Analogic Kinship: A Daribi Example

Author(s): Roy Wagner

Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Nov., 1977), pp. 623-642
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/643623
Accessed: 15-11-2017 12:48 UTC

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 analogic kinship: a Daribi example

ROY WAGNER-University of Virginia

Let us begin with the proposition that all human relationships are analogous
to one another. This includes those relationships that anthropologists have called
"kin relationships," which, for that reason, will form the subject matter of our
discussion. This means that kin relationships, as well as the relatives identified
through those relationships, will be considered as basically alike in some important
way. Note that I am making this assumption purely for analytic reasons; I do
not mean to imply that this basic quality of analogy or alikeness is somehow
"given," or innate in the nature of things. I am merely introducing the proposition
as a foil to the traditional anthropological assumption of the innateness of kin
differentiation-the notion that the genealogical breakdown into "father," "mother,"
and so forth, is a natural fact, and that it is a human responsibility to integrate
them into particular kinship "systems" (or discover such integrations).
Consider, then, a situation in which all kin relations and all kinds of relatives
are basically alike, and it is a human responsibility to differentiate them. The
responsibility of doing so will be our task in understanding kin relationships,
as it is man's role in perhaps the majority of human societies. A mother is another
kind of a father, fathering is another kind of mothering; a sister might be
a better sister for the fact that she is "a little mother" to her siblings, and a
good father is often "like a brother" to his sons. A certain solicitude (perhaps
epitomized by Schneider's "enduring, diffuse solidarity") is quintessential to all
ideal kin relationships, regardless of how they may be defined or in what forms
the solicitude is expressed. And this solicitude represents, as well as anything can
represent, what I mean by the basic analogy of all kin relationships to one another.
From the standpoint I have chosen, I might as well speak of one essential kin
relationship, which is encompassed and varied in all of the particular kinds of
relationships that human beings discern and differentiate. This essential similarity
flows between and among the latter, in spite of every effort one may make to
differentiate them.

And it is for precisely this reason that man's obligation and moral duty is to
differentiate, and to differentiate properly. For if the appropriate distinctions
are drawn, and the proper modes of avoidance, respect, deference, and even
burlesque are observed, then the resulting "flow" of similarity will be realized,

Kin relationship may be approached in the traditional manner as

the classification or the sociopolitical "relating" of genealogically
differentiated relatives, or it may be seen as the purposive differentiation
of relational categories to compel a "flow" of analogical "relatedness"
among them. Analysis of a New Guinea relational system in the latter
terms, beginning with the "interdict" on relations with the wife's
mother, reveals a set of operant concepts for the understanding of
kinship in symbolic terms, as well as a set of general conclusions as
to the nature of kinship.

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 perceived as an expression of inner morality. But if these distinctions are not
drawn, or drawn improperly, or if the wrong or inappropriate ones are made,
then the flow of similarity will appear as a kind of contagion, a moral degeneracy
spreading from one kinsman to another. This is what the celebrated "incest
taboo," which has been identified by so many anxious classifiers in so many
diverse societies, seems to be all about. For incest-treating a mother or sister
as a wife or lover or treating a son or brother as a lover or husband-is a morally
undesirable flow of similarity.
The "relational" aspect of kinship is thus always understandable as a kind of
analogic "flow"-that is what we mean by "being related," and this flow is always
the consequence of kin differentiation. Western middle-class society, which takes
responsibility for "relating" in a deliberate sense, perceives differentiation as
something "innate." Thus for Western ideology, a proper "flow" results from the
conscious and deliberate performance of legitimate "relating": making a legitimate
marriage between compatible people, maintaining and adjusting interpersonal
relationships, learning to like one's affines, doing one's relational duty to kinsmen.
And the inappropriate flow of incest is seen by Westerners as "going against
nature," an abrogation of "natural" differentiation that allegedly brings about
disastrous natural consequences. For Western society, appropriate flow is defined
and promoted by natural differentiation, and the task of the individual and of
society is that of comprehending this natural "fact" and accommodating our
actions to its precepts. We "draw" the creative distinctions by perceiving them
"in nature," and we perceive the consequent flow as a potential for "right"
or "wrong" performance. Others perceive the flow of relationship as a "given"
that prompts appropriate differentiation.
But in both cases the flow of relationship, and ultimately lineality-analogy
across the generations-is integrally linked to differentiation. Lineality is not a
separate, "political" consideration, a matter of "group recruitment," but is always
an aspect of a totality that includes differentiation as well. The creativity of
kinship in the West is centered on an act of collective joining, the "marrying" of
two people, for it is from this act that appropriate differentiation (into "husband,"
"wife," "mother," "father," and so forth) eventuates. But the creativity elsewhere,
and especially in tribal societies, is based on an act of appropriate differentiation,
one that will assure a proper relational flow. Marriages, in our sense, are not
"made"; they follow, or "flow," from an initial differentiation, from which the
consequences of marriage also flow.
Let us then explore this mode of thought and action. All kin relationships and
"kinds" of kinsmen are basically analogous because all incorporate the essence
of human solicitude that we call "relating." Every particular "kind" of relationship
exemplifies this essence in some particular way, and comprises a ("metonymic")
part of a potential whole, a totality of which the aggregate of all the kinds of
relationship represents a homologue. Each particular kind of relationship, since it
incorporates the underlying context of relational solicitude, can be seen as an
("metaphorical") analogue of each other kind of relationship. An example taken
from Levi-Strauss's classic study of totemism (1962) might help to clarify this
point. Levi-Strauss postulates a homology between a "natural series" of totemic
creatures and the set of human groupings that they represent, in which "it is
not the resemblances, but the differences, which resemble each other" (1962:77).
Applying this model to Spencer and Gillen's description of the Aranda of Central
Australia, we find that for certain purposes this homology is significant, whereas

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for others it is "collapsed" into a series of anthropomorphic analogues. Thus
the "totemic" groupings in the human series are each responsible for the ritual
proliferation of their "natural" homologues so as to benefit the whole of society.
But the Intichiuma rite, which brings this about, requires that each human
grouping synthesize the primordial inapertwa creature that represents a union
between man and a natural homologue, an anthropomorphic "metaphor" standing
in an analogous relation to other such metaphors (Spencer and Gillen 1968:167-211,
389, 445). This transformation is diagrammed at the top of Figure 1. We can likewise
postulate a homology between the various kinds of relatives traditionally recognized
in kinship studies (or, for that matter, between any particular "cultural" set of
relatives) and the totality, or aggregate of kinds of human relationship, as I have
stated above. By recognizing the union of each kind of relative with its relational
homologue, on the model of the Aranda inapertwa creature, I can transform
this traditional conception of kin relationship into the analogical model I have
suggested. The transformation is diagrammed at the bottom of Figure 1. It is a
scheme for the differentiation of a kin universe into analogical units.
The traditional concerns and problems of functionalist, structuralist, and
cognitive kinship studies can be seen as consequences of a homological frame of
reference. The analysis of joking, avoidance, and respect relationships initiated by
Radcliffe-Brown (1952) and Eggan (1937) deals with culture-specific homologies
between sociological kin roles and a set of "given" genealogical relatives. Kin
differentiation (the genealogical "grid") becomes an invariant control against which
the sociological alignments and stresses of various tribal peoples are contrasted.
Joking, avoidance, and respect are understood as conventional strategies for

Homological Equivalence B
natural human Analogical Equivalence
series series Intichiuma series
Emu o o Emu men I Emu Emu men I
Kangaroo o o Kangaroo I Kangaroo Kangaroo
men men I
Honey o o Honey Ant IHoney Ant Honey Ant
Ant men men

Witchetty o o Witchetty Witchetty Witchetty

Grub Grub men Grub Grub men

Homological Equivalence
relational kinds of Analogical Equivalenc
totality relatives kin relationships
paternal o o "father" I paternal "fathe
solicitude I solicitude
maternal o o "mother" maternal "mother"
solicitude solicitude
fraternal o o "brother" fraternal "brother"
solicitude solicitude
affinal o o various affinal various
solicitude affines solicitude affines

Figure 1: A comparison of Levi-Strauss's "totemism" model an

among the Aranda (Spencer and Gillen 1968) with the model of
presented in this discussion. Boxes indicate contiguity or incor
indicates resemblances.

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 converting a naturally differentiated kin universe into a functioning society, and a
comprehensive account of a people's relationship protocols yields their social
homologue of genealogy.
Levi-Strauss's "atom of kinship" model (1963) achieves an elegant simplification
(or oversimplification) of this homological approach. Natural differentiation is
supplemented by the constraints of (social) reciprocity to limit the possible
constellations of kin attitudes among four "basic" kin types. What Levi-Strauss
offers is a limited and rigorous refinement of homology, rather than an alternative
to homology. A set of contrastively defined "attitudes" (the distinction between
attitude and relationship is by no means clear) is shown to vary in a regular way in
relation to genealogy and reciprocal obligation. The insistence on a "given" kin
differentiation, however abstracted, preserves the essentially homological character
of this model.

The character of the homology changes radically in the ethnosemantic

approaches of Lounsbury (1964) and others, which substitute culture-specific kin
classification for "mode of relationship" or "kin attitudes." The homology o
componential analysis is neither the explication of a sociological dynamic nor a
synthesis of the attitudes induced by reciprocity, but a detailed correspondance
established between a native classificatory "system" and the "kinds of relatives"
specified by genealogy. Much of the value of this approach comes from the close
specification of particular homological transformations (rather than a demonstration
of how a society is held together); like other homological schemes, however,
its usefulness is ultimately contingent upon the validity of the idea of natural
kin differentiation.
For the functionalists and structuralists as well as the ethnosemanticists the
"problematic" area is demarcated by the empty spaces between boxes in the firs
of Figure 1. For an analogical approach, however, the (homological) correspond
subsumed by the postulated identity between mode of relationship and kind o
Here the kin term or terms (as well as the "relatives" it identifies) is part and par
mode of relationship (see Wagner 1972a), and term and relationship together f
conceptual entity that is differentiated from other such entities. The "problema
here corresponds to the empty spaces between boxes in the second column of
and involves the "flow" of analogy or similarity between kin relationships.
The dynamic of explanation for an analogical analysis of kin relations is
different from that traditionally assumed in homological approaches. The trad
genealogical method, with its "kinship diagrams" and terminological "kin
is basically synchronic and emphasizes the systematic deployment of re
correspondences across an invariant grid. What we might call the "te
factor can be located as one of a number of logical implications subsum
the total constellation. But an analogical analysis is of necessity diachro
sequential: concerned with "relationship" as the analogical consequence of
contrived differentiation, it exhausts a terminological-relational series through
temporal sequence rather than logical systemization. Each differentiation has its
consequences and is reestablished or altered diachronically.
There is another, perhaps more subtle, implication of an analogical approach
that deserves clarification. This is the fact that, having obviated the distinction
between "natural" kin type and "cultural" kin relationship by subsuming
terminology and relationship within a single entity, an analogical approach does
not incorporate the contrast between "mental" symbolization and "physical" fact.
Its constructions are intended as simultaneously conceptual and phenomenal; they

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belong to a single universe of apprehended cultural construction (and culturally
constructed apprehension) that is contiguous with other realms of conceptualization.
Kin relationships are not separated as a rigid "cultural" response to a set paradigm
of "natural" contingency but rather emerge as an integral part of a wholly
symbolic conceptualization of things.
We begin, not with a grid, but with a conceptual world, and the significance
of kin relationships within this world is a function of their meaningful development
in terms of its symbols. The beginnings of our analysis should involve an entry
into this conceptual world and a creative apprehension of its meanings, rather
than the demarcation of a particular "domain" or department of the totality
that we might want to designate as that of "kinship." This requires that we
begin our analysis with some particular conceptual world, and with a set of
assumptions about conceptual worlds in general, rather than a general orientation
regarding "kinship systems" in general. Accordingly, I shall present an analogical
analysis of kin relationships among the Daribi, an interior Papuan people whose
conceptual world I have already reconnoitered in some detail (Wagner 1967,
1972b).
The relationships, restrictions, responsibilities, and obligations of Daribi kinsmen
all flow from an initial differentiation, or interdiction, that is made with, and
sanctioned by, a considerable moral and ceremonial emphasis. For the purposes
of this analysis I shall consider the interdiction to be the basic and primary
step (as the Daribi themselves consider it), the "maker" or "creator" of kin
relationship. But since the interdiction is made within a conceptual world, one
that presumes the analogical flow resulting from differentiation (since the context
of differentiation is an established society, not an analytical discourse), it will be
necessary to consider it in the light of the analogical flow.
The interdiction is initiated in the form of a betrothal (orowaie "to betroth")
and involves the prospective bride and groom as well as certain key relatives of
theirs, notably the prospective bride's mother. We might in fact consider the
prospective bride's mother to be the more significant party in a basic dyad, since she
assumes the essential role in the interdict once the betrothal stage has been
passed. But until this time the prospective bride and her mother are treated
for most social purposes as the same person. The force of the interdict is to
commute all or most interaction ("relating") between two sets of persons, focused
on the dyad involved in the exchange of wealth and meat. The abrogation of
relationship begins prior to the setting up of the betrothal itself, when go-betweens
are used to mediate relations between the two parties, and remains in force
with certain modifications, as long as marital relations exist.
The interdiction and commutation of relationships here can be understood in
terms of differentiation and analogy. What is abrogated is in fact any preexisting
analogical relationships that may be construed to exist among the parties (such
as, for example, their being "distant second cousins"), and any familiarity that
might arise in ordinary social intercourse. We might say that any "horizontal" or
nonlineal analogical relationship is cut off and transmuted into "vertical" or lineal
relationship. This point takes precedence over any implications that may stem
from our traditional idea of "exchange" or "reciprocity," since "exchange" is
no more admissible as an unaccountable "fact" than notions like the "domain
of kinship." In order to realize the significance of this, however, we must consider
the nature of the "vertical" lineality, for this grounds (and is grounded by) the
Daribi conception of sexual differentiation.

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 Maleness is considered to be an effect of seminal fluid, kawa, which is contained
and developed within a system of tubes (agwa bono) and nodes (agwa ge) that
we would call the lymphatic system, and is transmitted by a man in sexual
intercourse. It forms the outer layer of an embryo, the skin, eyes, teeth, and
hair, as well as the lymphatic system and genitalia of a man, and the lymphatic
system and mammary glands of a woman. Femaleness is considered to be an effect
of maternal blood, pagekamine, which is contained within the circulatory system
and provided by a woman in the conception of a child. It forms the inner layer of
an embryo, the bones, viscera, and other internal organs, and the circulatory
system. Menstruation is seen as the release of pagekamine for reproductive
purposes. Although the heart, lungs, and liver are thought of as places where the
soul (noma') resides and are developed from maternal blood, Daribi says that
the soul of a man is bestowed by the father, and that of a woman is bestowed
by the mother.
But the crucial difference between these fluids and the sexual characteristics

they objectify is the relative contingency of the male and relative self-suf
of the female. Both fluids are necessary for the creation of an embryo,
although the blood in a woman's body is sufficient for her role in conce
the seminal fluid that a man receives from his father is never sufficient in qua
for conception and must be augmented. It is replenished and increased by
juices and fat of meat that is eaten (in a woman these fluids form materna
Thus meat takes on the considerable significance of an adjunct to malene
male reproductive potential: it is the partible and portable accessory to ma
continuity. Beyond this, the contingency of maleness amounts to a defin
statement of moral obligation: man's responsibility should be to reta
supplement the contingent, to manage and utilize meat resources and exe
social force and constraint in such a way as to contain and incorporate male
lineality.
Viewed in analogical terms, kawa and pagekamine are simply two ways in which
the vertical flow of analogy resulting from the interdict are represented. They
amount to the same thing seen, as it were, from different angles, and we shall
see that the whole course of Daribi relational transformation is but a sequential
realization and acknowledgement of this fact. But the realization is a gradual and
sequential one, and the force of the moral obligation is that each party to the
interdict shall represent and perceive its own lineal flow as that of male substance,
for its primary concern is the retention and replenishment of this substance.
The party of the wife givers will, for this reason, represent and perceive the
giving of its women and their consequent reproductive activities as its own lineal
flow of male substance. A Daribi man regards and addresses his sister's children
as his own. But the party of the wife takers will regard the lineal flow of the
wife givers as that of female substance, as a flow of "blood."
What might be described as exchange or reciprocity is in fact an objectified,
quantifiable mediation and intermeshing of two views of a single thing. The
wife givers represent their own flow to the wife takers as that of femaleness,
giving adjuncts of female productivity (bark cloth, string bags, and so forth) and
the promise of a woman. The wife takers represent their flow to the wife
givers as that of maleness, giving meat and other adjuncts of maleness and male
productivity (pearlshells, axes, bushknives). Each party acquires an objectified
increment of flow consonant with its perception of the flow of the other, but,
because the wife givers regard the woman and her apurtenances as part of their

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own male lineality, each party's giving is consonant with its perception of its
own lineal flow. "We" are always male contingency, by moral precept, and it
is always the women, because of their very self-sufficiency, who are obliged to
mediate the flow of male lineality.
The objectification of parallel "male" and "female" flows, as against any single,
analogical flow or relationship between prospective wife givers and wife takers,
is thus an artifact of the interdict. But because the meat, wealth objects, and,
potentially, the woman involved are not "merely symbolic" tokens like our money,
and rather are themselves what they stand for, or represent, we can say that
the objectification of parallel flows through "exchange" is the very substance,
as well as the artifact of the interdict. Now it should be clear why the full force of
the interdict involves a male on the side of the takers and a female on that of the
givers: because the interdict and the objectification of parallel flows are on
the same thing. Betrothal and marriage, via the interdiction and separation of
through which they are constituted, amount to the germinal social different
of male and female, a differentiation that motivates the whole of Daribi secular
life. It is a differentiation that is recreated constantly in betrothal and marriage
and that owes its social persistance to this recreation. And this perhaps explains
why, when I asked a group of Daribi men what specific practice had always been
theirs (and not introduced as part of a cult), they replied: "it is this, that a man
should never behold, speak to, or utter the name of his wife's mother."
The establishment of a betrothal, formalized in the passing over of a sizable
amount of "male goods" to the prospective wife's people and a small return
gift, initiates the recourse to "affinal" forms of interaction between appropriate
parties in the parallel linealities-the beginning of the interdict. This amounts
to a total, formal abrogation of intercourse and even recognition between the
prospective groom on one side and his prospective bride and her mother on the
other. They may not speak to each other, see each other, utter one another's
name or the name of the thing it refers to, or hear such a name spoken. (To
this end Daribi women wear their bark cloaks like a shawl about the face-so

that it may be drawn over the face if the occasion demands this. T
step off a road and turn their backs if there is any possibility of
forbidden person.) There is no terminology of address or protocol f
between a male and his betrothed. A male and his betrothed's (or wife's) mother
are au to each other. Any infringement of the interdict between them must be
compensated by a small gift of (male) wealth to the female au. Those considered
"true" bothers (ama' mu) of a groom or prospective groom and all other women
married into the lineality of the bride or prospective bride (generally including
wives of full brothers of the woman and the wives of their male issue) are also
au to each other, though the force of the interdict may not be as emphatic in
these cases.

The terms of the interdict are no less stringent with regard to the fathe
the betrothed, though the forms are different. This man (and his male and f
siblings) and the prospective groom (and his "true" brothers) are wai to one
another. Wai should observe particular care in their relations with one another,
avoiding embarrassing situations and "speaking carefully," with a certain degree
of deference being shown by the prospective groom and his brothers. The forms
of the interdict are slightly more permissive, though no less significant, between
baze, including the prospective groom (and his "true" brothers) on one hand,
and the siblings of the prospective bride on the other. This is a careful protocol,

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 which combines mild joking with a certain amount of deference to the bride's
brothers (to whom Daribi occasionally refer as "true" baze). Female w?i and baze
are potential and even preferred (additional) marriage partners, though this does
not affect the protocols of interaction with them during betrothal. Female wai
and baze are distinguished by a combination of the terms with the word we
("woman," "wife"), as in w i-we, baze-we. Offspring of male baze, who stand in
the yage protocol in relation to the prospective groom and his brothers, and
offspring of male yage, who are reciprocally yame to them, are likewise fairly
unimportant during the betrothal stage of the interdict, and the protocols are
relatively unconstrained. Female yage and yame are potential preferred marriage
partners, but like wgi-we and baze-we, this potentiality of their role is held in
abeyance during betrothal.
Betrothing a woman is often spoken of by Daribi as noma' sabo ("takes the soul,"
that is, "soul taking"). Noma' ("soul") can be understood as the moral and social
persona. In this usage the noma' can be approached on an analogy with the
Maori hau, the spirit of a gift that demands reciprocation (Mauss 1954:8-9). Taking
the soul then amounts to acquiring a pledge, the moral "self" of a woman, to be
requited later by the passing over of the woman. During the course of the betrothal,
generally when the betrothed reaches the age of eight or ten, she is obliged to
visit the prospective groom's people and is then placed under the care and tutelage of
her prospective husband's mother, whom she calls auwa ("grandmother," reciprocal:
wai', "grandchild." She calls her auwa's husband wai', here "grandfather," which
carries the same reciprocal.) The purpose of this visit, which is to see that the
prospective groom is assembling the bridewealth so that she may return to tell
her father, is significant. For the bridewealth is linked to another use of the term
noma', the ogwanoma' (literally "boy soul," but spoken as a single word). The
ogwanoma' is the ceremonial attire assumed by the groom and four or five other
members of his line for the presentation of the bridewealth, which constitutes the
wedding ceremony. It consists of a covering of charcoal over the entire visible body,
a black cassowary plume worn on the head, and contrasting white shell ornaments.
This is also the traditional battle dress of men. The wedding consists of the men, so
attired, standing at rigid attention in single file before the door of the bride's father's
house. In their left hands the men hold pearlshells belonging to the brideprice, and
in the right they each hold a bow and a bundle of arrows. The bride then emerges from
the house, splendidly attired, walks down the file of men, and takes the pearlshells
from each. She then takes them to her father. As they are relieved of the shells, the
men grasp one of the arrows in the left hand and resume their rigid stance. It is
highly significant in terms of male contingency that the female soul is taken, whereas
the "boy soul" is merely "shown" and retained, and that this "showing" is done in
a martial posture.
This ceremony, we kqbo, literally the "tying" or "fastening" of the woman (as
opposed to merely "taking her soul"), might also be viewed as the explicit and
self-contained assumption of parallel, vertical "flows." The groom's party moves
into the residential locus of the bride's people and "shows" but also contains its
ogwanoma' in a rigid, armed manner. This manifests and exemplifies an ideal of
sober male assertiveness, while at the same time presenting the bride's people with
pearlshells of the same sort as those worn by the groom and his accomplices. In
sum, the ceremony amounts to an assertion and mutual recognition of the self-image
of male substance that is proper to each party. But the "tying" of the woman also
means that she is separated (that is, "taken" and "fastened") from her own line, who

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are henceforth known as her "pagebidi"-"base-people"-a tie that is explicated and
substantiated through the tracing of pagekamine. Prior to the "tying," her principal
links of substantial analogy were traced both through paternal and maternal substance.
But presentation of the brideprice commutes this linking analogy to a single tie
with her natal line, viewed as a link of maternal substance by the groom's people
and as an extension of their own paternal substance by the bride's. Thus the latter
are obliged to give over a certain portion of the bridewealth as a quitclaim to the
bride's mother's people, given more or less to validate assumption of her pagebidi's
role.

We can understand a kind of analogy to be manifest between the givers and takers
of souls, women, and pearlshells, and this analogy can indeed be said to relate them.
Yet the terms of the interdict are such that this kind of analogy is not embodied
in internal, substantial "flow," but in the kinds of "detached" or "detachable" things
(souls, women, pearlshells) that are being presented and accepted. For it is these
detachable things, used as mediators in lieu of substantial flow, that are used socially
to "mark" and confirm, to establish and substantiate, the setting up of parallel
substantial flows. There is a flow of meat, women, and pearlshells just precisely
where there is no flow of substantial analogy, because the exchange of these
detachable markers in one direction is the means by which substantial flow is
emphasized (and hence created) in another. This is why Daribi say that "we marry
those with whom we do not eat [that is, share] meat." It is a self-contained statement, a
model "of" and a model "for."

In sum, then, the exchange of detached, partible things amounts to deliberate,

controlled analogy-the manipulated "flow" that is substituted for internal, substantial
flow by the imposition of the interdict. Like the interdict itself, it is the aspect
kin relationship for which human beings take direct responsibility. Unlike intern
substantial flow, which, as the "given" residuum of previous exchanges, prompts
certain kinds of appropriate human action (such as "sharing"), the interdict and th
exchange that it leads to is predicated upon immediate human action. The restrictions
and distinctions made here, whether "behavioral" (as with avoidance and respec
or "structural" (as with exchange and marital protocols), are the subject of great care
and discretion. They call to mind the painstaking restrictions surrounding food an
pollution that Dumont emphasizes in Homo Hierarchicus (1970) as the very core of the
Hindu caste system. As in Dumont's analysis, it is not necessary to adduce literal
constituted "groups" (or even "societies") here: all that is necessary is for people
observe the niceties of the interdict and its concomitant exchanges and prerogatives,
and the sociality (and its analogies of substantial flow) will take care of itself.
The "flow" of controlled analogy through exchange is thus constitutive of the whole
relational matrix. But we have seen that this constitutive action must respect th
exigencies of the substantial analogies (that is, male and female flows, as perceiv
by the respective parties) that it sets up. Most significantly, this involves the obligation
of male contingency-giving meat and male wealth to the pagebidi to make restitution
for their perceived loss of male flow. For Daribi (whose usages are fundamentally
asymmetrical in this respect, in contrast to those of some other Papuan people
the morality of this obligation extends beyond individual marriages and becomes
binding consideration for the two linealities involved. Thus, insofar as these linealities
are set up through interdict and exchange, they will be constituted in terms of
unidirectional "flow" of controlled analogy, one being "wife giver" and the other
"meat giver," so to speak. Additional wives may be given in the direction of th
original marriage but should not be given in the reverse direction. In those few

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 cases where sister exchanges do take place (owing, as the Daribi say, to a lack of
wealth on the part of the exchangers, who are often criticized on moral grounds),
informants insist that any meat exchanged may not be consumed by the exchangers
themselves.

It would seem, indeed, that the protocols regarding meat here are even more
crucial than those relating to the giving of women themselves. But this is just wh
we should expect, given the predominant significance of male contingency, for meat
is the externalized, partible equivalent of seminal fluid, kawa. We can then apprehend
the asymmetrical and unidirectional character of exchange as being itself a kind
analogue of male lineality: as the flow of kawa, male relational analogy, passes fro
father to son, so the "flow" of its external equivalent passes horizontally in on
direction only. Exchange and descent, affinity and consanguinity, become metaphors
for one another.

Like all metaphors, however, this one works both ways. As there is a "flow" of
meat between linealities that replicates descent, so we also find a "flow" of wome
within these linealities on the model of unidirectional or asymmetrical exchange. This
is the junior levirate, which for Daribi is generalized to include the inheritance o
wives from father to son and among those who regard one another in broad, idiomatic
terms as "brothers." The moral emphasis, however, is on the transference of wiv
from elder to younger males, and this is clearly reflected in various kinds of relationa
terminology. The eldest of a set of male siblings is referred to as the gominaibidi
literally the "head-man" or "source-man," on the analogy of a wQ-gomo, the
"water-head," or high point at the source of a stream. As the water flows downward
from this point, so the wives flow from the gominaibidi to his younger siblings.
man and his elder brothers' wives, who are potential spouses under the levirate, ar
sare to one another and may not joke or act in other ways that betoken familiarit
such as calling one another by name. A man and his younger brothers' wives, who
potential marriage is not encouraged by the levirate, are wai' to one another. Th
indulgent, nonrestrictive relationship is also that of grandfather and grandchild and
of a wife and her husband's father.
It may be incidental to the central idiom of this discussion, but it is nevertheless
helpful to note that leviratic transfer is involved in a significant fraction of all Daribi
marriages. Table 1, based on marital histories collected from roughly half of the Daribi
married males in 1968-1969, indicates that wives are obtained leviratically in 46.8
percent of all cases. Certainly this high incidence is the result of diverse situationa
factors, including especially the practice of betrothing very young girls to older men.
Early widowhood, and a plurality of widows, is an expected feature of such an
arrangement. Thus we find that, statistically, the internal, "lineal" flow of wives i
almost as frequent as the external, interlineal flow. Significantly, however, the marita
rites of we kQbo, with their dramatic "defense" of male contingency, are not performed
in cases of leviratic transfer.
The external, horizontal "flow" of women from wife givers to wife takers is also, of
course, very much an ongoing affair, particularly since Daribi usages require that
small prestations of meat and wealth be passed along continually in the opposite
direction. Another measure of this "flow" is the prerogative or expectation of the
groom, or wife taker, to receive further wives from the lineality of the wife givers.
This includes women who are w,i we, baze-we, yage, and yame to him, but usually
focuses more particularly on the wife's sister, or baze-we. It is clear that the
"obligation" is not always honored by wife givers, who may have other obligations or
inclinations regarding their sisters, daughters, and father's sisters. But the prerogative

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 Table 1. The prevalence of leviratic transfer.

Marriages Initiated by Betrothal Number Percent

following original betrothal 209 29.8
betrothal inherited leviratically at death* 32 4.6
betrothal inherited leviratically without death* 56 7.9
betrothal transferred nonleviratically 55 7.9

Marriages Not Initiated by Betrothal

married without betrothal or transfer 46 6.6

wife inherited leviratically at death* 207 29.5
wife inherited leviratically without death* 34 4.8
wife received nonleviratically 63 8.9

total 702 100.0

* Total marriages
Total marriages w

is often "pushed
approached by
had forcibly d
consequences.
did not quit Ne
Table 2 present
calculated as a
after the first
yage, taken in t
taken together
and 35 percent o
"flow" of meat
The metaphoric
subliminal and
significant for
different form
the other broug
inveterate "slip

Table 2. The pr

All contract
(includes dissolved betrothals) after the first
Relationship Number Percent Number Percent
Baze-we 58 9.5 40 11.0
Yage 30 4.9 18 4.9
Wai-we 3 .5 3 .8
wife's other lineag
mates 93 15.2 67 18.3
other marriages 427 69.9 238 65.0

total 611 100.0 366 100.0

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 through the mediation of horizontal "flow," to counteract and abolish any substantial
flow between the two linealities. What happens is that the means of imposing the
interdict come to model, and to be modeled by, the thing that is interdicted. This
effect, coming about gradually in the years after marriage (in the allocation of widows
and the organization of polygyny), is the first step in the obviation of the interdict.
This effect is paralleled by an even more significant compromising of the interdict:
that brought about by the birth of children, who manifest the substantial flow of both
linealities-that of the mother and that of the father-in a single social persona.
Terminologically and in every other way, Daribi men regard their sisters' children as
their own. From the respective viewpoints of the two linealities, indeed, the child
stands in an analogic relation of paternal substance to each of them. Thus the child
becomes itself a point of analogic relation between the two linealities: relationship
has "happened" to the original demarcation between them. Because the same social
persona stands in an analogic relation to both, the two are related analogically to one
another. It is important, too, to remember that every single individual in the society
manifests such a confluence of linealities, and that every expression of lineality as a
clear-cut social construction is compromised by the implications of this effect.
If the expression of distinct linealities is to be maintained as a viable social
construction beyond the point of marriage-if, in other words, the child is to be
regarded as analogically "belonging" to one or another of its two linealities-then a
mediation must be effected. Moreover, this mediation must satisfy the claims of male
contingency that both linealities make upon the child. Once again, this is accomplished
through the presentation of detached and partible equivalents of substantial flow.
These are given, in a series of payments called pagehabo (from pagehaie "to pay the
pagebidi") by the father of the child to the child's pagebidi. Because the latter regard
the child as an analogue of their own paternal lineality, the detachable analogic
elements can be accepted (or negotiated for) as a legitimate substitution. Because the
father's lineality regards that of the mother as the child's pagebidi, analogues through
maternal substance, pagehabo becomes for them an act of defending male contingency
against female sufficiency; for the pagebidi are believed to exercise, through the
special qualities of maternal blood, a power of cursing the child with death or illness.
Thus male contingency is the chief moral consideration on both sides, though it
becomes a truly pressing issue for the father's lineality, since for them male
contingency is opposed to female sufficiency. This difference makes paternal affiliation
a moral issue, for in the absence of pagehabo payments the father's line would be
indeed contingent in the face of the pagebidi's position of sufficiency-the paternal
side must supplement its maleness and the claims based upon this maleness. The
pagebidi, for their part, need not supplement their claims, but they claim the right
(which is sometimes exercised) of taking possession of the children themselves in the
event of nonpayment.
Pagehabo is often subject to negotiation; payment often is delayed until a child
survives its vulnerable early years, or the payments for one child or even several are
tendered in a single "lump" sum. Customarily, too, it is only demanded for a woman's
first three children, though this again is often a matter of negotiation. What is
important, regardless of the circumstances of giving, is the mediation that is effected,
for this is a moral issue bearing upon health and lineality. Pagehabo is given a few
years after birth, at initiation for males or marriage for females, and again at death. But
adult males should also, as a matter of some moral consequence (for example, what
a man "who understands well" would do), pair off with one of their awa pagebidi
(the so-called awa mu, or "true maternal uncle") in an ongoing exchange relationship.

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Female lineality, that is, should morally be transmuted into a flow of partible analogy
throughout a man's life.
In terms of our broader understanding, pagehabo is a kind of reimposition of the
interdict, a deliberate (though motivated) definition of lineality. But it is also, as I have
observed, compromised in a way that the original interdict is not, for inasmuch as the
persona for whom the payments are given belongs simultaneously to both linealities,
and relates them, the mediating payments that define this lineal affiliation are
exchanged within a single lineality. They are "shared" as well as exchanged, and to
this extent the linealities that they serve to define are rendered less distinct. Thus the
identification between horizontal and vertical flow, between lineality and exchange
(or act and circumstance), encountered in the levirate and in continuing marriage
with wife givers and compounded in the begetting of children is carried forward in a
cumulative fashion. It qualifies the redefinition of lineality in pagehabo, and its effects
grow even more pronounced as the child grows older.
Most Daribi exchanges, including those made at betrothal and marriage, as well as
pagehabo, involve the passing back of a smaller prestation called sogwarema by the
receivers of the main prestation. In the case of pagehabo given for a male child,
however, the sogwarema wealth is often withheld by the pagebidi until the child grows
up and begins to assemble his own brideprice. The youth then has the right to go to
his pagebidi and request a contribution to the bridewealth he is assembling, and the
accumulated sogwarema wealth will be turned over to him for this purpose. Even if
the sogwarema wealth has not been withheld, however, the youth's request should
be honored. The right to ask for such a consideration and the contribution itself are
tokens of the young man's affiliation with his maternal lineality, over and above the
definition of his lineality effected bypagehabo. Withholding the sogwarema prestations
has the effect of conserving the definition of lineality, though it renders the
transference of wealth, when it occurs, more ambiguous, for by honoring the youth's
request with sogwarema wealth the pagebidi both "exchange" with the youth's paternal
lineality and "share" with the youth himself.
Precisely this sort of ambiguity, exchanges, expectations, and protocols,
simultaneously honoring the canons of "sharing" and "exchanging," suffuses the
relations among cross-cousins, the offspring, respectively, of the erstwhile "wife
givers" and "wife takers." Daribi say that cross-cousins, or hai', "are the same as
siblings," meaning that they should think of each other and treat each other as
siblings. But of course they are not siblings, but hai'. Hai' are siblings to the extent
that lineality and exchange, "sharing" and "exchanging," are collapsed into one, for
then the paternal linealities of their fathers are merged into a single flow of meat
given in exchange and kawa passed down generationally. Hai' are not siblings to the
extent that the lineality of the matrilateral cross-cousins is regarded by the patrilateral
cross-cousins as female or maternal rather than male, because female lineality
emphasizes lineal obligation. Thus the moral injunction to regard hai' as siblings is
in fact a restatement of the primacy of male substantial flow, a further resolution of
male contingency. Hai' as siblings are related by the analogy of male substance, a
condition that leads Daribi to say that one's patrilateral hai' are "true hai" in
contradistinction to one's matrilateral hai', for the latter may also be regarded as
pagebidi.
Because the hai' relationship is itself developed out of the paradoxical confrontation
of two analogous but distinct semiotic modalities, it emerges as the crucial point in the
self-creation and self-limitation of Daribi kin relationships. Because the vertical and
horizontal modes of analogic construction are interdependent as well as fundamentally

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 opposed to one another, relating to one's hai' is always a matter of playing one set
of relational injunctions against another. We might say that hai' impersonate or
dramatize the conflicting implications of lineality and exchange in their relations with
one another. For this reason the responsibilities and obligations, what we might wish to
call the "norms" of the relationship, are restricted closely to bivalent usages, those that
satisfy simultaneously, though ambiguously, the canons of sharing and exchanging.
As "siblings," male hai' should contribute to one another's brideprices and are
entitled to a share in the bridewealth received for their respective female hai'. As
"brothers," male hai' may exercise a claim (rated as being just below that of a younger
brother in priority) on the inheritance of one another's widows. But because hai' are
not siblings and because matrilateral hai' are also dwano pagebidi, "little pagebidi,"
and hence exchangers, these rights and obligations of sharing are always worked into
the idiom of exchanging, so that expressions of lineality as well as exchange take
the same external form. The leviratic claims that hai' make as siblings must generally
be validated by equilateral exchanges among the prospective co-heirs-should the
surviving hai' not receive the widow thus "paid for," he may legitimately demand
the return of his wealth. Otherwise, of course, the matrilateral hai' receives somewhat
more wealth than his patrilateral counterpart in the exchanges that pass between them,
for he is a "creditor" of the latter in the pagebidi relation.
Viewed as expressing sharing through the idiom of exchanging, the hai' relationship
approximates the generationally "skewed" one of "child" and pagebidi, even though
the pagebidi here is of the same generation as the "child" and is a "little pagebidi."
As in the case of the awa pagebidi, or maternal uncle, the hai' pagebidi retains the
sanction of cursing ego, and, also as in that case, ego is often paired off with a
particular hai' pagebidi in a permanent exchange relationship (that of hai' mu, or
"true hai' ") when he reaches adulthood. Viewed as expressing exchanging through
the idiom of sharing, the hai' relationship approximates that of siblings, generationally
equivalent, with a slight implication of leviratic seniority on the part of the patrilateral
partner. (It is said that the patrilateral hai', if a gominaibidi-the eldest male of his
sibling series-should not inherit the widow of his hai' pagebidi, "because his mother
came from there," and a gominaibidi is felt to be closer to his mother than his younger
siblings are.) Figure 2, which lists leviratic transfers statistically according to the kin
category of the source, illustrates graphically the prevalence of transfers from
patrilateral to matrilateral kin for a number of relationships, including hai'.
The effect of the moral injunction to regard hai' as "siblings," and hence to
express exchanging through the idiom of sharing, is that of countering and neutralizing
the structural superiority of the matrilateral hai' as pagebidi. Thus the injunction of
siblingship among hai' is self-fulfilling as regards equivalence; matrilateral and
patrilateral hai' become equals through the balancing out of two rather different
sorts of inequalities, the ostensible "generational" superiority of the former and the
putative "lineal" seniority of the latter. The fact that matrilineal hai' receive more
wealth and, statistically, more widows can thus be accounted for either in terms of their
superiority or their inferiority. It is, like virtually everything else in the relationship,
ambiguous, and it acquires this character precisely because the relationship, qua
relationship, is constituted by the summing together and mutual modeling of the two
aspects.
Terminological usage accords with the injunction to regard hai' as siblings. Were
this not the case, were the pagebidi aspects of the relation to be emphasized, then
we might expect the normalization of an "Omaha" terminology to apply here (Wagner
1970). In fact the term hai' is used almost exclusively-dwano pagebidi being invoked

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 Patrilateral Matrilateral

elder
number percent younger
ama' 59 14.8 number percent
(brother) ama' 5 '1.3
aia 33 8.3 (brother)
(father) ogwa 4 1.1
Total 92 23.1 (son)
Total 9 2.4

number percent
ama' 41 10.3
number percent
(half brother) ^""" ama' 1 5 1.3
ama' 39 9.8 K%%h (half brother)
(first cousin) ama' 4 1.1
ama' 14 3.4 % (first cousin)
(second cousin) ama' 1 .3
Total 94 23.6 _^ (second cousin)
Total 10 2.7

number percent
hai'
19 4.8 number percent
(FZS) ^^ hai' 15 3.8
hai' 11 2.8 . (MBS)
("classificatory" FZS) hai' 6 1.5
Total
30 7.6 , ("classificatory" MBS)
Total 21 5.3

number percent
Total: preferred source of wives 1 216 54.3
Total: permissible but not preferred source 40 10.4

Genealogically "distant" ama' 97 24.4

No kin category identification provided 29 7.3

Inheritance from ogwa or awa (pagebidi)

Grand total L 397100.2

Figure 2. Leviratic transfers accordi

(preferred "flow" of wives shown

only occasionally as a descriptive gl

terms and relational modes with onean
as hai' bare affines (one's hai's wife's
In the following generation, that of
male and female analogical flow foll
abrogated. One relates to one's fath
na' ("father's sister") respectively and
("mother's brother") and ida ("mothe
usages for those related through them
the parent's pagebidi relationship ar
"patrilateral" flow. Because hai' are "
to hai' as siblings invariably puts a
the relationship, the differential aspec

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 in their own eyes, female flow in those of the wife takers) disappears. In a broader
perspective, the identification of "sharing" with "exchanging," of lineality with
exchange, among hai' in the parental generation obviates the lineal distinctions that
the original exchanges (via the interdict) had set up. Of course, an individual's own
lineal relationships through his or her parents may color relationships with the
respective parental hai', but these more recent analogical constructions bear upon
other loci of responsibility. Parents' hai' are relationally parents' siblings.
They involve, in any case, essentially weak relationships. If they permit a generally
unconstrained flow of analogy irrespective of strong lineal bias, it is only because the
force of a strongly motivated lineality has gone out of them. There are, barring adoption
by one's father's hai' through widow inheritance, few obligations or perquisites
attached to them. It is said that one should not marry offspring of one's parent's
hai', as one should not, in general, marry those of a parent's siblings. But one may
marry the grandchildren of parental hai'. Primary parties to the original interdict (the
point of reference in the grandparental generation of the children of hai') are related
to as wai' and auwa, reciprocal relationships differentiated by the sex (respectively
male and female) of the senior partner. But these relationships are broadly indulgent
and diffuse.
All Daribi kin relationships can be seen to be generated by the interdict imposed
at the incipience of a marriage, and by its consequences. The impression of
tremendous complexity, indeed, the impression of a naturally or an innately imposed
differentiation of "kinds" of relatives, is an illusion fostered by the contrapuntal and
overlapping implications and consequences of innumerable past, present, and projected
impositions of the interdict, and their consequences. Daribi create their world of
relatives and kin relationships even as their perceptions and conceptions of kin and
kin relationship are created by this world. Nevertheless, a strong argument can be
made, supported by their own notions of priority and responsibility, that the kin
relationships of the Daribi constitute a self-generative means of analogical construction.
Such a regime of semiotic construction can be understood and explicated as a
phenomenon in itself, tangent to other, similar constructive regimes but not necessarily
predicated upon such other imputed theoretical orders as political or economic
interest or the solidarity of the group. To be more specific, there is no necessity to
adduce corporate interest here; lineality as analogic flow and its associated premise
of male contingency are quite sufficient to account for "recruitment" and other
solidarity-oriented issues. Lineality as open-ended analogic flow, as a quantity that
changes its value with time and with position within the relational matrix, is far more
consistent with observable events and attitudes among the Daribi (and many other
highland Papuan people) than lineality as normative dogma or lineality as idiom for
social interest.

Lineality "on the ground" is imprecise and multivalent; like the analogies elicited
in Daribi naming, it is negotiable and capable of infinite elaboration and extension.
Often enough invoked within and between human aggregates, it is but a part, and a
transient part, of the whole of kin construction. The obligations of "sharing meat"
among hai' are another part of this whole and are drawn upon quite as much as
lineality in the articulation of human aggregates (for example, what I have called
elsewhere "communities"). What is important is not that these analogies are used,
or that they exist, but how they are invoked and compelled. And the evidence for this
indicates that we need not look beyond the confines of kin construction to find a
satisfactory accounting.
More generally, this study leads to two orders of conclusions regarding kin

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relationships, both of them, of course, interrelated. The first has to do with kin
differentiation and the role of constraint and restriction in eliciting and distributing
relational analogies. The second has to do with the consequences of analogic
construction, the flow of analogy that comes to motivate and qualify successive
restrictive and differentiating efforts until the force of the initial distinctions is obviated.
The range of potentially recognizable analogies existing among any set of human
semiotic constructions is virtually limitless. Only a very small number of them is ever
selected for the purposes of social construction. The analogies that are actualized
in this way are selected and controlled through acts of overt discrimination, or
differentiation. The analogic approach that I have assumed here recognizes an identity
between the terms that are used to differentiate relatives and the respective analogical
relationships obtaining between those relatives and their reciprocals. If we speak of
differentiation alone, we may regard the entailed relational aspect as a "flow" of
analogy between any ego and its relatives so differentiated. And because the entailed
relationships link relatives to relatives, because the points of differential reference
become themselves relational operators, certain kinds of analogic flow can be seen
to connect an ego with particular sets, or chains, of relatives or to associate relatives
in such sets exclusive of an ego. The strength of this approach is that, obviating the
distinction between the dyadic ("kinship," "filiation") and transdyadic ("descent")
categories of homological approaches, it permits a central focus on the symbolic
dimensions of a conceptual world.
Let us first consider the broad implications of the analogic approach for kin
differentiation. I shall list these as a set of conclusions.
1. The means by which relatives are differentiated from one another and the means
by which they are differentiated from an ego (reciprocal) are one and the same. My
mother is a mother to me and she is also my mother in contrast to other relatives, who
are aunts, and so forth. This point is sometimes complicated, but not necessarily
contradicted, by terminological usages (that is, separate terminologies for "address"
and "reference"). We differentiate relatives, broadly speaking, by the same criteria
that specify our relationship to them.
2. The differentiation of relatives constitutes a differential and distributive restriction
of relational analogy, via the means of eliciting it, into a range of contrastive roles, or
protocols. Borrowing an idiom from Levi-Strauss, we might say that an (unrealizable)
ideal of total analogy is detotalized and distributed over a range of partial realizations,
each corresponding to a kind of relationship. A kind of relationship (designating the
particular kinds of relatives proper to it) can then be considered as an analogue of
relationship in general, diminished and restricted in certain dimensions so as to control
and channel the flow of relational analogy.
3. The essence of "kinship" is restriction, and the opposite of "kinship" is therefore
total, unrestricted analogy, or (in its behavioral aspect) complete familiarity and lack
of constraint. The core of any regime of kin relationship is, therefore, the set of
affinal relations (as implied, for instance, in Levi-Strauss 1969) which is also its
(generative) beginning point. The assumption that analogical connections might be
taken as analytically prior or might be considered the more significant aspect (as in
the writings of Fortes and the "descent theorists") is something of a nativistic fallacy.
Analogy, taken in and of itself as a primitive analytic term, can only generate viable
models ("segmentary lineage systems" and the like) when invoked in the context of
an assumed "natural" or "given" kin differentiation.
4. Precisely because it is "the opposite of kinship," complete or total familiarity will
often be invoked in the context of kin relationship to "prove," elicit, or emphasize kin

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 restrictions. Thus "joking relationships" frequently entail the mimicry of an unseemly
familiarity on the part of one or both "sides" so as to provoke a "disqualification" of
the behavior and a consequent realization of the relationship (if the behavior, as a
burlesqued "denial" of the relationship, is taken as a joke, then the relationship itself
emerges as a serious matter). A Daribi father is relatively "free" and familiar with his
children, and although the familiarity will be reciprocal when the children are very
young (this indulgence can be taken as a paternal claim to complete analogy-a
supplement to male contingency), older children and adults must show considerable
respect to their fathers. This balancing of familiarity on the part of the father with
constraint on that of his offspring emphasizes and coincides with the directional
emphasis of analogic flow, which moves from father to offspring but not vice versa.
Likewise the custom of ritual "snatching" among the southern Bantu peoples described
in Radcliffe-Brown's classic discussion of "The Mother's Brother in South Africa" (1952)
coincides with the direction of horizontal analogic "flow." A sister's son can treat his
maternal uncle with a certain familiarity because the marriage cattle have already been
delivered to the maternal lineality, and it is the maternal uncle who assumes the
obligation for his sister's fertility and productivity. Among the Daribi the obligation for
continued payment rests with the wife takers (since the marriage wealth is given over
in "installments"), and the maternal uncle retains rights of "snatching" from his sister's
children.

5. Incestuous relations acquire their often cited moral repugnance by threatening

to expand the conditional familiarity of intensely focused (that is, "close") analogical
relationships into the total familiarity of nonkinship. This is why they are so often linked
with "familial" or "substance" relations. They mark the tolerance limits of socially
sanctioned familiarity.
6. "Kinship" expands an essentially simple and unitary disposition ("relating"),
formless and characterless in itself, rather than ordering and simplifying an array of
particularistic and otherwise hopelessly complex kinds of relatives. The contrast that
is often made between "given" or natural kin differentiation and "normative" kin
classification or relationship, between "natural fact" and "social contract," as it were,
is a gratuitous projection of Western categorical constructions, and one that leads to
illusory problems and pseudoinstitutions such as the "incest taboo" (Wagner 1972a).
Kin differentiation and analogic flow are interdependent simply because they have
been defined in contrast to one another, and the single most significant methodological
constraint upon their application and exemplification as analytic categories is that this
contrast be maintained in the most stringent possible terms. When one of them is
singled out as the primary focus of an inquiry, as I have done here with differentiation,
then the other will subsume the implications of this focus as a dialectical antithesis.
Let us then review the analogical implications of kin differentiation as a set of
conclusions.

1. The initial assumption of the basic similarity of all kin relationships (and, via t
implications of this assumption, all "kinds" of relatives) can be said to ground
discussion, both in an interpretive (analytical) sense and in an operational sense. Sin
moreover, I have argued that the Daribi themselves understand the differentia
of relatives and relationships to be a province of human responsibility, the analogic
equivalence of all kin relationships to one another can be said to ground their
approach to kin differentiation and relationship.
2. Unless they are consistently and continually interdicted, the implicit analo
obtaining among kin relationships (and between the "kinds" of relatives to which t

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correspond) will tend to assert themselves, forcing themselves into perception and
expression and coloring the resultant social realizations accordingly. The contrasts
between sharing and exchanging, between wife givers and wife takers or between
paternal and maternal lineality are not mysteriously "given" facts, but differentiating
social assertions. When sharing begins to be taken as the same thing as exchanging,
when the distinctions between wife givers and wife takers, or between paternal and
maternal lineality become eroded, then something of the assumptional basis of the
whole constructive effort is realized, and the restrictions of "kinship" are to that
degree obviated.
3. Although they elicit analogic flow, the differentiating distinctions and restrictions
of "kinship" are themselves carried forward by this flow. But this very interdependence
renders kin differentiation vulnerable to the dissolution of the particular into the
general that flow entails. What we call "reproduction" or "generation" is modeled
entirely by analogic flow: offspring are related by some kinds of analogy to either
parent or parental lineality (perhaps this is what Fortes meant by the "universal
bilaterality" of filiation) and hence draw an analogy between them. If a new
differentiation, or a redifferentiation is applied here, the resulting kin construction
takes on a "lineal" character; if not, the resulting construction becomes generally
"cognatic" or "bilateral." If the original differentiation between "wife givers" and
"wife takers" is reapplied in the alignment of offspring, the resulting construction
conforms to what Levi-Strauss (1969) terms an "elementary structure," its specific
form depending upon the specifications of wife giving and wife receiving restrictions
(sometimes very complex, as among many Australian peoples). In such cases usages
like those of "restricted exchange" or "cross-cousin marriage" may become, at least
in normative terms, highly desirable, for they serve to reestablish the interdict in its
original force. If a new differentiation, between paternal and maternal linealities, is
introduced, as in the "child price" usages of the Daribi and many African peoples, then
the construction becomes what Levi-Strauss has termed a "complex structure."
4. Thus "elementary structures" are those that maintain and continually reinvoke the
interdict, the idiom of affinal differentiation, in certain categories so as to stave off
the effects of obviation. This may be viewed as a means of "alliance" and continuing
connubium, or it may be interpreted in less sociocentric terms as a moral effort to
conserve "kinship." "Complex structures" emerge as all those regimes of kin
construction that are realized through the progressive obviation of distinctions and
restrictions, including "cognatic" regimes. "Complex" regimes may be seen as
conservative of lineality, broadly speaking, rather than of kin restriction.
5. The diachronic integrity of a regime of kin construction can be understood in
terms of a tension between differentiation and its analogic consequences. Such a
regime can always be shown to have a systemic character (as in Levi-Strauss's "atom
of kinship") if only because the component relationships are differentiated by contrast
to one another, as complementary facets of a single human disposition. Understood in
its own (internal) terms, qua system, this complementarity lends itself to the reification
of ethnographic particularism. Approached as an instrumentality for the creative
evocation and temporal realization of a total social construction, however, the systemic
aspect of "kinship" emerges as a function of a larger constructive intention. Such
traditionally recognized phenomena as the (systematic) differentiation of relatives and
kin relationships, lineality, and reciprocal exchanges are indeed parts of such a
self-actualizing intention; so, too, is the generalization that no single realization of
kin construction (an imposition of the interdict and its consequences) seems to persist
beyond three or four generations.

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Date of Submission: May 20, 1977

Date of Acceptance: June 16, 1977

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