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

Abstract

STUDIES OF KINSHIP TERMINOLOGIES, and the significance of these terminologies for 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 terms must be analyzed initially from the perspective of their references, others (e.g., Leach 1958, Needham 1962) argue that they must be regarded as category words denoting the significant groupings in 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 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 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