose the Dani or any other single culture as a basis for general archaeological inference. I present these facts simply as a Cautionary Tale.

FBD Marriage and Demography among Tripolitanian Jews in Israel

Abstract: T HE PROBLEM of father's brother's daughter's (FBD) marriage in the Middle East has been approached from a number of points of view. Patai (1962:135-176) has traced this type of marriage, as a culture trait, in time and space. Other studies have focused on the social function of this type of marriage within specific communities (Barth 1954:171; Salim 1962:48). Ayoub (1959:274) and Patai (1965:333) have suggested that the focus on FBD marriage has obscured the more general and socially more important pattern of lineage endogamy. Recently, Gilbert and Hammel (1966:89) have bolstered Ayoub's analysis by demonstrating that the observed rate of FBD marriage in Middle Eastern communities may well be an epiphenomenon of other social processes. A number of these studies have raised the problem of making an adequate statistical statement about the rate of FBD marriages. It is clear that, in a given population, not everyone will have an FBD or an FBD of marriageable age. Cohen (1965:111), in presenting his data, calculated the rate of in-lineage marriage per 100 people for the various lineages of a community. Ayoub (1959:270), in assessing the rate of lineage endogamy, took into consideration the number of people available for marriage in a given lineage. Gilbert and Hammel (1966) have provided two methods for attacking this question. First, they simulated on a computer the processes of birth, mate selection, etc., while varying such parameters as rate of village endogamy and size of village. This computer simulation resulted in an "observed" rate of FBD marriage which could be compared with the rate observed in natural communities. Secondly, Gilbert and Hammel provided a formal mathematical model to predict the rate of FBD marriage expected by chance in a community, given the rate of village endogamy and the number of reproducing couples in the population. The present paper attempts to assess, in a real community, the possibilities for FBD marriage and compare the actual rate of marriage with the rate expected by chance alone, taking into consideration certain demographic characteristics of the

A Synoptic Comparison of Mesoamerican Marriage and Family Structure

Abstract: SINCE THE TIME OF REDFIELD'S STUDY OF TEPOZTLAN nearly four decades ago, American, Mexican, and European anthropologists have engaged in continuous ethnographic fieldwork in Mesoamerica. By 1952 the area was quite intensively and extensively studied, and the literature boasted some three dozen monographs and a number of articles on a variety of topics ranging from economic and material culture, political organization, and ethnohistory to religion and social organization, with an ethnographic coverage including the most important and numerous linguistic groups in Mexico and Guatemala (Tax, ed. 1952; Parra and Jimenez Moreno 1954). Since 1952 the list of monographs has been augmented by a few items, while the list of articles has been increased considerably, both numerically and topically, to include a variety of new topics such as studies of migration, kinship terminologies, ethnic relations, law, culture change, acculturation, and so on, as well as studies of the mestizo population of the area (Boletin Bibliogrcfico de Antropologia Americana, Handbook of Latin American Studies). My purpose here is not to pass judgment on Mesoamerican ethnography, but it should be characterized as uneven, to say the least. Of all the traditional ethnographic ategories, none has been more disregarded than social organization, and it is in this area that the ethnography of Mesoamerica is the poorest. Not a single monograph deals exclusively with kinship or the family, and the few articles on these subjects give only a general picture. Given these considerations, it is the purpose of this paper to present a synoptic comparison of marriage and the family in Mesoamerica, with special attention to household composition, nuclear and extended family arrangements, marriage and divorce, polygyny and marriage regulation, and residence and the spatial components of marriage and the family. This outline of marriage and family structure will enable the reader to see the range of variation of these structural forms, and I hope at the same time to indicate some of the most glaring gaps in this much-neglected field of anthropological inquiry. 1 I am grateful to Timothy D. Murphy for his assistance inordering the data, and for his suggestions and critical comments.

Descent and Filiation as Cultural Constructs

Abstract: CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS DAVID M. SCHNEIDER T HE TWO PURPOSES of this trio of papers are first o offer a definition of \"descent\" and \"filiation\" and second to show the utility of these definitions through the two well-documented papers which follow this one. The first purpose is facilitated by Scheffler's excellent review (1966) of this complex literature, making it unnecessary to repeat that review here. Further, the definitions offered here are similar to, though not identical with, those of Scheffler, and the reader will find his discussion useful. I have developed certain points, however, which e merely touches on and which are, I think, of fundamental importance. 1. The central point of the approach followed in these three papers is that culture is usefully distinguished from social structure and consists in a system of symbols and meanings.1 Social structure consists in kinds of relations among culturally defined and culturally differentiated units. The definitions for the kinds of relations, their symbols, and their meanings, however, are cultural. \"Descent\" has to do with a category of culturally differentiated s atuses. By definition here, descent consists in a set of symbols in terms of which certain statuses are abstracted from a genealogical mesh or a universe of kinsmen; however, this is defined by a particular culture, and constituted as a single, conceptual category. Those symbols are the distinctive features which define the parent-child relationship. Whatever itis in a particular culture which makes one person the \"offspring\" of another isthe basic set of symbols out of which some or all are stipulated as those which define a descent category. \"Filiation,\" too, consists in a set of symbols, those which, in the particular culture, define the parent-child relationship. Whatever makes one the parent of the other defines atthe same time the relationship of filiation. Both filiation a d descent, hen, seem to entail the very same symbols or the same kinds of symbols. But so, too, does kinship. For the universe or domain within which descent and filiation occur is the universe of kinship. If all those on the genealogy are kinsmen, some persons on the genealogy may be parent-child to each other, but others are not. Only dyads of a certain kind on the genealogy (or in the universe of kinsmen) are parent-child to each other, and it is this which is distinctive about the relationship of filiation. At the same time, certain persons

A Scale of Alternate Generation Terminology

Abstract: In 1949 Murdock brought together and clearly defined nine criteria, or bases for distinction between kin-types, drawn from Kroeber (1909) and Lowie (1929). The six major criteria are generation, sex, affinity, collaterality, bifurcation, and polarity. The three minor criteria are relative age, speaker's sex, and decedence (Murdock 1949:103-105). Murdock uses a number of these criteria in conjunction with is

The Resource Holding Corporation among the Mescalero Apache

Abstract: N THIS PAPER I propose to examine vidence for the pre-reservation Mescalero Apache which indicates that they existed at that time as a unitary resource holding corporation. To my knowledge, the possibility hat a wider corporate body might be manifested in economic terms has received little explicit attention i the literature. Property holding as an attribute ofcorporate units of smaller scale has been widely recognized; indeed, some writers (e.g., Murdock 1960:4) have considered this factor the criterial ttribute inthe determination of corporacy. That resource holding might also characterize total societies composed of multiple s gments has been overlooked, perhaps because the function of this type of corporation in social integration is less obvious than for such structures as segmentary lineages, age organizations, sodalities, and ritual congregations which link or order segments in several fashions. The Mescalero in the time period of concern for this study--roughly the middle of the 19th century-were hunters, gatherers, and predators occupying the mountains and high plains of the southwestern U ited States and Mexico. The society was acephalous; there was no role involving political functions with authority over all Mescalero. Small groups clustering around leaders were the maximal decision making units. These groups varied in size but were egalitarian in ideology; their members were intensely individualistic. Kinship orientations were cognatic; an individual recognized grandparents and their siblings and all their descendants as close kinsmen. To American observers ofthe 1850s the Mescalero were a \"tribe,\" although the rationale for this folk categorization was never examined. The problem neglected in the historical reports is the major theme of this analysis: is there a basis for social integration transcending the politically equivalent segments of this seemingly fragmented society? This study represents a synthesis of field material with historical records.

Measures of Nez Perce Outbreeding and the Analysis of Cultural Change

Abstract: AS USED BY THE NEZ PERCES and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an individual's blood quanta description refers to the composition of his legal heredity. Elaborate genealogical methods are employed customarily to determine the precise nature of the individual Nez Perce's heredity, since admission to tribal membership is thus determined. Should an individual possess less than one-fourth Nez Perce blood quanta as determined by analysis of his genealogy, he will not be eligible for tribal membership or for the many benefits that such membership brings. Although it is orthodox in the social sciences to separate biological from ethnic and political criteria when discussing heredity, the Bureau of Indian Affairs observes no such subtleties. For example, distinctions of race such as Negro and White are entered in individual genealogies in a manner equivalent to tribal, ethnic, and national distinctions. A typical individual's blood quanta description might state, therefore, that he is one-fourth Nez Perce, one-eighth Negro, oneeighth White, one-fourth Umatilla, and one-fourth Mexican. The reasons for separating out such a potpourri of qualitatively different racial, ethnic, and political distinctions are complex and result from both historical and social influences. An adequate explanation of such distinctions would require an entirely separate analysis, and in this paper I shall accept them as givens. Consequently, it is not possible to say that the recent reduction of Nez Perce blood quanta is a study of assimilation (cultural and/or social incorporation) or amalgamation (racial incorporation). It involves aspects of both. Despite such complexities, a simple comparison of the Nez Perce and non-Nez Perce blood quanta units is feasible and permits a useful assessment of the amount of Nez Perce outbreeding in different age and regional subgroups of the present population. It is quite clear that the present rapid reduction in native blood quanta is a direct reflection of increases in outbreeding, and for the purposes of this paper they will be regarded as equivalent. The three goals of this paper, therefore, will

Affinity and the Role of the Father in the Trobriands

Abstract: The Trobriand Islands are a group of coral islands located in the Massim off the eastern coast of New Guinea. The islanders are horticulturalists who raise yams and taro as staples, which are supplemented by tropical fruits, coconuts, fish, and occasionally pork. Both men and women participate in gardening chores, and special interest and energy are invested in the yam gardens, as yams are ritually and politically a significant crop. The size, texture, and amount of yams raised may bestow prestige, status, and political influence upon the gardener; they are also necessary items of exchange in most rituals (Malinowski 1965:52-83). Trobrianders live in villages, each of which is \"owned\" by one or more matrilineal subclans or dala. The subclans are members of matrilineal totemic clans (kumila), whose member subclans are scattered. While the clans have certain ritual significance, it is the subclans which figure predominantly in Trobriand

Body-Environment Transactions: A Standard Model for Cross-Cultural Analyses

Abstract: THE SEARCH FOR A SUITABLE MODEL for viewing and comparing behavorial systems has several times led anthropologists to consider the limitations and imperatives of the organism (Malinowski 1944:91-95; Gillin 1948:260-297). Probably the most familiar expression of this quest is a list of \"needs.\" Several difficulties, however, arise in such an approach. First of all, it is difficult tobe exhaustive. Does a list of \"needs\" cover all requirements-even all biological requirements-or just those of immediate concern to the model builder? Second, it is difficult without being arbitrary to subdivide all \"needs\" in an unambiguous way. This is equally true at the structural or at the behavioral pole of the relationship. The more comprehensive the list, moreover, the more likely the needs will overlap. Third, a problem of order or conceptual level commonly arises when elementary biological needs are grouped with derivative or other-psychological, social, or cultural-needs in a list of universal determinants or components of culture. How, for example, does a \"need for positive affect\" (Goldschmidt 1959:26-29) compare with the need for food, drink, sex, or elimination? Yet the idea of individual needs obviously implies much more than elementary organic requirements. Perhaps \"needs\" schema serve didactic purposes better than they do the organization of data for analysis and theory. Yet a biological model was attractive, presumably, because it promised a set of standard reference points or universals from which to evaluate intercultural variation. Ideally it should facilitate empirical and analytical ends as well as purely didactic ones. In this paper, we are still concerned with defining a group of standard, biological reference points for the comparison of cultures. However, we believe the most useful reference points will meet the following criteria: they will (a) be inherent in all human beings; (b) involve overt behavior directly and unavoidably; (c) be discrete and specifically identifiable, with manageably narrow parameters; (d) allow appreciable variation in behavioral expression or functioning, or render some behavioral variability inevitable; and (e) in some sense constitute a system or order. The context we choose for reference points is the external anatomy of a human being. The external anatomy is not only elemental but crucial in limiting and mediating relationships between the organism and its environment. In particular, we see the several orifices of the body as the foci of major material transactions with the environment. These orifices are the mouth,

Household Atomism and Change in the out Island Bahamas

Abstract: T HE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to provide through the controlled comparison of data from three communities within one society (the Bahamas): (1) an in-society test of some hypotheses pertaining to household composition change and (2) a case study of the effects of developmental change on the household composition of two communities in the Out Island Bahamas. The hypotheses to be tested are derived from other anthropologists' statements about change in residence rules and family structure. Murdock in 1949 (p. 201) stated: \"The one aspect of social structure that is peculiarly vulnerable toexternal influences is the rule of residence\" (italics mine). More recently, Foster (1962:31-32), in noting a trend away from the traditional extended family and towards the Western uclear family in several societies, has suggested that changes in a society's economic base are generally followed by significant changes in family organization. It would seem that these assertions would apply equally well to changes in household composition, for household composition is a behavioral correlate of both residence rules and family organization.2 Further, the assertions can be stated as hypotheses and tested with census data from changing societies. Cross-cultural tests of hypotheses pertaining to change in household composition are not generally feasible because these data for a society are seldom available for two points in time. In-society tests are possible, but then it is necessary to make the relevant variables operational in terms of the specific cultural forms that exist in that society. These limitations are also true for the present test situation where it is necessary to deal in terms of: (1) conceptual3 rather than longitudinal time, because all the data employed were collected at the same point in time, and (2) expanded households (as defined below) rather than extended households, as the latter do not occur with any significant frequency in the Out Island Bahamas.

Money, Kinship, and Change in a New Guinea Economy

Abstract: M ONEY IS A POWERFUL INSTITUTIONAL SOLVENT, or so a current scientific aphorism would have it. The truth of this statement seems adequately borne out both by the historical experience of Western societies and by a growing number of studies of socioeconomic change in non-Western communities. "Commercialization" is the label often applied to the processes by which money works its revolutionary magic: as small-scale pre-monetary s stems are enveloped by world market economy, their traditional organization of economic life on the basis of personal-social reciprocities gives way to a cash nexus. But, of course, even though commercialization may appear to be an irresistible trend, it is highly improbable that, as a developmental process, it is achieved uniformly in divergent cultural and institutional settings. In any event, it is useful to record the manifestations of commercialization i particular societies, perhaps especially when these relate to the earliest or initial phases of the process. The object of interest in this paper is the society of Sio in northeastern New Guinea. Sio is linked with the market economy through both cash cropping and migrant wage labor, and has been invaded by money. But while the use of

Observational Procedures for Identifying Kindreds: Social Isolates among the Rungus of Borneo

Abstract: A GREAT DEAL HAS BEEN WRITTEN on the theory of the kindred, but little has been said about the observational procedures to be used in identifying the presence or absence of social isolates of the kindred type in any particular society.2 My conclusion i this paper is that social isolates3 that in cross-cultural analysis have been referred toas kindreds o not exist in Rungus society. I suspect that this conclusion will be challenged by some and that this challenge will stem from a difference in the observational procedures, or operations, used in establishing the presence or absence of kindreds. Therefore, in order to make a contribution t wards the development of a universal model of social isolates which are ego-centered and structured ona kinship basis, I will review the operations which I have used and which I feel are important in establishing the presence or absence of these types of social isolates in any society. Implied in my procedures, as will be seen, is the heuristic concept of a continuum of development along which social isolates, from aggregates ( ee Oliver 1958) to corporate social groupings (see Appell 1965), may be ranked.

Onitsha Ibo Kinship Terminology: A Formal Analysis and Its Functional Applications

Abstract: STUDIES OF KINSHIP TERMINOLOGIES, and the significance of these terminologies for social relationships between kinsmen, have held the attention of anthropologists for so long that there should be some semblance of general scientific consensus on procedures for the analysis of these problems. Yet examination of the relevant recent literature suggests that such a consensus does not exist. Indeed procedural debates appear to be increasing in frequency rather than approaching resolution. While some scholars (e.g., Lounsbury 1964, 1965) maintain that kinship terms must be analyzed initially from the perspective of their genealogical references, others (e.g., Leach 1958, Needham 1962) argue that they must be regarded as "category words" denoting the significant groupings in social structures. Still others claim, in apparent exasperation over the intractibility of the issue, that such terms are in fact ideological smokescreens which conceal and disguise the important facts of social life (cf. Gluckman 1965:xii). Concurrently, in some cases, the more detailed the investigator's analyses of such systems, the more complicated their structures appear to become (e.g., Buchler 1964), and some analytical procedures have become so difficult (e.g., Hammel 1965b) that critics of them (e.g., Coult MS) doubt whether they require or are worth the effort that has been expended. Such conflicting perspectives can be viewed in part as reflecting the birth pains associated with the slow but definite trends towards the establishment of clear theoretical distinctions between the domains of "culture" and "social system," and between various kinds of cultural "meaning." A recent article by Maybury-Lewis (1965) is symptomatic of such pains, for he inaccurately but revealingly characterizes the "genealogical approach" to the analysis of "kinship systems" (in this case cross-cousin marriage systems) as an "etic" investigation and the "social consequences" approach as an "emic" one. This misapplication of concepts derived from structural linguistics indicates how incomplete has been the absorption of semantic theory into cultural anthropology; one cannot

The Role of Choice in Gimi Kinship

Abstract: THAT KINSHIP TERMS DESIGNATE CATEGORIES by means of which people codify social behavior and expectations is one of the most firmly established axioms in anthropology. But the ethnographer who takes this too literally is liable to return with an incomplete picture of what kinship terms mean and of how people in kinship-based societies behave. For in the field, confronted with live human behavior, we must be concerned not only with where terms fit in formal paradigms but with how people use them to fulfill private purposes in the real world of everyday ffairs.1 And in this sense kinship terms are not just symbols for categories of kin; they are cultural objects, to be used much as any other object is used and to be understood much as any other object is understood--which is to say that their outward form and function may not tell all one needs to know about what they mean to the people who use them. In this paper I shall be directing attention totwo characteristics of kinship systems that generally receive insufficient attention. The first is that in small, relatively isolated, kinship-oriented communities, most persons are related to one another by two or more genealogical links. Ordinarily one kinship term takes precedence over other possibilities, but this does not obviate the fact that, given motivation, a individual may be able to trace two, three, or more links to many other people in his community. The second point is that in every society one finds so-called terms of address co-existing with terms of reference. The tendency is to dismiss the former assimplifications of kinship usages for everyday purposes, but unless meaning is to be entirely divorced from usage this is plainly unacceptable. Knowing why a man chooses one term over another on a particular occasion isno less important than knowing the conventional meanings of the terms among which he chooses. My subject is the kinship system of the Gimi, a people of the New Guinea Highlands, and especially some of the ways in which they manipulate kinship terms to meet he shifting demands of social ife. I have no reason to think that Gimi kinship usages are extraordinary. Swartz (1960), for one, has already reported on the importance of \"situational determinants\" in Trukese kinship, and, although is ethnographic materials do not correspond strictly to mine, his conclusions point clearly in the same direction. The present paper may indeed be read 1 Cf. Hymes (1962:16) on the \"ethnography of speaking,\" which \"is concerned with the situations and uses, the patterns and functions, of speaking as an activity in its own right.\

On Scaling Kinship Terminologies

Abstract: IN A SERIES OF RECENT PAPERS I. R. Buchler (1964a, 1964b, 1966) has demonstrated hat kinship terminological systems may be rank ordered by means of the Guttman scaling technique.' The items caled (the \"scale variables\") are terminological equations of two kin-types ( .g., for Buchler's Omahatype systems, MBS = MB, etc.). A relatively small subset of such equations is chosen from among the terminological equations of the numerous kinship systems under consideration n a particular study. Each system considered is then given a \" --\" if it contains a chosen equation, \"-\" if it does not, and an \"O\" if the relevant data are not available. The composite scores for each of the several systems are then represented and compared with one another in the form of a \"scalogram.\" Systems that receive exactly the same scores comprise a \"scale type,\" and scale types therefore consist of systems which share a specific number of the selected terminological equations. Buchler's \"Omaha scale variables\" and his \"Omaha scalogram\" are reproduced below for illustration (Table 1). Five scale types are represented in this scalogram. Buchler argues that his Crow study (1964b), for example,

Some Problems in Ndembu Kinship

Abstract: T HE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to analyze several aspects of Ndembu kinship concerning descent, filiation, and affinity as parts of a symbolic system. As the work of LUvi-Strauss (1949) has indicated, kinship systems have an ideological spect which must be analyzed in its own terms, apart from social structural considerations. The categories, concepts, and logical interrelations ofsuch an ideology are summarized in symbolic form. We will examine some Ndembu kinship symbols, analyze the relations between them, and attempt to state these relationships in a parsimonious but enlightening model. We will propose that some parts of the ideological dimension ofNdembu kinship can be handled differently from V. W. Turner's analysis (Turner 1957) and that they can be neatly described by a model of double unilineal descent and a four section marriage system.