Affinal Ties Research Articles

Adopt a Daughter‐in‐Law, Marry a Sister: A Chinese Solution to the Problem of the Incest Taboo

In stressing the social advantages of the familial incest taboo, most explanations of the taboo ignore the fact that it makes marriage the enemy of the family. The stranger intruded by marriage often poses a threat to existing domestic relationships. The Chinese solution to this problem is to circumvent the taboo by adopting female children who are raised as wives for their foster parents' sons. The family choosing this form of marriage sacrifices prestige and dependable affinal ties, but by socializing their own daughters‐in‐law they preserve domestic harmony. The fact that many Chinese arrange marriages within the family as a means of preserving the family suggests that widely accepted explanations of the incest taboo exaggerate the dangers of incest and ignore the dangers of the taboo.

Affinal Ties, Subsistence, and Prestige among the Coast Salish1

THE nature of Northwest Coast social stratification and the nature of the institution most intimately related to it, the potlatch, are problems of widely recognized importance. Yet attempts at solving these problems have not been wholly satisfactory. Generalizations about social stratification have been betrayed by failure to give sufficient weight to all of the differences in social structure that existed among the various Northwest Coast tribes. Explanations of the potlatch have been only partial ones, finding its function in the expression of the individual's drive for high status or in the fulfillment of society's need for solidarity. Relating these functions to man's other requirements for survival has often been inhibited by an assumption that the satisfaction of alimentary needs through the food quest and the satisfaction of psychological needs through the manipulation of wealth form two separate systems, the and the economy. Or if a relationship between the two is hypothesized, the hypothesis usually makes the dependent upon the economy; it is assumed that a rich habitat provides an abundance of food which in turn supports the prestige economy which in turn maintains social stratification. I believe, however, that it is more reasonable to assume that, for a population to have survived in a given environment for any length of time, its subsistence activities and prestige-gaining activities are likely to form a single integrated system by which that population has adapted to its environment. I will try to show how this may be true of one group of Northwest Coast tribes, the Coast Salish of Southern Georgia Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca,2 and in particular I will try to show that in the socio-economic system of these a role of crucial importance was played by the ties established through intercommunity marriage. Native social organization in this area was characterized by a seeming looseness. Kinship was reckoned bilaterally. Residence was usually, but not always, patrilocal. The nuclear families of brothers, cousins, and brothers-inlaw formed extended families (x?anacellwam), occupying great cedar-plank houses and claiming rights to certain local resources and to certain inherited privileges. One or more such extended families formed a village or community. The community was linked through ties of marriage and kinship with other communities and these with still others to form a social network with no very clear boundaries. Groups of villages like the Lummi and Cowichan were linked by common dialect and traditions as tribes but in recent generations these village groupings were certainly not separate societies.

French Canadian Kinship and Urban Life1

The urban French Canadian kinship system is a variant of that generally reported for Western societies. It is a patronymic bilateral structure, with two major dimensions of lateral range and generation depth. While awareness of descent and pride in the history of a family name is shown by the majority of informants, frequency of contact is highest between members of the same generation, and cuts across consanguineal and affinal ties. These lateral and generation dimensions involve different patterns of behavior: a formal pattern of expected obligations operates between the generations; a more informal choice according to personality preference operates between members of the same generation. The nuclei of the kinship system are the parent-child and sibling relationships of the domestic family, which is held to be an autonomous unit. The expected roles of the members of the broader kin group vary according to their position in the formal and informal patterns, and their closeness to Ego's domestic family. These roles separate the total kin into a number of subgroups having special functions. The total kin group is expected to come into action only for very formal occasions, such as a funeral; in most situations, only the subgroups are involved. Women are more active within the kinship system

Nuer Marriage Ceremonies

Marriage among the Nuer is brought about by payment of bridewealth and by the performance of certain ceremonial rites. The rites cannot take place without the payments, but transfers of cattle do not by themselves bring about the union. Both are necessary and they proceed in a connected movement towards the full establishment of the union. Each enforces and reinforces the other. The bride's people can, by holding up the rites, put pressure on the bridegroom's people to make the payments due to them, and the bridegroom's people can, by withholding the cattle, induce the girl's family and kin to advance the ceremonies. First one pedal is pressed down and then the other as the marriage is propelled to its appointed end, the birth of children and the sharing of a home. It is undertsood that payments should have reached a certain point before a certain rite is held, and the performance of the rite is a recognition of the transfer of cattle up to that point. Payments of cattle and marriage rites therefore tend to alternate, though there is no fixity about the alternation and no marriage is exactly the same as another in this respect. The new social ties of conjugality and affinity are made stronger by each payment and by each ceremony, so that a marriage which is insecure at the beginning of the negotiations becomes surer with every new payment and rite; both sides, by the giving and receiving of cattle and by joint participation in the rites, becoming more deeply committed to bringing about the union. Therefore a marriage which has reached the final rites may be regarded as a stable union and will generally prove to be so.