The Dyadic Contract: A Model for the Social Structure of a Mexican Peasant Village1

Abstract

HE social structures of societies with unilineal descent groups are far T better known than those of societies with bilateral kinship systems, and our conceptual models for dealing with them are much more sophisticated. The differences in our relative degrees of knowledge are particularly apparent when we compare African groups with what may be called “classic peasant society,” of which the preindustrial European village is the type example.e By 1953 Fortes felt “we are now in a position to formulate a number of connected generalizations about the structure of the unilineal descent group, and its place in the total social system . . . ’’ (1953:24). We are still unable to say as much about bilateral systems, as a class, as Fortes said about unilineal descent groups a t that time. Since Fortes wrote, Pitt-Rivers’ account of a small Spanish town (1955) and Banfield’s description of a poverty-stricken Italian village (1958) have appeared. Both represent classic peasantry. Although the Spanish Alcall and the Italian Montegrano differ from each other in many ways, and are described by the authors from distinct points of reference, it is clear that in social typology they fall together as compared to African corporate-unit groups. Most, and possibly all, non-Indian Latin American peasant communities, when better described, will be found to fall with the European Mediterranean type. This is important, since collectively the two areas, which share much common culture history and many social structural features, offer an excellent contrast to the African groups which have become the take-off point for so much structuralfunctional analysis. This paper represents a preliminary attempt a t a structural-functional analysis of the social organization of the Mexican peasant community of Tzintzuntzan. Specifically, I suggest a model-and describe part of the empirical data from which it is drawn-to reconcile the institutionalized roles which can be recognized and described with the underlying principle which gives the social system coherence. The model appears to account for the nature of interaction between people of the same socio-economic status, between people of different statuses, between fellow villagers, between villagers and outsiders, and perhaps between man and supernatural beings as well. Although my anallysis deals only with Tzintzuntzan, I think the model will prove useful for other societies with similar structural features. In Tzintzuntzan, as in AlcalB and Montegrano, the nuclear bilateral family is the basic social unit. And, as in these two communities, both villagers and