Rodney Needham - Rethinking Kinship and Marriage

Routledge Library Editions

RETHINKING KINSHIP
AND MARRIAGE

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY

FAMILY & KINSHIP
In 7 Volumes

First published in 1971

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First issued in paperback 2011

1971 Association of Social Anthropologists of the
Commonwealth

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Rethinking Kinship and Marriage

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-33013-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-51127-8 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-136-53640-3 (ePub)

Miniset: Family & Kinship

Series: Routledge Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography

SBN 422 73690 2

Dedication

The contributors, with one protesting exception,
join in dedicating this volume to

EDMUND LEACH

in grateful recognition of the quality of his
empirical analyses, the provocative originality of
his theoretical excursions, and the moral example
set by the verve and the unpretentious radicality
with which he has advanced the study of kinship
and marriage

At the annual general meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists, held at the University of Sussex in April 1969, the chairman, Dr Edmund Leach, suggested that the next conference ought to get back to firm anthropological ground. The members present decided that this meant kinship and marriage, and they asked me to act as convener. This was ironic, for Leach had prominently argued that marriage was not an isolable institution, nor subject to any universal definition (1961, ch. 4), and I had contended that kinship was a thoroughly misleading term and a false criterion for the comparison of social facts (1966: 31-2).

Nevertheless, our colleagues were definite that these were the topics they wanted discussed, so with an unfeigned reluctance I agreed to organize a conference on kinship and marriage. Leach, whose participation I naturally judged to be essential, at once consented to prepare a paper for it, but thereafter the organization admitted various possibilities, each with its own difficulties. One course was to select a theme and to invite contributors to address themselves to this; another was to concentrate on theoretical issues, or alternatively on empirical problems; a further possibility was to circumscribe an ethnographical province and to work comparatively within that; and so on. But this range of procedures implied a degree of liberty which I soon had to realize I did not possess; for it appeared to me that the real and fundamental difficulty, and one that attached to any kind of arrangement for the conference, was simply to find a squad of social anthropologists who were sufficiently interested in the topics, technically competent, and willing to prepare essays for public debate. I mention these considerations because for me they were the first lesson of the conference, in driving home more forcefully the condition of the profession in these respects and the theoretical state of affairs with regard to the topics in question. Also, readers are entitled to a report on the circumstances in which the conference took shape and on some of the reasons for the ultimate constitution of this volume.

As it was, I invited in the first place people whose work I respected, no matter what their field of interest and without any restriction or guidance as to choice of subject. All I asked was that they should talk about something that interested them. An exception was Mr McKnight: I knew he had visited the Wikmunkan, so I asked him specifically whether he would like to address the association on his findings in that society. Some whose collaboration I particularly desired could not be free for the occasion or, understandably, did not want to take part in an academic gathering when term was over and they could otherwise get some work done; some others were too far away, in places such as Australia and Brazil, to come to England for the purpose. In the end, however, as I trust readers will agree, matters worked out very well: we had enough speakers, and their papers proved to complement one another very nicely. Then there were posterior benefits which materially improved the monograph: Mr Forge, who had delivered an authoritative commentary on Mrs Korn's analysis of the Iatml system, very kindly consented to compose his notes into a formal assessment for publication; Dr Beidelman, who had agreed to take part but found himself unable to attend, afterwards sent an essay on the Kaguru; Mr Wilder, who had made a vigorous contribution to the discussions at Bristol, offered an examination of Purum descent groups which I had a special pleasure in including; and Dr Fox, who had not been able to participate in the conference, later submitted (after the volume had been prepared for publication, and thus not in time for appropriate mention in this introduction) an expanded version of the paper that he had intended to deliver.