Abstract
This study explores two novels titled Flesh of the Wild Ox (1932) and The Riffian (1933) written by Carleton S. Coon about the Moroccan Rif. These roughly unexplored novels are by an ethnographer and derive from an ethnography titled Tribes of the Rif (1931). Indeed, they “boast” themes usually seen as ethnographic in nature: kinship, marriage, polygyny, honour and shame, magic, subsistence pattern and inter-tribal warfare. This study is set within the convergence of literature and ethnography, striving to foreground the ethnographicity within the novels. It brings kinship into focus, notably investigating how kinship works in relation to power. It distinguishes twin kin power relationships: intra-kin and inter-kin. Intra-kin power relationships are domestic, involving individuals of a single kin group while inter-kin power relationships are transdomestic, involving individuals of different descent groups or the groups themselves. In both relationships, kinship operates inclusively as the Riffian characters strive to expand the number of individuals and groupings who, in Schweitzer’s words, can be “made into relatives” (210). The Riffians use inclusive strategies, including polygyny, exogamy and shame compulsion, so they can extend kin ties to non-kin. Those kinship strategies validate the the elasticity of kin boundaries among the Riffians. 
 
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Highlights
This study explores two novels titled Flesh of the Wild Ox (1932) and The Riffian (1933) written by Carleton S
In 1948, Coon left Harvard for the University of Pennsylvania to take up the job of an anthropology professor and museum curator
Coon speculates that five human erectus species have evolved separately into the human sapiens stage, giving rise to a remarkable degree of civilization among the foremost races
Summary
Mohamed Saili KINSHIP AND POWER RELATIONSHIPS IN COON’S FLESH OF THE WILD OX AND THE RIFFIAN the French resistance groups in Morocco and gathering military intelligence (Coon, A North 137-38). According to McCall, Coon was “a generalist who studied physical anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology together” (31) His magnum opus is The Origin of Races (1962). Coon speculates that five human erectus species have evolved separately into the human sapiens stage, giving rise to a remarkable degree of civilization among the foremost races. His speculation has been dismissed as a racist theorisation which serves a segregationist cause. While on a 1939 sabbatical leave in 1939, Coon excavated a cave in Tangier, unearthing deposits going back to Mousterian times These are but noteworthy examples of Coon’s contribution to anthropology. The germane one to this study is Tribes of the Rif
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