2 - Marital and non-marital systems

Summary

Evoking Hamilton, mentioned above, we recall that a symbolic code precipitates relations between functional behaviour and a signifying system of concepts and customs. Inhering in signifying patterns of behaviour, symbolic codes conceive of signs and functional rules that mutually generate one another (Hamilton 2005: 16). By inference, encoded systems generate rules and postulate recognizable signs; with such symbolic systems we can deduce behaviour according to preconceived rules and customs. Precipitating preconceived relations between designated roles, these rules reflect coherent relationships between a custom and signs which generate the concomitant signifying performativity and behaviour. Rules therefore are functional, decoding relations between a custom and a pattern of behaviour that people adapt.

The Myth and Ritual School lays out the idea of patternism, which predates the more recent approaches. Avoiding a discussion on the disagreement and contention among scholars, patternism refers to pattern as ‘a fixed combination of certain elements which are expected to recur and which, consequently, postulate even when they have left no trace in our evidence’ (H. Frankfurt, cited in Hooke 1958: 5). Hooke postulates that the borrowing of patterns among cultures exists side by side with independent development of ideas and institutions (Hooke 1933a: 6). Endorsing such assumptions, we may conclude that similarities of patterns are contingent, comparable and deducible, while differences are evolutionary, indigent and locally and personally particular.