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Alternate Generations among the Lele of the Kasai, South-West Congo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Mary Douglas
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Extract

In the last fifty years certain instances of a special privileged relation between grandparents and grandchildren have been quoted so frequently as to have become almost classic cases. The three most important are those reported for the Dieri tribe of SE. Australia (Howitt 1904), the Pentecost Islanders of Melanesia (Rivers 1914), and the Oraons of Chota Nagpur (Sarat Chandra Roy 1915). In all three cases the system of kinship terms treats grandchildren as if they were in the same generation as their grandparents, but in each report slightly different aspects of the relation between grandparents and grandchildren are emphasized. Among the Oraons it is the bantering mode of conversation between a man and his granddaughter or greatniece ‘in which the two parties habitually act the part of man and wife’ to which attention is drawn, leading to the conjecture that there was formerly a system of marriage between grandparents and grandchildren. In Pentecost Island the classing of alternate generations together in kinship terminology is ‘connected with an ancient social condition in which it was the normal occurrence for a man to marry the granddaughter of his brother’. Among the Dieri tribe the custom of marriage with a daughter's daughter of the man's own brother was reported as actually in practice.

Résumé

LES GÉNÉRATIONS ALTERNÉES PARMI LES LELE DU KASAI AU SUD-OUEST DU CONGO BELGE

Cet article examine un rapport spécial entre les grands-parents et les petits-enfants qui a été constaté parmi plusieurs sociétés, et d'après lequel les deux générations sont, en quelque sorte, mises en parallèle. Le rapport peut être exprimé par l'emploi de termes de parenté, par une forme de conversation familière et railleuse, et souvent par un système de manages préférés entre un homme et la fille de sa fille. L'auteur décrit le rapport tel qu'il est mis en pratique parmi les Lele, une société dans laquelle les clans de ligne maternelle sont dispersés par suite du fait que lors du mariage les femmes habitent avec les clans de leurs maris; mais une femme qui est donnée en mariage au père de sa propre mère, est renvoyée au village où sa grand'mère a été mariée. Le père de la mère, au lieu de se marier avec elle, peut la dormer à un membre plus jeune de son clan. Cette pratique sert à maintenir la cohésion du dan de ligne maternelle et donne un sens de continuité historique. L'auteur suggère que ce rapport spécial se trouve principalement parmi les sociétés où la structure de parenté est faible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1952 , pp. 59 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1952

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References

page 59 note 1 Roy, Chandra, The Oraons of Chota Nagpur, 1915, p. 356.Google Scholar

page 59 note 2 Ibid., pp. 352-5. P. 351 shows that this was not the practice at the time of the investigation.

page 59 note 3 Rivers, W. H. R., History of Melanesian Society, 1914, vol. ii pp. 47, 48.Google Scholar

page 59 note 4 Howitt, , Native Tribes of South-eastern Australia, 1904, p. 177.Google Scholar

page 59 note 5 African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, 1950. Introduction, pp. 27 sq.

page 60 note 1 Foundations of Social Anthropology, 1951, p. 236.Google Scholar

page 60 note 2 Rivers, op. cit., chaps, xix and xx. See also p. 74: ‘It is much to be regretted that the information I was able to obtain in Pentecost was so scanty and untrustworthy.’

page 60 note 3 Howitt, , op. cit., p. 176.Google Scholar

page 60 note 4 p. 351.

page 60 note 5 pp. 388, 391.

page 60 note 6 My fieldwork among the Lele of the Kasai was done from April 1949 to April 1950 under the auspices of the International African Institute.

page 60 note 7 Fortes, , in African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, p. 276.Google Scholar

page 62 note 1 The three cases cited above—Dieri, Pentecost Island, Oraons—and others from Central Africa: the Plateau Tonga, see Colson, Seven Tribes of British Central Africa, and the lla, see Smith and Dale, The Ila-speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, 1920, i, chap. xii.