13 - Local Rules and Global Structures: Models of Exclusive Straight Sister-Exchange

Summary

INTRODUCTION

More than a decade has elapsed since the publication of Franchise Héritier's L'excercise de la parenté (1981), an important and original contribution to the theory of kinship. Drawing on her extraordinarily rich field data from the Samo of Upper Volta, Héritier attempted to clarify certain propositions first put forward by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his 1965 Huxley Memorial Lecture, “The Future of Kinship Studies” (1966). These propositions bear upon the so-called Crow-Omaha or semi-complex systems of alliance, conceived of as a distinctive category intermediate with respect to the “elementary” and “complex” structures. Lévi-Strauss claimed that understanding how such semi-complex systems regulate alliances and restrict the choice of marriage partners is crucial if we are ever to develop a truly general theory of kinship, one which is applicable to the classic elementary structures and also to the complex ones exemplified by modern societies. The many questions raised by Lévi-Strauss's speculations provoked fundamental debate. His ideas also stimulated many new field studies, including Héritier's research.

The main results of Héritier's study are well known. Briefly, the patrilineal Samo formulate an elaborate system of marriage prohibitions that combine the classic unilineal proscriptions central to Lévi-Strauss's definition of the Crow- Omaha category with cognatic injunctions spanning three generations, and these in turn are combined with a further set of restrictions on the replication of previous alliances.