Kinship vis-h-visMyth

Contrasts in Lbvi-Straws’ Approaches

to Cross-Cultural Comparison

JAMES A. BOON
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
DAVID M. SCHNEIDER
University o f Chicago

The enormous secondary literature which relates Levi-Strauss’ comparative studies

t o different schools of thought has failed sufficiently to emphasize the major dis-
continuity within his own work. This paper characterizes the basic methodological
differences in his approaches t o “kinship” and to “myth. ” I t then suggests how, by
concentrating on the k i n s h i p h y t h distinction, we might constructively refine vari-
ous structuralist concepts, such as distinctive feature analysis and the logical
foundations o f the “elementary ” kinship structures. Only by concentrating on the
few inconsistencies in Ldvi-Strauss’ remarkably coherent corpus o f work can an
adequate critique o f his theories o f comparison be commenced.

AT THE MOST GENERAL LEVEL Uvi-Strauss has made two major contributions to
anthropology as a comparative science: (1)a means of interrelating different reified “soci-
eties” by contrasting their principles of social differentiation and cohesion, set in relief by
his concept of marriage; (2) a means of analyzing a particular human capacity-the analogical
capacity-which characterizes all men, but is more conspicuous (to outside observers) in
preliterate tribal myths.
Both contributions are fundamentally ethnological rather than ethnographic. The
Elementary Structures of Kinship (hereafter ESK) compares select groups according to how
their rules and terms involving “cousins” relate to a theory of marriage-as-reciprocity.
Mythologiques detects a self-comparativist tendency in a particular sort of ethnographic data
which, in and of itself, can articulate cross-cultural differences. “Myths” are documents
translated by fieldworkers which record a differential classification tendency (penske
sauuuge). They are the evidence of how a society selects concrete items from experience to
articulate its distinctive features in contrast to other societies. Mythologiques compares
select groups according to how they have compared themselves. This paper emphasizes the
contrast between ESK and Mythologiques, the basic differences in Uvi-Strauss’ approaches
to kinship data and mythological data, which recall traditional contrasts between “social”
and “cultural” anthropology. We argue that formal-methodological frameworks have been
abstracted from these studies prematurely, and that two diverse kinds of endeavor have too
often been glossed as a single “structuralism.” First we review and summarize the kinship/
myth opposition. Then we illustrate some areas-“distinctive feature matrixes” and “the
elementary kinship continuum”-that require reconceptualizing with this opposition firmly

Submitted for publication April 1 0 . 1 9 7 4

Accepted for publicationJuly 1 0 . 1 9 7 4

799
800 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [ 76,1974

grasped. And throughout the paper we ask what might result if “kinship” were treated more
as “myth.”’

KINSHIP/MYTH

In his treatment of kinship Levi-Strauss deals with ethnographic materials, reported by

observers who have collected data from native informants, in terms of the following
premises: (1) Each society has a distinct kinship system which can be treated apart from
other aspects of the society and its culture (ESK, 480-2). (2) Each society is an entity, a
whole characterized by a particular kinship system, e.g., the Kachin system, the Murngin
system. (3) A kinship system can be defined provisionally as a “way of classifying people
and defining their rights and duties in accordance with past marriages and in provision of
future ones” (Levi-Strauss, personal correspondence); moreover:
kinship systems, marriage rules, and descent groups constitute a coordinated whole, the
function of which is to insure the permanency of the social group by means of inter-
twining consanguineous and affinal ties. They may be considered as the blueprint of a
mechanism which “pumps” women out of their consanguineous families to redistribute
them in affinal group, the result of this process being to create new consanguineous
groups, and so on [Levi-Strauss 1967a:302-303.]
(4) The elementary kinship structures are elaborations on the irreducible social bond intel-
ligible in the relations between a man and his sister, his wife and her brother, and off-
spring-the avunculate “atom of kinship” (LBvi-Strauss 1967:46).
The indigenes’ own views of their kinship are considered but must be tabled as anything
more than a part of the ethnographic material for analysis. In fact, along with anthropolo-
gists, natives themselves may be “guilty of methodological contrivance” (ESK, 110).
Analytic oppositions are formed not from actual recorded excerpts of native just-so stories
about their kinship relations, but from the fixed and presumably universal elements of a
social organizational scheme deemed appropriate for all societies and centering on incest
prohibition, exogamy, marriage, descent, residence, etc., and related nomenclatures. The
symptomatic elementary trait remains the relationship of a given group to either cross-cousin
marriage, or rules of exogamy, or dual organization as “so many examples of one basic
structure” (ESK,123). We can gloss this “basic structure” for the kinds of societies at issue
approximately as: a man takes a woman from a positively-defined class or genealogical
position, which marriage implies an immediate or eventual return of a woman. The basic
opposition is between “con~anguinity’~ (the social portion a daughter is married out of) and
“affinity” (the social portion a daughter is married in to), with marriage as the basic cohesive
operator. Whether the natives do or do not phrase the opposition in terms of “marriage” or
even whether any of the three aspects-consanguinity, affinity, marriage-coincide with
indigenous articulations is only a secondary concern. Accordingly, whether the system has
clans or lineages is something for the observer to decide, for “clan” and “lineage” are
technical concepts.
L6vi-Strauss defines a kinship system as one which specifies the rights and duties of men
with respect to the exchange of women between groups, but this exchange is specified as
“marriage.” The mere exchange of slaves or of hostages is another matter. Such arrange-
ments appear devoid of systematic sociological significance, whereas in positive systems the
exchange of women as “marriage partners” occurs by perpetual social rule. Moreover,
44
marriag? provisions” are complicated in actuality by children produced by the sexual
relations licensed by those marriages. The relationships between men and their wives’
brothers are augmented by relationships between the children and mothers’ brothers,
children and fathers, and through fathers to fathers’ sisters, etc.
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VISMYTH 801

Thus, according to this approach marriage must entail sexual relationships which in turn
must be fecund. Otherwise the condition, “with respect to past marriages and in provision o f
future ones,” could not be met. This scheme disqualifies certain native notions of “mar-
riage” as genuine marriage-e.g., unions between men and transvestites in some Plains
Indians. Yet the Zulu “marriage” between two women-where the “wife” is impregnated by
a designated male, while some other male is her “husband” and the “father” of the offspring-
apparently qualifies. L6vi-Strauss does indeed note: “It is far from our mind to claim that
the exchange or gift of women is the only way to establish an alliance in primitive societies”
(ESK, 483). He allows for friendship and homosexuality, but then expresses these reserva-
tions:
However, the whole difference between the two types of bond can also be seen, a
sufficiently clear definition being that one of them expresses a mechanical solidarity
(brother), while the other involves an organic solidarity (brother-in-law, or god-father).
Brothers are closely related to one another, but they are so in terms of their similar-
i t y . . . . By contrast, brothers-in-law are solidary because they complement each other
and have a functional efficacy for one another, whether they play the role of the opposite
sex in the erotic games of childhood, or whether their masculine alliance as adults is
confirmed by each providing the other with what he does not have-a wife-through their
simultaneous renunciation of what they both do have-a sister. The first form of solidar-
ity adds nothing and unites nothing; it is based upon a cultural limit, satisfied by the
reproduction of a type of connexion the model for which is provided by nature. The
other brings about an integration of the group on a new plane [ESK,484.1
The “new plane” in Uvi-Strauss’ view is the cultural aspect of the human social condition,
wherein offspring are morally bonded to their parents and cross-parental generation, and act
accordingly.’
In short, the facts of human reproduction, proceeding under the orderly rules of alliance,
make “marriage” the critical bond in the system of exchange called “kinship” in ESK. For,
only fecund marriages can provide for the future of the system by producing the actors who
make the marriages back. The future marriages convert the “atom of kinship” into kinship’s
“fundamental quartet” (ESK, 442-443), expressed most directly to Uvi-Strauss in societies
practicing cross-cousin marriage:
viz., in the older generation, a brother and a sister, and in the following generation, a son
and a daughter, i.e., all told, two men and two women; one man creditor and one man
debtor, one woman received and one given. If we were to envisage this quartet as con-
structed in a system of marriage between parallel cousins, an essential difference would
appear. The quartet would then include an uneven number of men and women, i.e., three
men and one woman in the case of marriage between cousins descended from
brothers. . . . In other words, . . . the structure of reciprocity could not be set up [ESK,
4431.
Throughout ESK there persists an ambiguity in the argument arising from Uvi-Strauss’
distinction between two different kinds of function. There is “use-function” in the British
functionalist sense involving how one part of a social system integrates the other parts and
facilitates cohesion of the whole. The other kind of function is a kind of “algebraic”
function, the systematic relationship among sets of meaningful parts, illustrated in the
forumla A:B::X:Y (LBvi-Strauss 1950:xxxv, ff).’ For Uvi-Strauss two different approaches
are needed in the study of kinship. Use-functions involve the organization of groups, the
actual exchange of women and the different kinds of social cohesion which follow from
these. But in ESK “algebraic-function” arguments appear only at the comparative level of
the interrelations o f the sociological use-functions themselves, not at the level of isolating
the actual customs and rules analyzed (see below). In studies of myth these two functions
are merged, not because there is no use-function in myth but because the use-function is the
algebraic-function. Because myth has no function besides establishing orderliness among the
802 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974

elements of concrete experience it selectively reduces, Mythologiques appears solely preoc-

cupied with algebraic-functions.
In ESK, however, the primary concern is the use-function and the secondary concern
algebraic-function, although incest and the logic of the elementary structures themselves are
partially conceptualized algebraically. The problems of cross-cousin marriage all turn on the
question of how social cohesion is provided for (although not necessarily realized) by mar-
riage norms and how a particular social organization is structured. It is shown that there are
greater inherent limitations in direct exchange than in generalized exchange, and that there
are greater limitations-to an analytically imposed theory of social cohesion and group
dynamics-in patrilateral than in the matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. The latter elemen-
tary marriage system allows the greatest range of social segments to be included by non-con-
flicting marriage provision. The analysis asks which men, organized in what way, exchange
which women with which other men, by what rules to achieve what kind of “functional”
cohesion. Witness this decidedly functionalist passage:
a human group need only proclaim the law of marriage with the mother’s brother’s
daughter for a vast cycle of reciprocity between all generations and lineages to be orga-
nized, . . . whereas marriage with the father’s sister’s daughter forces the interruption and
reversal of collaborations from generation to generation and from lineage to lineage. In
one case, the overall cycle of reciprocity is co-extensive with the group itself both in time
and in space, subsisting and developing with it. In the other case, the multiple cycles
which are continually created fracture and distort the unity [conceptual?, actual?-but
patrilateral rules are normative, not empirical] of the group [ESK,450; our insert].
ESK analysis consists in stipulating the marriage rules for how social bonds are formed
among groups or categories. It takes the incest prohibition (i.e., social rules requiring one to
“copulate somewhat out”) as a universal given, therefore itneed not, analyze the role of the
incest prohibition in each system, but only its constant role in all systems. Systems where
kinds of incest are conceived as a marriage alternative (either mythically or for a select few)
are dispensed with (e.g., ESK, 487). ESK assumes the use-function of genealogy is constant
for all systems and classifies people by biological parentage before asking what “biological”
parentage culturally consists of in each ease. ESK only tangentially discusses “cultures” as
systems of symbols and meanings for particular space-time isolates. Cultural questions of
symbolic interrelationsip-what incest means in particular cases, whether adoption is equated
with “blood relationship” and how, if one can “marry” a sword or a tree, etc,-are of
secondary salience in analyzing each reified society, and comparisons are effected only by
using a social cohesion etic framework. Levi-Strauss applied Mauss’ principle of reciprocity
systematically to show how an analytically complete range of social cohesion-types-from
two groups satisfying each other’s marriage needs simultaneously (direct exchange) to many
groups completing a cycle of alliance eventually (matrilateral systems)-was implicit in dif-
ferent positive marriage rule alternatives. ESK documents the ways different kinds of total
systems achieve different forms of social cohesion. And the particular elementary structure
adopted is viewed as a constraint, affecting the degrees of social cohesion certain societies
achieve, at least as important as demography, ecological setting, etc.
To summarize aspects of ESK: (1)Uvi-Strauss employs a use-function theory based on
definitions of kinship and marriage, descent, residence, genealogy, incest prohibition,
exogamy, etc., which assumes all these are interrelated to fulfill needs of social cohesion. He
uses actual native textual materials only insofar as they mesh with this theory. (2) His
concern is with problems of “social organizations” and not with problems of “cultures.” The
“structuralism” of the study rests in its algebraic interrelation of different social rules as
most directly intelligible in cross-cousin marriage principles. Thus the major “culture” in
ESK is the “culture” of the theory of social organization variants. (3) The innovation
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VISMYTH 803

Uvi-Strauss introduced into the study of kinship-in a self-proclaimed direct line from R.
Lowie-was his application of “exchange” as a central and irreducible element in social
organization. Mauss’ concept of exchange is explicitly related to the fundamental we/they
social unit (the necessarily-different-but-interrelatable-as-differentiated
unit familiar in Durk-
heim’s concepts of mechanical/organic solidarity). The social unit in ESK is seen as funda-
mentally coded by the avunculate and marriage rules centering on it which pronounce
different portions of society marryable. (4) Here are Uvi-Strauss’ early attempts to develop
techniques of structuralism-the use of opposition, mediators, and operators, arising around
the nature of the avunculate relationship perpetuated through the generations-which are
later developed in the Mythologiques series.

In L6vi-Strauss’ approach to myth the “algebraic-function” eventually achieves promi-

nence. In “The Structural Study of Myth” he studies myths for the same reasons any
comparativist folklorist might:
Mythology confronts the student with a situation which at first sight appears contradic-
tory. On the one hand it would seem that in the course of a myth anything is likely to
happen. There is no logic, no continuity. Any characteristic can be attributed to any
subject; every conceivable relation can be found. With myth, everything becomes
possible. But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding
similarity between myths collected in widely different regions. Therefore the problem: If
the content of a myth is contingent, how are we going to explain the fact that myths
throughout the world are so similar? [ 1967a: 203-2041.
This early article glosses a simplifying technique for discovering the logic of mythic organiza-
tion of materials. The technique is pronounced preliminary and the Oedipus example inap-
propriate. Even so, it is already clear that no simple theory of myth-analogous to the
“elementary structural” kinship theory derived from cross-cousin mamage provisions or
concepts of dual organization enables us summarily to compare the whole of one group’s
“mythic materials” to another group’s. Uvi-Strauss’ comment that classicists might dispute
the basic units he detects in Oedipus suggests that no privileged portion of myth limits the
form an entire mythic system can take, as he feels the privileged portion of kinship known as
“marriage rules” limits the form an entire kinship system can take.
This technique is applied to a traditional anthropological problem in Totemism, is related
to various Western philosophical traditions in The Savage Mind, and in Mythologiques is
expended to demonstrate something about the texts now to be studied as a corpus. His
thesis is a simple one: that New World preliterates display a “common conception of the
world”:
From the start then, I ask the historian to look upon Indian America as a kind of Middle
Ages which lacked a Rome: a confused mass that emerged from a longestablished,
doubtless very loosely textured syncretism, which for many centuries had contained at
one and the same time centers of advanced civilization and savage peoples, centralizing
tendencies and disruptive forces . . . [the set of myths] such as the one studied here, owes
its character to the fact that in a sense it became crystallized in an already established
semantic environment, whose elements had been used in all kinds of combinations-not
so much, I suppose, in a spirit of imitation but rather to allow small but numerous
communities to express their different originalities by manipulating the resources of a
dialectical system of contrasts and correlations within the framework of a common
conception of the world [Livi-Strauss 1970:8; our italics].
He argues this thesis by drawing algebraic analogies @ensLe sauuage) between concrete
referents in the texts.4 He demonstrates the “common conception of the world” of Indian
America by moving through its manifestations in myths, using the same logical processes by
which, he suggests, this ongoing conceptualizing of the world occured. LQvi-Straussstates
804 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974

initially that the only means to verify his interpretations is: (1)to transform the constalla-
tion of algebraic analogies between the referents in one text, (decoded in light of extensive
social contextual and environmental data) into those of other texts (this is essentially what
Volume I1 does for I); (2) to move across the whole corpus eventually encompassed, finally
to analyze its extreme reaches, and then by similar transformations to relate these distant
myths back to the first parts of the corpus considered (this is what Volumes I11 and IV do
for I and 11).
It is an essential, not merely a convenient, starting point of Mythologiques that all texts
are translatable. Something of their bizarre contents is preserved even in translations into
Indo-European languages. Only if part of their internal logic is translatable can “structural”
mythic analysis begin. There is good ethnographic reason to suspect that texts have (at a
more complex level than “motifs”) moved across different New World languages without
sacrificing certain principles of consistency, and a myth is especially valuable if multiple
variants which seem related have been documented across space and languages. What appear
translatable are combinations, juxtapositions, and sequences of outlandish composite images.
But never is mythological data restated in terms of an external analytic (as in ESK) involving
residence, descent, affiliation, cohesion, etc., although myths can in fact employ actual
ethnographic facts in their systematic signification. Mythic units remain things like stinking
opossums, fishermen-in-whale-stomachs, incentuous-downstream-aunts, etc.i.e., complex
concrete images. Livi-Strauss adopts no motif index and finds no differentiation by social
function necessary. “Agricultural myths,” “solar myths,” “rites of passage myths,” “origin
myths” are all simply myth.
Uvi-Strauss assumes that a group’s myths approximate a record of its selective reduction
of its sensory environment into orderly arrangements. But a group’s mythic corpus is not
simply a direct encoding of the members’ shared sensory experience; it is rather an encoding
that is itself differentiated from neighboring groups’ codes, and from the same group’s codes
in times past. Only twice does Uvi-Strauss examine more thoroughly the myths and con-
texts of particular tribes (in Vol. I and the Salish in Vol. IV); but even these are not intended
as exhaustive. Mythologiques rather traces differentiations across groups, which is a perfectly
sound strategy for detecting the “semantic environment” implicit in equivalences and con-
trasts that New World preliterates have used to distinguish themselves from their natural
surroundings and from their cultural neighbors. Someone else may attempt the definitive
study of particular tribes’ myths, or of the way these myths relate to other social and
economic matters. Uvi-Strauss does not preclude these projects, but he chooses not to
achieve them and opts for an internal analysis of “myth.”
Thus, most simply Mythologiques corresponds to an extended exercise in proving seem-
ingly disparate elements are transformed members of the same “set.” But the anthropologi-
cal significance of the exercise increases if it can be shown: (1)that a particular kind of
general logical process corresponds to this analogical set-building; (2) that, empirically, vari-
ous populations have employed the process extensively to identify themselves and differen-
tiate their experiences from their neighbors’. Then the indigenous analogizing can be re-
analogized into Mythologiques; Lkvi-Strauss provides his own best summary:
The Salish-speaking peoples. . . often speak in their myths of a deceitful genie who,
whenever a problem puzzles him, excretes his two sisters imprisoned in his bowels,
whereupon he demands their advice by threatening them with a torrential downpour:
they, being excrement, would disintegrate.
Now, in Salish myths, the same genie creates for himself two adoptive daughters, out of
raw salmon roe. When they’re fully grown, he desires them. Testing his position, he
pretends to call them by mistake “my wives” instead of “my daughters.” They promptly
take offense and leave.
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VISMYTH 805
Finally, the Salish tell of a third pair of supernatural women. These women are
married and are incapable of expressing themselves in articulate speech. They live at the
bottom of natural wells and upon request, send up dishes of hot, well-cooked food to the
surface.
These three motifs cannot be understood apart from one another. On the other hand,
once you compare them, you notice their common origin. All the women are related to
water: either, as in the case of the well women, to stagnant water, or to running water for
the two other pairs.
The latter are distinct from one another in that the salmon-roe daughters come from a
positive, earthly source of w a t e n a l m o n streamrand the excrement-sisters are
threatened with destruction by a negative, heavenly source of w a t e r t h e disintegrating
rain. That’s not all: the salmon-roe daughters and excrement-sisters are the products of
either raw (in the first case) or cooked (in the other) food, while the well-women are
themselves producers of cooked food. Further, the well-women, if you permit me, are
“marrying-types” as wives and good cooks. The other two pairs are “non-marrying
types,” whether because they are labeled as sisters or because they avoid incestuous
marriage with their foster father. Finally two pairs of women are endowed linguistically:
one for their wise counsel, the other because they catch on to a half-spoken, improper
hint. In this way they contrast with the third pair, the well-women, who cannot speak.
Thus from three meaningless anecdotes you extract a system of pertinent oppositions:
water, stagnant or moving, from the earth or sky; women created from food or producing
it themselves, raw or cooked food: women accessible or opposed to marriage depending
upon linguistic or non-linguistic behavior. You arrive at what I’d call a “semantic field”
which can be applied like a grill t o all the myths of these populations, enabling us to
disclose their meaning [ 1971a:48-49].
Mythologiques maps one version of such a grill for North and South American Indian
groups. Only secondarily does it employ the grill to reach non-mythologic conclusions. But
the full circular significance of the four volume study is this:
the Salish myths compose a vast sociological, economical and cosmological system
establishing numerous correspondences between the distribution of fish in the water
network, the various markets where goods are exchanged, their periodicity in time and
during the fishing season, and finally exogamy: for, between groups, women are ex-
changed like foodstuffs.
The enjoyment of a diversified diet functions in myths as a sign of how open each
small society is to the outside world, an indication of the degree to which these various
societies are willing to engage in marital exchanges, and thus to communicate with one
another. . . .
The myths. . . referred to are the same ones which in South America serve to account
for the passage from nature t o culture, symbolized by the acquisition of cooking fires, to
man’s benefit. But in these North American populations, which engaged widely in inter-
tribal exchanges, mythic imagery accentuates that aspect which, to them, constitutes the
distinctive trait of civilized life. Accession to culture is no longer indicated by the simple
art of cooking meat, but by the founding of commerce, giving this term a social and
.
economic sense . . [ 1971a:49].
Mythologiques frustrates the more sociologically minded reader because different groups
cannot be contrasted by the ways they handle “myth” (except perhaps in terms of
prevalence vems near absence). No solid perspective by use-function is gained by “myth” as
for “kinship,” where direct exchange societies contrast holistically to patrilateral cross-
cousin societies, etc. Another frequent criticism is that Mythologiques overlooks the actual
living groups that have created the textual materials under analysis. Yet both complaints
seek to deny LQvi-Strausswhat he is most trying t o demor ;trate. He purposefully treats the
texts not insofar as they are constitutive of the affect-.aden, self-identity of particular
groups, rather as they establish diacritical relations across various groups-groups which need
never be wholly isolated or reified. This procedure is not to imply that myths are never
806 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974

codifiers of positively integrated identity (and certainly the Salish myths as analyzed come
near being this), but only that the differential or diacritical aspects of the texts can be
emphasized and in fact constitute their peculiarly “mythic” quality:
every myth is by nature a translation, originating either in another myth issuing from a
neighboring but foreign population, or in an anterior myth of the same population, or in
a myth that is contemporary but the property of another social subdivision (clan, sub-
clan, lineage, family, brotherhood)-another myth that an auditor seeks to plagiarize in
translating it in his fashion into his personal or tribal language, as much to appropriate it
as to contradict (dkmentir)it, thus inevitably deforming it.
Rarely seized upon at their origin and in a state of vitality, these relationships of
opposition between myths emerge vigorously from a comparative analysis. If thus the
philological study o f myths does not constitute an indispensable preliminary approach
[our emphasis], the reason for this lies in what one might call myths’ diacritical nature.
Each of the myths’ transformations results from a dialectical opposition to another
transformation, and their essence resides in the irreducible face of translation by and for
opposition. Considered from an empirical point of view, every myth is at once pristine
(primitif) in relation to itself, and derived in relation to other myths; it is situated not in a
language and in a culture or sub-culture, but at the point of articulation of cultures with
other languages and other cultures. Myth is thus never in its language ( d e sa langue), it is a
perspective on another language . . .[Livi-Strauss 1971b3576-577;our trans.].
In fact, in Volume I11 we see that if individual texts begin to take on a strong internal
integrity, a serial plot-line consistence or a literal reflection of the life experience of the
group narrating them, they become more oral “novel” or literature and less “myth.”
Mythologiques demonstrates the diacritical aspect of preliterate semiotic activity. The
ultimate comparutiuist integrity of myth is a negative, constrastive one. Myths express inter-
tribal, cross-cultural, cross-language differential stereotypes. Totemic representations create
an identity for a set of clans by delineating in concrete forms what each is not, what each
must not do, eat, etc. In a similar way group identities achieved by myths are not positive,
hermeneutic ones but differential, structuralist ones. Myths portray the relations between
the natural world and the social world-real or imaginary-in a way which enables members
of societies to take cognizance of themselves as much for not replicating in their actual
practices the mythic universe as for occasionally replicating parts of the classifications
comprising that universe. Most important, myths reveal internal principles of consistency-
equivalence for the sake of equivalence, inversion for the sake of inversion-which can be
analyzed without isolating each culture area as a mythic type, and without an exterior
analytic of the social needs t o interrelate factions, establish residence, etc. Living groups do
these things-no one denies this-but the mythic formulations are at the comparative level
independent of such needs. For living groups also stereotype and classify their experience
differentially; and this is the subject and object of Mythologiques.
To summarize, Gvi-Strauss refuses to do with mythic data what he does with kinship
data: he says kinship d&a must pertain to social cohesion needs of actual groups; mythic
data need not. He studies myth first as independent, meaningfully contrasted sets of signifi-
cations exchanged through time and across languages and space. Mythologiques seeks to
demonstrate there is a discernable order to myth at this level. Only secondarily does he
analyze particular, localized elaborations of some selection from this intercontinental
semantic universe-where honey codes both sperm and menstrual blood, opossums mark
ritual stench, etc.-and describe the dialectic interrelations of certain mythic texts with
actual local history and environmental conditions (cf. LQvi-Strauss 196713). For the mythic
units reflecting on this experience and basic social needs are pre-constrained, imperfectly
coined to directly disclose any social cohesive reality. Simply as “myth” they have an
internal logic. One might say LBvi-Strauss defines kinship (as primarily operated through
marriage) as that aspect of social life which pertains to the social cohesion of proximate
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VISMYTH 807

differentiated groups; and myth as that which identifies-bydistinguishing groups according

to the sensory codes they have abstracted from their experience. Thus, the priorities in ESK
and Mythologiques are reversed. And the central question becomes not only, as many critics
have asked: “Cannot there be a kinship of myth?”-i.e., use-function constraints on these
“mythic” algebraic-function relations; but more to our interest: “Cannot there be a myth of
kinship?” By “kinship” we intend those classifications of solidary actors (defined by
“descent,” marriage rule, and other symbols) which serve comparatively as diacriticals for
differentiating identities across societies, and which serve within a given population to in-
form its experience, but not in a simple relationship with ecology, demography, or actual
social cohesion. And is this “kinship” neglected if one sees use-function as the essential
factor in matters of incest and marriage? There is, we suggest, an element of “myth” in
“kinship,” whereby peoples can handle what analyzers call incest, marriage, kin terms,
descent and collateral bonds, etc., independently of hypothetical “social needs” of the
group; and ignoring this fact can lead to faulty arguments.

EITHER-OR MATRIXES AND META-MATRIXES

Differences between two kinds of analysis-here represented by ESK and by Mytholo-

giques-can be obscured by premature confidence in formal methodologies and analytic
paraphernalia such as “bundles of binary distinctions.” To argue that an analysis proceeds by
isolating sets of distinctive features is not sufficient cause to label it “structuralist” or even
one kind of analysis. A case in point occurs in 1. Buchler and H. Selby’s Kinship and Social
Organization, when the authors illustrate two examples of what they call “the same kind of
method of explanation,” i.e., describing a set of items as a (Jakobsonian) distinctive feature
matrix.
The first example cited is IKvi-Strauss’ cross-cultural elaboration of R. Needham’s work
on Penan “mourning terms.” The significant “set” composed of nekronyms (e.g., “eldest son
dead”), autonyms (e.g., “John”), and teknonyms (e.g., “Father of John”) is contrasted
according to the occurrence of two features:
(1) statement of relation with a relative,
(2) implication of opposition between self and others.
In brief, nekronyms do state (1)but do not imply (2); autonyms are vice-versa; tekonyms do
both. Hence the role of proper names in different societies can be compared.
Buchler and Selby’s second example is the familiar type of analysis stretching from early
Kroeber to more recent Componentialists which compares and contrasts assortments of
individual kinship terms, such as English “father” characterieed by the features of seniority,
consanguinity, masculinity, etc.; “mother” by seniority, consanguinity, but not masculinity;
“son” by consanguinity, masculinity, but not seniority, and so forth.
The authors’ assertion that these two examples are the same kind of method based on a
distinctive feature matrix overlooks a critical difference in the two examples. Nekronyms
pertain to a relation with another relative as opposed to having nothing to do with such a
relation. This is indeed a classification according to the presence or absence of the feature;
yet if the feature is absent (as in autonyms), it is not automatically known what else is
present; that would take further investigation.6 In such a distinctive feature matrix, then, we
learn what nekronyms are about without learning at that level what they are contrastively
not about. Moreover the analysis starts not from a set of terms but a pre-analyzed set of
types of terms. Let us designate the product of such an analysis a meta-distinctive-feature-
matrix.
808 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974

In the other example the term “father” pertains to “masculinity” as automatically op-
posed f o “femininity,” to “seniority” as opposed to “juniority,” to “consanguinity” as
opposed to “affinity,” etc. The inverse of the feature is positively defined by the analyzer’s
pre-assumptionso-called common sense. Not pertaining to masculinity is pertaining to
femininity; all terms must be either masculine or feminine. Such Componential Analysis of
closed domains (e.g., kinship genealogies) does begin with actual native terms but describes
them according to a pre-analyzed grid. It is assumed, for example, that universally not-male
is equivalent t o female (rather than neuter, or at another level “animal”); consanguinity
opposes “affinity” (rather than “adoption” or many other possibilities suggested by cross-
cultural data). Thus let us call this an eitherlor-distinctive-feature-matrix.
By means of this pedestrian contrast in types of matrixes we can succinctly distinguish
ESK and Mythologiques. ESK resembles an eitherlor classification; its axioms allow an array
of eitherlor distinctions to be made: such as restricted versus generalized, patrilateral versus
matrilateral-one side the positively defined (loaded) inverse of the other. ESK achieves an
eitherlor matrix by pre-assigning the oppositional feature based on a theory of social co-
hesion; yet in other ways it differs. It is unlike many Componential Analyses because it does
not analyze actual native units or categories, but analytic glosses such as cross-cousin/paralleI
cousin, descentlresidence. (ESK of course employs native terms but analyzes them only after
glossing them according to its prescriptive marriage theory). Moreover its locus of approach
is not relations of principles for distinguishing lexical items, but relations of principles for
distinguishing reified groups. Yet ESK cannot properly be deemed a “Componential Analysis
of social cohesion types,” because although LQvi-Strauss always detects eitherlor features
based on a concept of marriage, he repeatedly acknowledges that any single eitherlor opposi-
tion is good only at a particular leuel. This aspect of the study makes it at least semi-struc-
turalist and constitutes its major advance over Lowie’s Primitive Society. That is, Livi-
Strauss does not simply chart a distinctive feature matrix of marriage formulas; he jumps
around in the matrix to ponder its implications. Consider this summary passage:
Can the reason be given for [the contamination of generalized exchange by restricted
exchange]? Undoubtedly, yes, if w e. . . consider that the three elementary structures of
exchange, viz., bilateral, matrilateral and patrilateral, are always present to the human
mind, at least in an unconscious form, and that it cannot evoke one of them without
thinking of this structure in opposition to-but also in correlation with-the two others.
Matrilateral and patrilateral marriage represent the two poles of generalized exchange, but
they are opposed to each other as the shortest and the longest cycles of exchange, and
both are opposed to bilateral marriage as the general to the particular. . . . At the same
time, bilateral marriage has the characteristic of alternation in common with patrilateral
marriage, whereas it resembles matrilateral marriage in that both allow a general solution,
and not a collection of partial solutions, as is the case with patrilateral marriage. The
three forms of exchange thus constitute four pairs of oppositions [ ESK,4641.
Here ESK skews toward the algebraic. All elementary structures are described as always
potential; there is no compromising suggestion of axiomatic needs of social cohesion which
ought to determine when which structure prevails. This structuralist skewing of ESK at once
distinguishes it from earlier use-functional analyses, and that makes it something more than a
Componential Analysis. The set of elementary structures is seen here as algebraic-type logical
alternatives (the above “fundamental quartet”) always in principle open to “groups”
establishing themselves as distinct social units cross-referenced by marriage rules to other
groups. But insofar as this algebraic quality holds, arguments in ESK of functional-use
potential of different elementary systems remain inappropriate, unspecifiable-vestiges of an
earlier anthropology.
On the other hand, Mythologiques does not even partly resemble a Componential
Analysis. Rather, it is a meta-distinctive feature matrix, and represents a completely dif-
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VIS MYTH 809

ferent kind of comparative research. Oppositions in the series are complemented by search-
ing textual materials to detect possible inverse categories. What in the corpus of New World
mythic texts is the opposite-complement of fire? smoke? earth?, no water;. .all .
water?. . .no, stagnant water, as itself opposed t o falling or running water. Thus in myths
“hot” does not simply, common sensically, oppose “cold.” For if myths were constructed
according to a presumed-to-be-natural common sense, they would be unnecessary to
indigenes and certainly not a problem for anthropology. In short, Mythologiques discloses
how mythic texts encode features selected from experience in different, yet related, ways
from other features selected; just as a nekronym encodes features of “alter relative” and
“self” in an inverse way from an autonym. Yet Mythologiques is at once more impressive
since it only glosses preliterate images according to other preliterate images presumably in
the same “semantic field.” This is why the analysis can be corroborated only by attesting
more and more encodings that rely on principles related to the initial code.
We can then construct a simple distinctive feature matrix to compare and contrast rough-
ly ESK, Mythologiques, and along the way Componential Analysis:

Basic Data

functional etic
actual native analytic (social-cohesive
terms or images glosses genealogy)
Elementary Structures of Kinship - + +
Mythologiques + - -

Componential Analysis + - +

The chart could be rephrased as three different strategies of translation of cultural phenom-
ena: (1) Componential Analysis begins with arbitrary sets of native language terms and
differentiates them according to an imposed functional analytic (e.g., attributes of a
genealogical grid) to discern their “meaning.” ( 2 ) Mythologiques begins with common sense
translations of striking native composite images (e.g., genie defecates disolvable sisters) and
more adequately translates them by mapping differential relations to other such images from
a related cross-cultural textual corpus. (3) ESK begins with a functional theory of social
cohesion, selects customary complexes (e.g., the avunculate and cross-cousin marriages) and
nomenclature clusters that pertain to the theory, and translates their meaning as the inter-
related set of types of elementary structures-the structural logic of the functional theory.
An obvious conclusion is that one should never expect eitherlor conclusions to issue from
a meta-matrix, or vice versa. Each of the three approaches rests on differing assumptions as
to the meaning of social phenomena; what, for example, is “kinship” about? Is it about
social cohesion needs of groups, per part of ESK? Is it about formal elegance and efficiency,
per Componential Analysis? Or is it about that peculiar human tendency t o differentiate yet
interrelate complex categories of experience to order social life without being directly
determined by non-conceptual parameters, per Mythologiques? It might be about all three of
these, or others; but the last has been most neglected by comparativist theories of kinship.
Finally, we should pause t o appreciate this either-or/meta contrast in the simplest “structur-
alist” analyses of cultural data employing distinctive feature techniques, before rushing to
adopt any formal apparatus as anthropology’s own.
810 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974
BEYOND THE ELEMENTARY CONTINUUM

One flaw in ESK was an understandable failure (in 1949) to pinpoint with consistency
the locus of the “models” at issue. Societies do not have patrilateral or matrilateral systems;
rather groups or parts of groups reveal ideas of such marriages which might be carried out to
various extents. One could, as many have urged, hypothesize the necessary “external condi-
tions” which determine which marriages will characterize a given population, but this is not
necessarily a prerequisite to mapping the logic of attestable marriage-ideas independently.
The confusing element in ESK (monumentalized in the prescriptive/preferential debate)
remains the scattered claims such as “a human group need only proclaim the law of marriage
with the mother’s brother’s daughter for a vast cycle of reciprocity between all generations
and lineages to be organized” (ESK, 450). For marriage rules are not laws, rather norms.
And norms are normative, not actual. Marriage systems are ideally organized by marriage
rules. In fact marriage rules interest structuralists because they can be described as a closed
set, and this fact derives from their relative independence of concrete facts. The properly
structuralist argument is that marriage rules constitute a logic generally independent of,
although possibly relevant to, other levels of experience.
Only by stressing this independence of marriage rules-we would call it their “cultural
aspect’%an other elementary-looking rules such as patriparallel cousin marriage preferences
be compared at all. For patriparallel cousin systems do not achieve a system of reciprocity of
greater scope between groups; to the contrary, they use marriage ideals to scale down the
possibility of reciprocity cycles between social units interrelated through something other
than marriage. Yet such systems exist, survive, and thrive in contexts as distinct as Arabia
and Bali. Moreover, complex systems need not be conceptualized merely as the breakdown
of elementary structures, as an intrusion first of the time dimension (in Crow-Omaha
systems), then of the individualistic dimension.’ The degeneration argument in ESK about
complex systems-like its avoidance of parallel cousin marriage principles-arises from a
misplaced argument about the use-function of elementary structures.
By preserving a social cohesion argument LQvi-Strauss compromised his more original
structuralist position concerning the mutual occurrence of “elementary structures” in
human social thought (i.e., their logical inter-implication). Without the social cohesion
theory, LBvi-Strauss might have portrayed incest more exclusively as an axiom basic to the
“socio-logic” characterizing I ‘esprit humain. It would never have been even indirectly im-
plied that incest-as-tabooed is a universally actual amalgamator of groups, but only that
incest is always a conceivoble and implicit option insofar as tabooed. This would in fact be
perfectly consistent with arguments in ESK describing each elementary structure as the
negation of the next and incest as the logical extreme of “elementariness” for each structure.
In the following passage the locus of elementary structures is cultural. Marriage rules con-
ceptualize variable solidarities as opposed t o relative senses of incest, and an elementary
structural tendency is always covert in human groups as they identify and differentiate
themselves:
Ghosts are never invoked with impunity. By clinging to the phantom of patrilateral
marriage, systems of generalized exchange gain an assurance, but they are consequently
exposed to a new risk, since patrilateral marriage is not only the counterpart of matri-
lateral marriage but also its negation. Within systems of reciprocity, marriage with the
father’s sister’s daughtershort cycle-is to marriage with the mother’s brother’s
daughterlong cycle-what incest is to the entirety of systems of reciprocity. To speak in
mathematical terms, incest is the ‘limit’ of reciprocity, i.e., the point at which it cancels
itself out. And what incest is to reciprocity in general, such is the lowest form of
reciprocity (patrilateral marriage) in relation to the highest form (matrilateral marriage).
For groups which have reached the subtlest but also the most fragile form of reciprocity,
by means of marriage between sister’s son and brother’s daughter, marriage between
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A- VIS MYTH 811
sister’s daughter and brother’s son represents the omnipresent danger but irresistible
attmction of a ‘social incest’, more dangerous t o the group, even, than biological incest,
which latter will never compromise the security of the system because it cannot be
conceived of as a solution. It may be understood, then, how it is that in all the above-
mentioned formulas both types of marriage are associated as well as opposed; that the
reasons for proclaiming the excellence of the one are the same as those for abhorring the
other. . . . For a system of generalized exchange, to marry the father’s sister’s daughter or
to sleep with the sister is, on the same grounds, to reverse a cycle of reciprocity, which is
tantamount to destroying it, ‘making water flow up t o its source‘; in a word, it is incest
[ESK454; our italics].
If we regard the incest taboo as the logical axiom (as in the above passage) for conceiving
of social differentiation, and each form of elementary marriage rule as the relatively incest-
like negation of the next higher form, need we adopt any sense of an incest taboo (or
exogamy) as a universal agent in establishing actual social cohesion? The structuralist’s
interest in the incest taboo is not that it functionally interrelates actual social groups but
that any such presumed mechanistic results are achieved variably, that the tension inherent
in the logic of incest taboos echoes the tension in distinctions between crosslparallel and at
another level between matrilateral/patrilateral, and that such incest taboo-like cultural
principles to marry-out-within-limits are applied to social life at new levels.
By avoiding any social cohesion theory, the socio-logic concept of incest is clarified.
Moreover, a new way appears to approach the individualism of “complex systems.” We
suggest that individualism in spouse selection is the logical opposite-complement, or (to
borrow Lhvi-Strauss’ expression concerning “social incest”) “the omnipresent danger but
irresistible attraction,” of any prescribed marriage, including cross-cousin systems and
parallel cousin systems as well. In this view individual choice is most generally the perfect
opposite of socio-logic incest. Incest is ultimately the relative in-marriage in conflict with
any positive out-marriage rule, and individual choice is ultimately an out-marriage in conflict
with any preferred relative in-marriage; the sensational individual marriage is inevitably one
that is too “out”-out of class, or race, or community.
To clarify this position, let us consider L6vi-Strauss’ views on complex sytems. He has
generally argued: (1) these systems are less individualistic in practice than their ideals sug-
gest, since (racial, sectarian, national, etc., endogamies aside) endogamous pockets tend
somehow to form; he sees this as a more natural, less “categorical,” operation of an elemen-
tary proclivity, even when positive marriage categories remain unspecified (ESK, xxxvi); (2)
one must computerize any way to handle these systems’ enormous variables, since no cul-
tural categories prescribe suitable partners; real marriages must apparently be traced with no
native scheme to explain any divergence from total randomness; he has left the task to
others. This view of complex systems perhaps appears most clearly in LQvi-Straws’ brief
remarks on swayamvam marriage, which in Indic legends “consists, for a person occupying a
high social rank in the privilege of giving his daughter in marriage to a man of any status”
(ESK, 475), preferably her chosen hero. LQvi-Strauss speculates that such an idea was
significant in the historical development of individualistic marriage (complex systems) out of
a degenerated generalized exchange system:

Since generalized exchange engenders hypergamy, and hypergamy leads either to re-
gressive solutions (restricted exchange or endogamy), or to the complete paralysis of the
body social [!I, an arbitrary element will be introduced into the system, a sort of
sociological clinamen, which, whenever the subtle mechanism of exchange is obstructed,
will, like a Deus ex machina, give the necessary push for a new impetus. India clearly
conceived the idea of this clinamen, although it finally took a different path [i.e.,
hypergamy leads to caste] and left the task of developing and systematizing the formula
of it t o others. This is the swayamwra marriage, t o which a whole section of the Mahi-
bhirata is devoted [ESK,4751.
812 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974

But if elementary exchange patterns are non-statistical models (cf., ESK, xxxii-xxxiii),
any actual surplus of women at the top of an hypergamous system and the deficiency of
brides at the bottom is-even without arguing from particular ethnographic cases-a spurious
issue. There are multiple cultural ways of handling any real shortage or surplus of circulating
women, without breaking down the hypergamous marriage ideals: redefining more women
into the bottom ranks, female infanticide (cf. Dumont 1970:118), religious sanctions on
female celibacy at the top ranks. There is not necessarily any “paralysis of the body social”
translated in India into epical reflection; and swayamuara marriage can as readily be por-
trayed as the extreme positive expression of the cultural inhibition on marrying-in negatively
established in ESK theory by the incest taboo. Swayamuara is not necessarily a mere
secondarily formulated set of literary ideals made t o patch a faltering system of positive
exchange, whereby the “three basic characteristics of modem European marriage [freedom
to choose unprohibited spouse, equality of sexes, and individualization of the contract]
were introduced in . . . a furtive secret and almost fraudulent manner” (ESK, 477). For to be
consistent with the structuralist impulse of ESK, swayamuara marriage should represent not
the degradation of prescriptive marriage systems, but a logical foundation, i.e., the axiomatic
inverse that inevitably in the socio-mystique (per ESK, 454) sustains the values, through
unconscious but conceivable contradiction, on any prescribed union or on any incestuous
one as tabooed. In short, why are individualistic marriage contracts any less the “omni-
present danger but irresistible attraction” which (along with incest), through implied nega-
tion of preferential rules, underpins the whole of elementary structures? If patrilateral
marriage is incest-like vis-a-vis matrilateral marriage, and restricted exchange is incest-like
vis-a-vis these, and (we should say) parallel cousin marriage is a viable social option which is
incest-like vis-a-vis even restricted exchange; then all these elementary structures are them-
selves incest-like vis-a-vis systems based ideally on individualistic contracts. This point (again,
per ESK, 454) is another way of saying the inherent cultural possibility of “individualism in
marriage,” the above-mentioned swayamuam, is itself the opposite side of the “social incest”
axiomatic basis of elementary kinship theory. There are two cultural stop-gaps against
marrying-too-in: one is taboos on “social incest”; the other is positive sanctions on marrying
into unsystematically defined categories. To be perfectly consistent, a proponent of ESK
structuralist theory might say that, like the avunculate (see below), swayamuura does not
emerge in human societies, but is “present initially.”
These issues can be backtracked t o Lthi-Strauss’ initial formulation of the “atom of
kinship,” where he adroitly shifted from “elementary families” to the relations implicit in an
avuncular (MB) relationship, in light of the brother-sister and parent-child incest taboo. He
generalizes:
In order for a kinship structure to exist, three types of family relations must always be
present: . . . a relation of consanguinity, a relation of affinity and a relation of descent
[ filiation]-in other words, a relation between siblings, a relation between spouses, and a
relation between parent and child [Lhvi-Strauss 1967a:43].
And later:
In human society a man must obtain a woman from another man who gives him a
daughter or a sister [as refined in ESK, directly or indirectly, and categorically, not
actually]. Thus we do not need to explain how the maternal uncle emerged in the kinship
structure: He does not emerge-he is present initially. Indeed, the, presence of the
maternal uncle is a necessary precondition for the structure to exist [Levi-Strauss 1967a:
44-45] . 8
By mismatching a theory of social cohesion to his cultural (Durkheimian) theory of marriage
rules as codes to differentiate and interrelate social categories, L4vi-Strauss eliminated many
interesting possibilities of his own atom of kinship, even at the diagrammatic level of
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VIS MYTH 813

idealized models. The positive alliance prescription joining category A through marriage to B
logically rests not only on the axiomatic opposite-complement of denying marriage of A
with A (i.e., incest) but also of denying marriage beyond the A-B social universe, that is
denying individual marriage at this level. The defense that such an implied opposite-comple-
ment (individual marriage) cannot properly obtain at an elementary logic level, that this
would be mixing real actors for idealized models, is merely a means of protecting the
artifically isolated, axiomatically primary avunculate. We see this again in Gvi-Strauss’ posi-
tion that the only recourse if the “sibling” is tabooed is the cross-relation; for this requires
assuming that these consanguineous/affinal (A/B) categories are indivisible wholes, rather
than seeing them as populated (divisible) categories. And it is precisely in systems where the
“blood” sibling category might be tabooed but the so-called classificatory sibling (i.e., the
parallel) category is not, that an alternative to the elementary logic of out-marriage is
implicit from the start.
In other words if the “atom of kinship” is consistently a model of ideal cultural cate-
gories, and not actual social groups, then implicit within that model is not only determining
the descent category of sexually differentiated products of the original A/B categories, but
also the social-unconscious “flirtation” with the possibility of marrying within one category
(this much is granted in Lhi-Strauss’ notion of the “irresistible appeal” of social-incest) but
across the multiple members of that category. The rationalist tabula rasa obscures both this
point and the implicit, but tabooed, logical possibility of marrying-out of the system of
organic solidarity altogether.
To restate our argument in LBvi-Strauss’ axiomatic, avuncular sociologic: the atom of
kinship assumes as its very first principle not the avunculate or cross-relation, but the
Durkheimian oppositional identity of groups, i.e., social A/B descent categories cut across by
the cross-relation, the affinity relation. This model disregards cases where the affinity rela-
tion does not cut across the descent-identity relationi.e., parallel cousin marriage systems.
Moreover, if a tabula rasa can be populated with one set of idealized descent, affinity, and
consanguineal relations, it can be populated with two or more sets. And then a logical
alternative, given the prevalence of two necessarily interrelatable but distinct social cate-
gories (A/B) is an affinal relationship outside the A/B categories, an individualistic contract,
not positively categorized from the A/B categories’ point of view, with other means of
balancing or denying any exchange. If A/B is the social universe of organic solidarity, then it
must be contrastable as a whole to not-A/B, and in not-A/B will be found the source of
marriages not encompassed by positive prescription or prohibited by incest. Many societies
build systems on this option, and it is unclear why these any less elementary than prescrip-
tive systems given the many cultural devices for interrelating social categories other than
marriage.
In sum, we can salute the lasting contribution of ESK: a theory of the interrelation of the
ideal systems produced by marrying different kinds of cross-cousins. Yet simulatneously we
can reconsider assumptions that holistic systems of positively defined marriage categories are
logically p r io r m or e “elementary”-than other systems, and reject any implications that
swayamvara and individualized marriage unions in general are temporally secondary to more
mechanistic exchange systems.
Implicit in this conclusion is a rejection of R. Fox’s claim that L-6vi-Strauss’ approach
“does enable us to put all kinship systems on one continuum and discuss them as variations
on the ‘alliance’ theme” (1967:24). Patriparallel cousin marriage rules most effectively point
up shortcomings in the alliance theme; as V. Dass has argued:
the difference between the [Pakistani] systems I have been describing and systems of
prescriptive alliance . . . cannot be expressed in terms of an opposition between “parallel
814 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974
cousin marriage” and “cross-cousin” marriage. The opposition is rather between systems
that achieve exclusion of the group through marriage and systems that achieve alliance
between groups through marriage [1973:42].
In such systems, ranging at least from Arabia to Bali, marriage does not ally anything or even
distinguish new categories ideally to be perpetually married between in successive genera-
tions; rather it ideally closes a social unit in on itself. If one tries to salvage a functionalist
cohesion basis for “marriage” by saying that patriparallel cousin unions cement factious
agnates, then one implies a cultural principle beyond “marriage” that a certain social unit
should be perpetuated. In that case “marriage” could be seen as an alliance between
“groups,” only if the endogamous unit is hoisted to the analytic level occupied in ESK by
“society”; but then we are forced t o see any non-endogamous unions as occurring between
different “societies,” and the cohesion argument again falls apart.
Thus the issue basically involves theoretical assumptions about bounded “groups” and
“societies.” ESK assumes the existence of distinct societies internally differentiated and
interrelated by marriage rules. More recent work even on cross-cousin marriage emphasizes
how sets of kinsmen can effect a marriage priorly uncategorizable and thus articulate both a
cross-relationship and the “society” within which the marriage rules subsequently apply
(unless a new, undefined marriage is effected).’ In other words, actors in cross-cousin
marriage systems might frequently shift their categorized affines, readjusting them after new
actual marriages. This flexibility again challenges functionalist arguments of the actual social
utility of different elementary systems. Apparently the creation of positively categorized
alliance partners by extending properties of the avunculate relationship across generations
occurs not just on the rarified tabula rasa of the “atom of kinship” but repeatedly through
history. Different so-called “societies” can be articulated by mamage rules out of compli-
cated social fields. Parts of ESK suggest this fact, but its secondary implications involving
social cohesion obscure how even cross-cousin marriage rules might often be corrected to
categorize fresh exchange partners which a generation before were not so categorized. Our
alternative t o insisting that b y definition rules of “marriage” cohede groups (actually or
ideally) is t o say marriage rules conceptually differentiate interrelatable social units or close
one social unit in on itself in a field of units interrelated by some value other than “mar-
riage.” The latter viewpoint would enable us to handle systems involving individualistic
contracts and parallel cousins as readily as “elementary structures.”

CONCLUSIONS

M y fhologiques and other developments in anthropological studies of symbols and

semiotica illustrate how domains of a cultural semantic field can be liberated from socio-
functional prerequisites and reveal an autonomous integrity analyzable in its own right. But,
remaining now strictly within Levi-Strauss’ own work, Myfhologiques achieved this com-
parativist stance by not forcing tales of terminologies into pre-conceived analytic pigeon-
holes, whereas ESK assumed not only that certain varieties of “kinship nomenclatures”
pertain essentially t o marriage rules, but that each such nomenclature can be isolated and
analyzed as a closed set. Our point is merely that ESK proceeds as if kinship nomencIatures
and marriage rules are normally directly interrelated in distinct societies and not, as in
Myfhologiques, as if aspects of nomenclatures and images of rules might pertain more to a
cross-societal corpus of categories, suggesting that groups have formulated their kinship not
just according to the needs of concrete groups but according to semantic limits.’
Even if one granted “kinship” must display use-functions, that this is by definition the
institutional nature of kinship-cum-marriage, LCvi-Strauss has precipitously excluded types
of systems-parallel cousin endogamy, so-called “complex” systems-that do not fit with the
Boon and Schneider] KINSHIP VIS-A-VIS MYTH 815

theory of marriage as a social integrater of groups or part-groups. None of this is to imply

that ‘.‘kinship” does not do something. But to assert merely that universally kinship cohedes
all “societies” does not get us very far. Since some reduction and abstraction is necessary for
comparison, it can be more interesting to compare the symbolic meanings of kinship than its
“use,” for these vary widely but would seem to enjoy limiting principles. Given that all
groups are not characterized by genealogy-based organization, given that “real” incest (i.e.,
biological near-consanguinal coitus) is practiced by many groups, given that many societies
do marry relatively “in,” then every item on the kinship record (not just nomenclatures)
should be approached as value, ideal, distinguishing cultuml feature articulating varying
solidarities among classified actors-and not as a response to natural or social needs. This
would bring a comparativist kinship study much closer to Mythologiques than ESK.
ESK assumes everyone makes closed systems out of genealogically-defined people. In
light of the subsequent development of Mythologiques, L6vi-Strauss might better have
defined kinship as a subset of myth. Kinship interrelates diverse categories of enduringly
solidary people, sometimes by descent, sometimes by marriage rules, sometimes by other
symbolic devices. “Myth” remains the grander system schematizing the entire social and
natural experience in light of other constraining schemes. In short, kinship studies might
profit by joining Mythologiques in backing up to the question of what sort of analogical
systems people make out of whatever they make them out of, instead of assuming they
make them out of genealogical kin. In studies of myth the material of native classifications is
not posited axiomatically, but is discoverable only be careful investigations of the mythic
texts themselves. If each myth were analyzed as an either-or matrix, then each myth would
automatically appear as a closed system, keyed directly to a socially useful moral, or repre-
senting the real experience (e.g., subsistence pattern) of the group, rather than as easily
representing conceivable contrasting systems. L6vi-Strauss instead analyzes myths as meta-
distinctive-feature-matrixes, claiming that this allows whatever system there might be to
close itself, if and when it actually does so. In myth man’s analogical capacity-his tendency
to establish systems out of concrete signifiers-is portrayed as being dependent on its
materials only insofar as it must have something (and it really seems anything would do) to
work with. In light of evidence on adoption, ideal and actual incestuous relations, taboos on
copulation and/or marriage based on decidedly un-genealogical considerations (e.g., teacher-
pupil), etc., we might relax our preconceptions as to the genealogical and social organiza-
tional nature of “kinship” data as well.

NOTES
A preliminary version of part of this study was presented in the symposium on “Dia-
lectics in Structural Anthropology’’ a t the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropo-
logical Association, New York, 1971. Our aim is not to review the extensive secondary
literature on L6vi-Strauss, but to consider closely two internal variants of his own structur-
alism and to suggest the kinship/myth contrast as a focus for future theoretical discussions.
’To point up provisionally the genealogical bias in this position on marriage (i.e., the
in-law bond) as the foundation of organic solidarity, one might ponder if a teacher-pupil
relation marked by a taboo on sexual relations between the teacher-line and the pupil-line,
with both the positive content of the relationship and the taboo perpetuated in succeeding
generations (as in Hindu Bali; cf. Boon 1973) would not constitute a “new plane” of
complementary functionally-efficacious “organic solidarity” by some means other than
“kinship” as defined by “marriage.”
Obviously use-function parallels “social organization” and algebraic-function parallels
“culture” in the classic Rivers/Kroeber distinctions. But LBvi-Strauss’ usages are slightly
more formalized.
4“Savage thought is essentially analogical thought” (LBvi-Strauss 1966).
816 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1974

For a Mythologiques-oriented reconsideration of the whole of LBvi-Strauss’ ethno-

logical program, see Boon (1972). His structuralism is discussed within the context of
alternative anthropological approaches to symbols and classification systems in Boon
( 19763b ).
Determining that “John” does not name a relative along with naming ego, does not
alert us of the cultural possibility that “John” might implicitly refer to other cultural
domains, e.g., “Saints,” and that one might find significantly more “Johns” with brothers
named “Matthew” than with brothers names “Myron.”
7For a note on parallels in the way LBvi-Strauss conceptualizes Crow-Omaha kinship
systems and a certain stage of breakdown in New World groups’ use of myths, see Boon
(1970). Concerning the locus of models in ESK, when pushed by more empirical-minded
critics such as Needham (1962) and Leach (1961), LBvi-Strauss has shifted his kinship
models to their proper cultural level, but has left the vestigial social-cohesion arguments in
the book. For a review of such issues, see Buchler and Selby (1968). The most recent
empirical-minded denunciation of LBvi-Strauss is Korn (1973).
8LBvi-Strauss has recently (1973b:105) reaffirmed the “atom of kinship” as “the
quadrangle of relations between brother and sister, husband and wife, father and son, and
maternal uncle and nephew . . . . ” He also points out the translation error that led Leach to
accuse him of mistaking filiation for descent. Where we, following the English translation of
Structural Anthropology, talk of the “descent” dimension of the “atom of kinship” we are
merely refering to the verticle, opposite-complement of the alliance dimension, and we
might as easily have used “filiation,” since descent and filiation cannot fully contrast within
the logical limits of the atom.
N. Yalman has argued the point in reconsidering the preferential-perscriptive debate
and contrasting the nature of Kurdish patriparallel rules to Singhalese cross-cousin rules
(1970 :614-615).
For example, in so-called “American Kinship terms” are found domestic and religious
“fathers”; figurative, in-lawed, blood, play, sentimental, and friendship “aunts,” etc. On this
aspect of kinship nomenclature and why theories of metaphorical extension cannot ade-
quately explain them (and for alternative ways of conceptualizing “complex systems”) see
Schneider (1965a, l968,1969,1972a, 1972b).

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