Agnatic Descent Research Articles

CHANGING FAMILY STRATEGIES IN CONTEMPORARY MOROCCO Women’s Stories, Persistent Ideologies and Matrimonial Strategies

This article analyses changing family structures in Morocco by examining four households within one family’s residential compound. Despite its location in a rural setting, this compound is not the main site of economic production for these domestic units, meaning that other principles operate in the distribution and use of land. To analyse households within this property allows us to capture how marriage strategies and women’s position inside the family change through generations. Taking into account both the tradition of the extended family organized along agnatic descent lines and recent changes, which have made conjugal households desirable, this paper explores whether the seemingly conflicting values associated with traditional extended households and current opportunities for personal social mobility can be harmoniously integrated by families.

Clan Governance and State Stability: The Relationship between Female Subordination and Political Order

We propose that the relative influence of clans is an important explanatory factor producing significant variation in state stability and security across societies. We explore the micro-level processes that link clan predominance with dysfunctional syndromes of state behavior. Clans typically privilege agnatic descent from the patriline and are characterized by extreme subordination of women effected through marriage practices. Particular types of marriage practices give rise to particular types of political orders and may be fiercely guarded for just this reason. We construct and validate a Clan Governance Index to investigate which variables related to women's subordination to the patriline in marriage are useful to include in such an index. We then show that clan governance is a useful predictor of indicators of state stability and security, and we probe the value added by its inclusion with other conventional explanatory variables often linked to state stability and security.“I against my brothers; my brothers and I against my cousins; my cousins, my brothers, and I against the world” (Bedouin saying)“At the heart of tribes, to varying levels, is a severe patriarchy” (Jacobson 2013, 58).

Nasab as Idiom and Discourse

Contemporary Bedouin-related publications about tribal groups reveal a persistent interest in lineages. This article places this phenomenon within the larger framework of Bedouin self-representation and explores the nature and specific uses of the complex and polysemic notion ofnasabin treatises and speech. The ambiguity resulting from a tension between the pragmatic context of local articulation and circumstantial (re-)definition and the ideological significance, purportedly unchangeable and defined character and moral value ofnasabis reflected in historical and modern discourses as well as in pervasive references to tribal groups as being defined bynasab. The particular concomitance of practical and ideological aspects is the reason for the lasting impact of this notion, as its structure allows for the negotiation of both political issues and individual and collective identities. The publications considered here, mostly from Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, vary between an affirmative stance that often seeks to define prestigious lineages and an attempt to balance the obvious uncertainties of the data with an interest in establishing the identity of tribal groups and narratives referring to descent. As Bedouin lore puts it, the concept of belonging defined by origins in terms of agnatic descent (nasab) is challenged, and sometimes superseded, by the affinity established through locality and cohabitation.

A Study on Composition and Naturethe of agnatic Descent Group

A Study on Composition and Naturethe of agnatic Descent Group

Fasu Solidarity: A Case Study of Kin Networks, Land Tenure, and Oil Extraction in Kutubu, Papua New Guinea

In the Fasu region of Papua New Guinea's fringe highlands, the oil extraction industry has imposed development values and the identification of corporate groups as beneficiary landowners. In response, Fasu males have tightened the boundaries of their agnatic descent groups to become exclusive patriunits. Cash royalties are incorporated into sociopolitical exchange, so the formation of exclusive kin groups allows males to expand social networks to other regions, whilst ensuring continuing wealth for future generations. Consequently, males are becoming isolated from pre–oil exchange networks, and females are becoming isolated within villages. In this article, I map the transition of Fasu kin networks from an ideology of descent to a dogma of descent and patrilineal solidarity, locating the transition in the symbolic codes that inform kin categories. I aim to highlight some consequences of “development” and to advance knowledge on the link between kinship and descent in a postcolonial, industry‐dominated Papua New Guinea.

Meret Shehena, ‘Brothers' Land’ S. F. Nadel's Land Tenure on the Eritrean Plateau Revisited

AbstractThis article revisits S.F. Nadel's study on land tenure in highland Eritrea from the mid‐1940s, and presents the current framework of the communal land tenure system of meret shehena. Under the meret shehena system, all land under the domain of the village is perceived as the common property of the village inhabitants. To restrict outsiders access to land, habitation rights (tisha) to the villages is guided by agnatic descent, and individuals obtain usufruct rights to land through residence in the village. The article proves that since Nadel's study almost sixty years ago, descent rules defining habitation rights have been changed, in order to restrict distant descendants returning to the village and claiming their land rights. Nevertheless, the overall workings of the system that redistributes all shehena land every seventh year to the village inhabitants, shows a remarkable resemblance to the observations made by Nadel. It appears that the customary operational guidelines of the system are virtually unaffected by wars and political turbulence during the last fifty years, following the core principle that each male adult individual with habitation rights (tisha) who marries and establishes a separate household, will be entitled to an equal share (gibri) of the village land, in order to secure the livelihood of all household members.

Scission, discontinuity and reduplication of agnatic descent groups in precolonial Berber societies in Morocco

Scission, discontinuity and reduplication of agnatic descent groups in precolonial Berber societies in Morocco

Life-Cycle Rituals in Dongyang County: Time, Affinity, and Exchange in Rural China

This article analyzes materials on the life-cycle rituals of Dongyang County, Zhejiang Province, for what they reveal about Chinese concepts of time and the conduct of relations with affines. It argues that Chinese conceptions of the life cycle are bounded by a mortality at once recognized in temporal metaphor and desire for longevity, but also mystified into nonrecognition in the ancestral cult, which denies the psychologically unpleasant experience of time's irreversibility (Leach 1961). Finally, the article highlights the lifelong significance of affinal relations and their centrality in life-cycle rituals, and the transactions which accompany them. Our perspective evokes an almost Melanesian flavor in the Chinese materials, suggesting future potentially productive areas for comparative work. (Rites of passage, affines, exchange, China) This article analyzes the life-cycle rituals of Dongyang County, Zhejiang Province, for what they reveal about Chinese concepts of time and the conduct of relations with affines. In the end, these insights are marshalled in support of the view that an exchange perspective is as necessary to an appreciation of Chinese social structure as a perspective grounded in notions of agnatic descent. (See Yang 1994; Yan 1996; Thompson 1988 for similar views.) The data presented here derive from fieldwork conducted in Dongyang County during the spring seasons of 1988 and 1989.(1) Much of the data on traditional custom is gleaned from Dongyang Fengsu Zhi (Record of the Habits and Customs of Dongyang County), compiled in 1985 by the county Cultural Affairs Office from the county Historical Annals (xian zhi). Similar compendia are available for all the counties of the Jinhua region of Zhejiang Province, compiled and edited by locally informed scholars in a kind of post-Cultural Revolution salvage mission to record old customs they were lost altogether.(2) TIME AND RITUAL The Chinese rites of passage on the life-cycle occasions of birth, marriage, and death have attained a high degree of standardization over the centuries. Watson (1988a:3) has argued that unlike Christendom, China possessed no centralized unified church with an associated hierarchy of specialists charged with the responsibility of dispensing religious truth and policing correct belief. Thus he theorizes that Chinese imperial authorities were content to control and legislate practice, enforcing orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy (Watson 1988a: 10-11). The stress on the efficacy of the practice of Li (the proper conduct of rituals) in keeping the state on a steady course was an important pillar of Confucian theory, yet orthopraxy yielded in small ways to local inflection in the details (Watson 1988a:15-16). The Chinese manifest a particularly strong form of the hierarchical order that Meillasoux (1978) postulates as characteristic of peasant agrarian societies, in which those who came before have precedence over those who come after. The veneration of the aged and the ancestral cult in China give concrete expression to Meillasoux's hypothesis which, while made without reference to Chinese data, so marvelously captures the essentials of Confucian ideology as to give it great credibility for sinological studies. Thus, in Dongyang County, birthdays of the decades of old age (celebrations of longevity) also have something of the significance of rites of passage (Yan 1996:39, 54). One's sixtieth birthday, which completes the 60-year permutational cycle of calendrical stems and branches, is especially noteworthy. For Evans-Pritchard (1940), rites of passage represented an aspect of structural time, in that generations of Nuer marched through the rites in age grades whose relative positions to each other never changed. While there are no formal age grades in Chinese culture, successive generations are marked in the idiom of genealogy and ritual performance and create a distinctive Chinese version of Evans-Pritchard's structural time. …

Parenté et orientation sociale : la chevalerie immédiate rhénane, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles

Though being an isolated and weak group of nobility, the rhenish imperial knigh-thood manages to strengthen its dominating position in the ecclesiastical principal ties. Wich pratices of kin did make possible this perduring domination ? First of all, kin is a protecting wall, because the way into the cathedral chapters (electing the bishops) passes throught paternal and maternal genealogical proofs and through cooptation. A little amount of lineages can in this way almost monopolize the chapters, as long as they practice a thorough endogamy and reinforce constantly the cognatic and agnatic network commanding the passage of power. But it doesn't mean that kin relations are hardened in this frame : the increasing ecclesiastical specialization leads to a tightening of the lineage. The role of each member of the family is redefined, the inheritance's discipline is hardened, the agnatic descent is emphasized. The growing differenciation of the kin circles (a large one for the working of the oligarchy, an institutional one for the defence of the exclusivism, a narrow one for the tightening of the lineage) is governing this familial strategies that show a high degree of flexibility in actualising different sorts of kin.

ONE NAME, MANY GROUNDS: LAND, MARRIAGE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE AMONG THE OROKAIVA OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

It is proposed, through an examination of published materials on the Orokaiva, that established and even competing models and concepts of ‘kinship’ and marriage (generalized and direct exchange, agnatic descent, clan, balanced reciprocity) have little or no explanatory power since they either do not fit the published facts or they predict the same results, despite published assertions to the contrary. An hypothesis linking relationship terminology, marriage ‘systems’ and land use is proposed. Some features in the ‘system’ of ‘kinship’ terminology appear to be expressive of the ideology of gardening rather than ‘kinship’ and marriage per se.

Agnatic and uterine relations among the Fante: male/female dualism

INTRODUCTIONOne of the outstanding features of Akan social organisation emphasised by ethnographers since Rattray's monograph on the Asante (1923: Chap. 2 esp.) is the interlacement of fundamental matriliny with prominent patrilineal traits. With particular reference to the Fante, on whom this paper is based, Christensen (1954: 5, 107) claims, on some wrong premiss though, that his study of 'the role and importance of the paternal line' leads him to conclude that ‘the Fanti manifest a system of double descent’. My own fieldwork (1966-70) on the Fante asafo – the most distinct social manifestation of their patrilineal tendency– indeed confirms the fact that the Fante still lay strong stress on agnatic descent groups, which in Asante and other Akan sub-groups have become more or less ‘obsolete’ (Fortes 1950: 265f, Busia 1954: 207, with reference to ntoro). This notwithstanding, the combination of patrilineal and matrilineal principles of reckoning descent remains a fundamental attribute of Akan culture as a whole. That is to say, the so-called Fante peculiarity is in fact only a slight variation of a general Akan type.

Agnatic Descent and Endogamy: A Note

Prominent among others, Murphy and Kasdan have portrayed in-marriage within Arab agnatic descent groups as rather contradictory, creating a 'bilateral' threat which can only be solved through genealogical amnesia of ancestresses. Among the Abutia Ewe of Ghana, in-marriage is also practiced on a significant scale within agnatic descent groups. This ethnographic example suggests that (1) the notion of incompatibility between agnatic descent and descent-group in-marriage may be the outcome of our very way of representing descent, and (2) with a different definition of descent, agnatic descent and descent-group in-marriage may indeed be pictured as coexisting unproblematically.

The status of women in sisala society

Sisala women occupy an inferior position in society relative to men. This is especially true when one analyzes the economic system wherein men dominate the control of the means and relations of production. This article describes the sex-role ascription in the technical relations of production, sexual inequality in the reproduction of the conditions and relations of production, and relates this sexual asymmetry to the structural rules of virilocal residence, bridewealth, and agnatic inheritance rules. A case is presented which shows that the accumulation of independent wealth is possible during one woman's lifetime, but its transmission to another female or to the woman's agnatic descent group is prevented by the existence of strict rules of patrilineal inheritance. The social control of women is seen as located in the social structure, while the conditions which alter that structure over time are material changes which occur in an historical context.

The Soul and Sacrifice Amongst the Sisala

The Sisala are a patrilineal group of horticulturalists living in the savanna-zone of Northern Ghana. 1 Their villages are widely scattered throughout the scrub brush, which is cleared on a rotating basis, for subsistence farming. There are two climatic seasons: rainy and dry. The Sisala cultivate crops of millet, sorghum, guinea-corn, maize, yams, rice and a variety of lesser crops. Cattle are kept for purposes of bridewealth payments and sacrifices. Social organisation is based on the principle of agnatic descent. Residence is patrilocal. The Sisala are united by a loose-knit association of patri-clans which are sub-divided into villages, maximal lineages, lineages, compounds, houses and single rooms. The village is the most important political unit, while the lineage, normally comprising a patrilineally extended family, is the corporate unit of production and consumption. It is also the most important ritual unit, in terms of the frequency of ancestral sacrifice and the function of this institution as a means of social control. The compound-family, several of which comprise a lineage, is made up of either an extended family or a joint-fraternal family. Either the lineage or the compound may be the unit of production, depending on the stage of the group in the developmental cycle. The Sisala are governed by a paramount chief who, for a threeyear term, heads a five-man council of chiefs, after which time another member of the council is elected by council vote. This council has under its jurisdiction several divisional and village chiefs. Chiefship was created by the British and today exists in this form along-

Yao bride-exchange, matrifiliation and adoption

I his paper deals with Southeast Asian Hill People whom I foreigners call Yao. It concerns two dominant issues in anthropological discussions: recruitment of maitrifiliates to allegedly agnatic descent groups and circular connubium in the Southeast Asian Highlands. I aim to demonstrate a functional relationship between these two phenomena and adoption; that each practice is an aspect of regional commerce.

Shrines, Ancestors, and Cognatic Descent: The Kwaio and Tallensi1

Parallels between Kwaio (Solomon Islands) social structure and the system of ancestral cults and shrines are drawn. Kwaio distinguish between, and make important use of, agnatic descent, cognatic descent, and cognatic kinship, and each is reflected in ritual. Comparisons are drawn between Kwaio social structure, ancestors, and shrines, and those of the Tallensi. Remarkable similarities emerge. It is suggested that many facets of “complementary filiation,” and other features of Tallensi social structure, may reflect a secondary principle of cognatic descent.

Agnatic or Cognatic? A Re-Evaluation of Ondo Descent

Both the Ijebu and Ondo kingdoms have been described by Lloyd as having a cognatic descent system (I962; I966; I968). The cognatic descent groups of these southern Yoruba peoples,' he has indicated, contrast with the agnatic descent groups characteristic of the more northerly Yoruba. This has been said to be one of the ways in which the Yoruba differ significantly among themselves in some aspects of social structure while being relatively homogeneous culturally. Lloyd has attempted to discover other differences in social and political structure which appear to be correlated with this contrast in descent organisation. It is more accurate, I feel, to describe the Ondo descent system as agnatic, and I will indicate here my basis for making this judgement. I must emphasise first, however, that differences between Lloyd and myself are not the result of our working from different definitional assumptions, since we seem to be in general agreement here. Thus the basis for our opposed conclusions depends on the nature of the data collected and on our interpretation of it. I agree with Lloyd's (I966) expressed definitions. Cognatic descent groups, he states, are ancestor-oriented, with descent being traced through ascendants of either sex; while agnatic descent groups are ancestor-oriented, with descent being traced through male ascendants only. As he points out, both types of descent system are structurally favourable to the formation of corporate groupings. Cognatic descent is unrestricted in the sense that an individual can theoretically be a member of as many groups as are formed on the basis of the descendants of the original ancestor. Agnatic descent groups, by contrast, are restricted in the sense that an individual can belong only to groups composed of persons descended from a common ancestor through male links. In distinguishing between agnatic and cognatic descent groups, only one definitional criterion is used by Lloyd: the rules for membership in these groups. Any other social phenomena which are frequently considered when discussing descent groups, such as residence rules, jural inheritance and concepts of biological relatedness have, correctly, been excluded from his definitions, since they can vary independently of the type of descent.

King Lists of the Old Babylonian Period and Biblical Genealogies

BIBLICAL GENEALOGIEs-especially the ethnographic tables in Genesis and the tribal genealogies assembled mainly in the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles-represent a unique historiographical genre within the literature of the ancient Near East.' Only at the start of the Islamic period did Arab chronographers create such broad genealogical tables, encompassing northern and southern Arabian tribes, dwarfing in extent even their biblical archetypes.2 An extraordinary document containing the full genealogy of the ilammurapi dynasty (henceforth GilD), recently published by J. J. Finkelstein,8 prompts a reassessment in this field. The Old Babylonian king list, together with the upper part of the Assyrian King List (henceforth AKL) ,4 now provides further insights into the essence and structure of biblical genealogies. Moreover, examination of lineage systems among present-day primitive tribal societies, which have been the subject of intense anthropological study in recent years, may give a clearer picture of genealogical patterns in the ancient Near East, in spite of the different historical and sociological contexts, and especially as those societies are of an entirely illiterate nature.' We should note, a priori, the parallel and the divergent features in the genealogical schemes of the Bible and the Mesopotamian king lists, for they define the possibilities of comparative discussion. Whereas the king lists are of an obvious vertical construction, biblical genealogies are spread out on a horizontal plane as well, exemplified for instance by the twelve tribes stemming from Jacob. Only the latter, a two-dimensional pattern, can form a true family tree, revealing a genealogical panorama of a single tribe or of an entire group of peoples. The Bible, followed by the Arabian genealogists, often resorts to accomodating female elements, wives or concubines, mothers or daughters, elements which naturally have no place in strictly vertical lineages of societies basing on agnatic descent. 1 On genealogies in the Bible in general, see the biblical dictionaries s. V.: e. g., The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible II, 1962, pp. 362 ff. (R. A. Bowman); Encyclopaedia Biblica III, 1958, cols. 663 ff. (Y. Liver; in Hebrew), with bibliographical references there. For the various interpretations of Israelite tribal genealogies, see W. Duffy, The Tribal-Historical Theory on the Origin of the Hebrew People, 1944. Cf. also L. Ramlot, Les genealogies bibliques, Bible et Vie chr6tienne 60 (1964), pp. 53 ff. 2 The basic treatment of these genealogies in relation with their biblical antecedents is still W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia2, 1903. Cf. also the most recent studies on Arabian genealogies: J. Obermann, Early Islam, in The Idea of History in the Ancient Near East, 1955, especially pp. 242 ff. and 290 ff.; W. Caskel, Die Bedeutung der Beduinen in der Geschichte der Araber, Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Heft 8, 1953; idem, Iamharat an-nasab-Das genealogische Werk des Hikdm ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi I-II, 1966. s The Genealogy of the Hammurapi Dynasty, JCS 20 (1966), pp. 95-118 (hereinafter cited by page number only); for specific points see also the bibliographical references there. 4The first real comprehension of the upper portion of AKL was achieved by B. Landsberger, Assyrische Konigsliste und Dunkles Zeitalter, JCS 8 (1954), pp. 33 ff. and 109 ff. (hereinafter cited only by page number) ; for two subsequent comprehensive investigations, cf. F. R. Kraus, KEnige, die in Zelten wohnten, Mededelingen der koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Afd. Letterkunde, N. R. 28, No. 2), 1965; H. Lewy, Assyria (2600-1816 B.C.), CAH I, Ch. XXV (rev. ed.), 1966, pp. 17 ff. For the two full copies of AKL extant, cf. I. J. Gelb, JNES 12 (1954), pp. 209 ff. However, a conclusive study of this facet must be left to a combined effort with modern anthropology, for within the present discussion only casual steps have been taken in this direction. Illuminating comparative material may be gleaned from investigations of, for instance, African peoples; cf., inter alia, E. E. EvansPritchard, The Nuer, 1940 (especially Ch. V); M. Fortes, The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi, 1949 (CChs. I and II ); I. Cunnison, The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, 1959 (Ch. IV). Cf. also L. Bohanan, A Genealogical Charter, Africa 22 (1952), pp. 301 ff.; and E. Peters, The Proliferation of Lineage Segments in Cyrenaica, Journ. Royal Anthr. Inst. 90 (1960), pp. 29ff.

Structural co‐variants of land shortage among patrilineal peoples

Abstract One point of difference among New Guinea Highland peoples hinges on whether, and how far, warfare was linked with territorial gains. Among the Kuma of the Wahgi Valley, land conquest was apparently not an issue before European contact. This paper shows how they are now moving to re‐form their old phratries, and finding the disposal of clan land useful in political competition between pacified clans. Comparisons are drawn between Kuma and Central Enga, with special attention to availability of land, agnatic descent, recruitment, and marriage.

Agnatic and Cognatic Descent Among the Yoruba

Agnatic and Cognatic Descent Among the Yoruba