Kinship analysis: methods, results and the Sirionó demonstration case

Abstract

A likely example of cultural devolution', the Sirion? hunters and gatherers of Bolivia were best known for the whistle-talk they have developed until Needham (1962) drew attention to their kinship system, which he cited as a rare case of matrilineal prescriptive alliance. His interpretation was subsequently weakened as it became clear that there is no evidence in the Sirion? ethnography (Holmberg 1950) for social correlates which are an essential part of the 'prescriptive alliance' scheme (Needham 1962, 1964). Meanwhile Schef fier and Lounsbury had chosen the Sirion? system as the demonstration case for a new approach to kinship, called 'trans formational analysis', which aims to discover the underlying cognitive structure of the system through semantic analysis. The Sirion? case study (1971) contrasted the results of this method with the failure of Needham's model; and since prescriptive alliance theory itself is Need ham's modified version of L?vi-Strauss' kinship theory (which I will call 'structural' theory), the case seemed to vindicate their semantic approach where 'structuralism' had already proved inadequate. The purpose of this paper is to compare L?vi-Strauss' general kinship theory (1949) to the transformational analysis, through an application to the Sirion? system. I will try to show that the two approaches are incompatible ? both cannot be valid ? but that structural theory allows the Sirion? system to be understood as : 1 ) simpler than Schef fier and Lounsbury make it; 2) based on universal rather than culture bound principles; 3) less paradoxical in its social setting than Needham suggests; and 4) less anomalous in its ethnographic context than it seems when it is labelled 'asymmetric prescriptive alliance'. To do this I will outline the basic premises of structural kinship theory, sketch the interpretation of Sirion? kinship which follows from them, and compare this in some detail to the transformational analysis. Finally I will try to place the Sirion? system in historical perspective