Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Meyer - Fortes 1953
Meyer - Fortes 1953
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
THE STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS4
By MEYER FORTES
AS IS well known, Africa has loomed large in British field research in the
past twenty-five years. It is, indeed, largely due to the impact of ethno-
graphic data from Africa that British anthropologists are now giving so much
attention to social organization, in the widest sense of that term. In this
paper what I shall try to do is to sum up some positive contributions that
seem to me to have come out of the study of African social organization. I
want to add this. British anthropologists are well aware that their range of
interests seems narrow in comparison with the wide and adventurous sweep
of American anthropology. This has been due to no small extent to lack of
numbers and there are signs that a change is on the way with the increase in
the number of professional anthropologists since the end of the war. At the
same time, I believe that the loss in diversity is amply balanced by the gains
we have derived from concentration on a limited set of problems.2
Social anthropology has undoubtedly made great progress in the past
twenty years. I would give pride of place to the accumulation of ethnographic
data obtained by trained observers. It means, curiously enough, that there is
going to be more scope than ever for the "armchair" scholar in framing and
testing hypotheses with the help of reliable and detailed information. For
Africa the advance from the stage of primitive anecdotage to that of scientific
description has been almost spectacular; and most of it has taken place since
1930, as can be judged by comparing what we know today with the state of
African ethnography as described by Dr. Edwin Smith in 1935. Mainly
through Malinowski's influence we now have a respectable series of descrip-
tive monographs on specific institutional complexes in particular African so-
cieties. Studies like Evans-Pritchard's on Zande witchcraft (1937), Schapera's
on Tswana law (1937) and Richards' on Bemba economy (1939), to cite only
three outstanding prewar examples, typify the advance made since 1930. They
are significant not only for their wealth of carefully documented detail but
also for the evidence they give of the validity of the thesis, now so common-
place, that the customs and institutions of a people can only be properly
understood in relation to one another and to the "culture as a whole." They
show also what a powerful method of ethnographic discovery intensive field-
work on "functionalist" lines can be.
The field-work of the past two decades has brought into clearer focus the
characteristics of African socieites which distinguish them from the classica
simple societies of, say, Australia, Melanesia or North America; and th
mark of this is easily seen in the thought and interests of Africanists. One o
these is the relatively great size, in terms both of territorial spread and of
numbers, of many ethnographic units in Africa as compared with the classica
17
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
18 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 19
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
20 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
to "culture" as the global concept subsuming everything that goes oni social
life. A serious limitation to this point of view is that it is bound to treat every-
thing in social life as of equal weight, all aspects as of equal significance.
There is no way of establishing an order of priority where all institutions are
interdependent, except by criteria that cannot be used in a synchronic study;
and synchronic study is the sine qua non of functional research. There is, for
instance, the criterion of viability over a stretch of time which enables us to
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 21
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
22 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 23
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
24 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 25
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
26 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 27
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
28 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 29
This way of thinking about the problem of social integration has been us
ful in recent studies of African political organization. Study of the uniline
descent group as a part of a total social system means in fact studying its func-
tions in the widest framework of social structure, that of the political organiza
tion. A common and perhaps general feature of political organization in Africa
is that it is built up in a series of layers, so to speak, so arranged that the prin-
ciple of checks and balances is necessarily mobilized in political activities. Th
idea is used in a variety of ways but what it comes to in general is that th
members of the society are distributed in different, nonidentical schemes
allegiance and mutual dependence in relation to administrative, juridical an
ritual institutions. It would take too long to enumerate all the peoples fo
whom we now have sufficient data to show this in detail. But the Lozi of
Northern Rhodesia (Gluckman, 1951) are of such particular theore
interest in this connection that a word must be said about them. The corpora
descent group is not found among them. Instead their political organiza
is based on what Maine called the corporation sole. This is a title carry
political office backed by ritual sanctions and symbols to which subjec
lands, jurisdiction, and representative status, belong. But every adu
bound to a number of titles for different legal and social purposes in su
way that what is one allegiance group with respect to one title is split up wit
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
30 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 31
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
32 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 33
Since the bilateral family is the focal element in the web of kinship, comple-
mentary filiation provides the essential link between a sibling group and the
kin of the parent who does not determine descent. So a sibling group is not
merely differentiated within a lineage but is further distinguished by reference
to its kin ties outside the corporate unit. This structural device allows of
degrees of individuation depending on the extent to which filiation on the non-
corporate side is elaborated. The Tiv, for example, recognize five degrees of
matrilateral filiation by which a sibling group is linked with lineages other
than its own. These and other ties of a similar nature arising out of marriage
exchanges result in a complex scheme of individuation for distinguishing both
sibling groups and persons within a single lineage (L. Bohannan, 1951). This,
of course, is not unique and has long been recognized, as everyone familiar
with Australian kinship systems knows. Its more general significance can be
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
34 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 35
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
36 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 37
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
38 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 39
NOTES
1 Editorial note: This paper was presented by Professor Fortes at the Symposium
"Positive Contributions of Social Anthropology," held at the 50th annual meetings of the
can Anthropological Association in Chicago, November 15-17, 1951. Professor Fortes' pa
tion in the symposium was made possible by the generosity of the Wenner-Gren Foundati
Anthropological Research, Inc.
2 This was written before I saw the discussion between Dr. Murdock and Professor Firth on
the limitations of British social anthropology in the October-December 1951 number (Vol. 5
No. 4, Pt. 1) of the American Anthropologist.
3 In the bibliography that follows, references marked by an asterisk are cited by permission
of the author.
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
40 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [55, 1953
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FORTES] STRUCTURE OF UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS 41
This content downloaded from 131.111.164.128 on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 11:01:44 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms