Three Styles in the Study of Kinship(Barnes, 1973)

BARNES, John A., 1973, Three Styles in the Study of Kinship, University of California Press, (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315017457). https://primoapac01.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1l6eo7m/82SNU_INST21412767290002591

 

The study of kinship is a fundamental part of the study and the practice of social anthropology. This volume examines the work of three distinguished anthropologists that bear on kinship and determines what theoretical models are implicit in their writings and assesses to what extent their claims have been validated. The anthropologists studied are from France, the UK and USA: Claude Levi-Strauss, Meyer Fortes and G.P. Murdock.
First published in 1971.

 

Chapter I  |  98 pages

Safety in numbers

Abstract 

George Peter Murdock has had amajor influence on theoretical studies in kinship and social organization. The publication of his book Social structure marked the establishment of a distinctive trend in comparative anthropological inquiry. His interest in comparative studies based on information about a large number of societies from all parts of the world led him to initiate the Cross-Cultural Survey, later to grow into the Human Relations Area Files. He founded the journal Ethnology to provide an outlet for publications in this field for articles which 'specifically incorporate or relate to some body of substantive data' (Murdock et ale 1962a: 2). His 'World ethnographic sample' (1957a) has been used by many other scholars for a great variety of investigations. Its replacement, the Ethnographic atlas, which appeared in instalments in Ethnology over many years before being published separately, continues as a sampling frame for general use. We can have no hesitation in identifying a distinct school or sub-branch within social anthropology, characterized by its own method of cross-cultural analysis. Two collections of papers, Readings in cross-cultural methodology (Moore 1961) and Cross-cultural approaches: readings in comparative research (Ford 1967), provide an ostensive definition of the school and indicate its range of interests.

Chapter 2  |  76 pages

Real models

Abstract 

It is not my intention in this chapter to discuss the whole of the work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Although Les Structures elementaires de la parente (lg49a) was his first major theoretical work, and although he foreshadowed in that book the publication of further studies in kinship (on complex structures and on Ambrym) which are now unlikely to appear (lg6g: xxxvi, 125 f.n. 6, 465), his recent work, apart from the Huxley memorial lecture ( I g66c) has been mainly in other fields. There is an essential continuity of method and interest between this early thesis and what he has written in the last few years on myth and the structure of thought. Questions of kinship are discussed at numerous points throughout his work. It would be easy to show that many of the themes prominent in La Pensee sauvage (lg62a) and later works are already present in Les Structures. But I am concerned here with these later publications only for the light they throw on Les Structures and on his articles specifically dealing with kinship. In fact they throw a great deal of light, for they make explicit many assumptions and preferences that are left unstated inLes Structures. Much of the bewilderment that in Britain and America greeted the publication of his book arose from a failure to appreciate that here was an essay in a different and unfamiliar tradition, and not merely an Anglo-Saxon work that happened to be written in French (cf. Scholte Ig66). The volume, brilliance, and popularity of Levi-Strauss's writings published in the last ten or fifteen years have ensured a wider understanding, though not necessarily wider approval, of his

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work even among anthropologists with objectives and techniques quite dissimilar from his. Yet LesStructures still tends to be judged by criteria that are more relevant to a tribal monograph or a report of a social survey than to an attempt to synthesize a large body of data from what was then an original and unexpected point ofview. This is perhaps because LesStructures, much more than its successors, is written essentially for a technical audience. It is true that the book was reviewed by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) and won for its author the Prix Paul-Pelliot, and that Levi-Strauss himself admits that some of his readers may not be able to follow at first reading his discussion of Murinbata Kinship (1969: 153 f.n. 5). Nevertheless this is a professional enunciation of a professional argument, a doctoral thesis in a mandarin system, whereas his later works are aimed at and have reached an audience much wider than the anthropological profession and have to be assessed differently. It is not its size alone that has so long delayed the translation into English of Les Structures.

Chapter 3  |  88 pages

Irreducible principles

Abstract 

In a comment on a paper by Eisenstadt, Meyer Fortes (I96Ib: 2 I I) says that his 'instinct is to shy away from methodological discussion'. We should then not be surprised if in this chapter where I attempt a discussion of Fortes's own methods much of the characteristic quality in his work escapes my analysis. Nevertheless I think the exercise may have value for two reasons. First, Fortes's dislike of discussions of analytical procedures and conceptual schemes is shared by many of his colleagues who, like him, have contributed substantially to the study of kinship. Ifwe are to understand the full implications of their achievements and to advance promptly from the salients of understanding they have brilliantly secured, we have to dissect their work, measure their imponderables, and systematize their imaginative insights, even though this methodological scrutiny may contrast sharply with their own preferred style of analysis. We can spontaneously recognize their achievements by reading their books and articles while sharing their distaste for arid scholastic pendantry; but we can utilize these achievements to the fullest extent only by taking their work to pieces to see what it is made of. I concur with Fortes when he says that it is only by the application of scientific methods that great advances in the study of human society were made during the first half of this century (1949b: vi). What is true for the first half is likely to remain true for the second; if progress is to continue our methods have to be stated explicitly so that we can the more easily use them and modify

them. Only in this way can we satisfy his contention that 'The new frame of reference for anthropological science will have to be worked out on the model of the experimental natural sciences' (I95 Ia: 354).

 

 

 

BEAN, Susan S., 1976, "Three Styles in the Study of Kinship. J. A. Barnes", American Anthropologist, 78-3: 661, (http://lps3.anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com.libproxy.snu.ac.kr/share/ZZUPTPUY8JI62JSRKZMU?target=10.1525/aa.1976.78.3.02a00360)

 

Three Styles in the Study of Kinship. J. A. Barnes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. xxiv + 318 pp. $3.85 (paper). [First paperback ed. First ed. 1971.1]

Susan S. Bean Yale University

 

For Barnes, social anthropology is a science the goal of which is finding an “interconnected set of empirically validated and distinctively sociological propositions” (p. xvii). This book, a detailed consideration of three influential but theoretically opposed styles in the study of kinship, is offered as a contribution toward that goal.

In the section “Safety in Numbers” (quoted from a tongue-in-cheek statement of Murdock), he discusses Murdock’s “style,” focusing on his method of cross-cultural analysis as it is applied to the study of kinship in Social Structure. He concludes that there are neither safety, nor verifiable sociological propositions in Murdock’s numbers, because Murdock tries to count the uncountable (i.e., cultures, which, for Barnes, are not discreet units).

In the second section, “Real Models,” he takes up (or on) the “style” (anthropologie structurale) of Levi-Strauss. As with Murdock, his objections are fundamental: although Levi-Strauss’s models are clever, there is no way of ascertaining if they are real (verifiable) or not. Moreover, Barnes implies that “real model” (“models are reality”-Levi-Strauss, quoted p. 101) is a contradiction: models are not reality, they are of reality.

Finally, in the third section, “Irreducible Principles,” Barnes discusses Fortes’ “style.” Here he has no fundamental objections; he is basically in sympathy with Fortes’ development of anthropological theory through the intensive study of a few societies. His criticisms are of some of the concepts Fortes develops, and of his tendency to extrapolate from two societies to universal social facts.

Barnes’ three commentaries are thorough and thoughtful. Since he rightly points out that he is dealing with widely disparate views, it is unfortunate that he did not devote a final chapter (his “Postscript” notwithstanding) to discussion of the “triangle of extreme polar types” (p. xix) in which, he maintains, the styles of Murdock, Levi-Strauss, and Fortes stand.

Barnes has chosen to analyze three styles in the study of kinship. In fact, by selecting three well-established, influential scholars and concentrating on how, not what they study about kinship, he has written a substantial and enlightening commentary on three prominent styles of doing social anthropology.