The Nonunilineal Descent Group in the Caribbean and Central America

Abstract

HUMAN social groupings have been classified by various observers in many different ways, usually according to the basis upon which individuals gain membership to the group. One large category consists of groupings based upon kinship, and included in it are such institutions as the family, the lineage, the clan, the sib, the stock, the kindred, and many others depending upon how the scientist wishes to define his terms. In this paper I wish to discuss a type of kinship grouping which has hitherto received little attention from anthropologists. Its characteristics place it outside any grouping listed above, though it has at times been confused with the kindred. Goodenough (1955:72) has pointed out that two distinct definitions of the kindred have previously appeared in the literature. In one, the kindred is seen as a group of people tracing their kinship connections laterally to a common relative. In the other, the members of the group trace descent lineally from a common ancestor. This latter group differs from such unilineal descent groups as the lineage and the clan by the fact that members trace their descent through both males and females; i.e., through either a male or a female in any given generation. Because of this characteristic, the group may be referred to as a nonunilineal descent group. Former references to this type of kinship grouping are few and, for the most part, brief. Radcliffe-Brown seems to be referring to it when he discusses stocks among the ancient Teutonic peoples (1950:16). In that system a stock was composed of the descendents, counted through any line, of one of Ego's four pairs of great-grandparents. Ego would thus belong to four distinct stocks. We are told nothing more of the structure and functioning of such groups, nor whether they served in any way as corporate bodies. Goodenough (1955) presented a fairly extensive discussion of the nonunilineal descent group in certain Polynesian social organizations.' He pointed out that some element other than descent must restrict and define the actual membership of each group. An individual may belong to as many such descent groups as he has ancestors, and without some other determining element such groups could never function as discrete or corporate units in a society. Goodenough (1955: 72) has suggested several ways of restricting membership which are used in various parts of Polynesia. These include restriction to (1) persons possessing certain land rights, (2) persons born in a particular area, and (3) persons who choose to reside in a given area. I shall now describe the nonunilineal descent group among the Black Carib of Central America. As in most other contemporary Caribbean societies, the