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The Fall of Kinship: Towards an Epidemiological Explanation

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The Fall of Kinship: Towards an Epidemiological Explanation TheFall of Kinship ¤ Towards an Epidemiological Explanation PAULO SOUSA¤¤ ABSTRACT Kinshipused to be describedas what anthropologistsdo. Today, many might well saythat itiswhat anthropologistsdo not do.One possible explanation is that the notionof kinship fell offanthropology’ s radar dueto the criticisms raisedby Needham and Schneider among others,which supposedlydemonstrated that kinshipis not asoundtheoretical concept. Drawinginspiration from epidemiologicalapproaches to cultural phenomena,this article aimsto enrich this explanation.Kinship became an unattractive theoretical concept in the subcultureof anthropology not simplybecause of problems with kinshiptheory per se,but also on account of fundamental changes in the very conceptionof anthropological knowledgeand the impactof thesechanges on the personalidentity of anthropologists. KEYWORDS Epidemiologyof representations, history ofideas, anthropology, kinship studies. Introduction Kinshipstudies once played a centralrole in anthropology, contributing fundamentallyto its identity in the contextof the socialsciences (Eriksen &Nielsen 2001;Kuper 1988). Kinship was a domaininvestigated almost exclusively byanthropologists (in comparisonwith other domains such asreligion, economy and politics that were also under the focusof the othersocial sciences). Kinshipwas regarded as the centralorganizing principleof “ primitive”societies, which were likewise the properobject ofanthropological inquiry (in comparisonwith the “modern”societies investigatedby the othersocial sciences). However,kinship studies have ¤Manythanks toMichael Baran, PhoebeEllsworth, Larry Hirschfeld, WebbKeane, NicolaKnight, Brian Malley,Sarah Rigg,Diego Rios, George Rosenwald, Barbara Sarnecka andDan Sperber for their criticisms andsuggestions. ¤¤Candidate,Department ofAnthropology and Culture &Cognitionprogram, University ofMichigan. E-mail: [email protected]. c KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2003 Journal of Cognition and Culture 3.4 ° 266 PAULO SOUSA becomemarginalized since the 1970s.Kinship experts have notonly pointedout this decline ofinterest in kinship, but have alsosuggested somefacts that may have contributedto (or at least co-occurredwith) its demise: Anthropology’s loveaffair with kinship has cooledin recent decades ( : : :) This trend has beenconstrued bysome observers as aclear (ifnot relieving) sign that the studyof kinship is deador moribund. Although such views remind oneof Mark Twain’s remark that reportsof his deathhad been greatly exaggerated,they doresonate with twoimportant changes in the status, scope andconstitution of kinship studiesthat have occurredsince the early 1970s.First, theories anddebates about what were once taken tobe the basic buildingblocks ofkinship (kinship terminologies,so-called rules ofdescent, marriage,and postmarital residence) nolonger occupy their longprivileged positionof centrality within the discourseof anthropology. ( : : :) The second importantchange ( : : :)refers tothe fact that the studyof kinship has been reconstitutedand partially subsumed under other (admittedly problematic andcontested) rubricssuch as social history,legal anthropology, and political anthropology,and ( : : :)feminist anthropology.(Peletz 1995:345) In the last ten to fteen years, anthropologyhas undergonea denite shift away fromtraditional approaches to the studyof kinship, formerly oneof its central concerns. Initially, this was occasionedby statements that there is really nosuch thing as kinship,at least comparativelyspeaking, and that only bygiving our attention almost exclusively toindigenous categories can anything worthwhile besaid on the matter.Later, kinship came tobe subsumedmore and more under studies into gender, personhood, the body, ritualetc. –something reecting this very same anti-formalisttendency. (: : :)quitea numberof anthropologists, refusing to be either seducedor browbeatenby the insistence ofsome oftheir colleaguesthat there isnosuch thing as kinship,have persistedin developingtraditional approaches, with many fruitfulresults. (Parkin 1997:Preface) The majortheorists ofanthropologymade their mark in the studyof kinship. It seemed moreor less impossibleto imagine what anthropologywould look like withoutkinship. And yet fromthe 1970son, the positionof kinship as aeldof study within anthropologyhas been underquestion. ( : : :) It has becomestandard, in works onkinship publishedsince the 1980s,for gender, the body,and personhood to feature prominently in the analysis, while rela- tionshipterminologies are barely referred to, and kinship diagramsscarcely make an appearance.‘ The kinds ofproblems changed.’ (Carsten 2000:2-3) THEFA LLOFKINSHIP 267 In thisarticle, I wouldlike toassemble these factsin acoherentexplanatory picture,by delineatingan epidemiologicalexplanation of the fall ofkinship inanthropology. Epidemiologicalapproaches are now an inuential methodological tool amongcognitive anthropologists and other cognitive scientists interested in culturalphenomena (see, e.g.,Atran et al.2001; Bloch & Sperber2002; Boyer 2001;Hirschfeld 1995; McCauley &Lawson2002; Morris et al. 2001;Nichols 2002; Sperber 1996; Strauss & Quinn1997; Whitehouse 2000).1 The general aimis to explain the processof distribution of two classes ofcausally relatedphenomena: mental factsand public productions. By‘mental facts,’I mean the uxofmental representationssuch as beliefs, ideas,and values insideindividual minds, which are deployed by the processesof perception, reasoning and judgment. By ‘publicproductions,’ Imean the variousexternal productionsof the mindsuch as behaviors, artifactsand, more speci cally, publicrepresentations (e.g., utterances, imagesin a painting,writings in a book),which constitute the interactions individualshave witheach otherand are part of the environment. Currentepidemiological studies have focusedmainly onwhy certain mental representations(and their public productions) become and remain widespreadand important. 2 Yet,inasmuch as the general explanandum is the processof distribution, the epidemiologicalrationale may beapplied mutatis mutandis toexplain why certainmental representations(and their publicproductions) cease tobe widespread and important. Thus, following thisreversal ofmotif, my goalis to explain why the ideaof kinship becameand remained an unsoundtheoretical concept in the mindsof many anthropologists,with the consequentdecrease of public productions suchas lectures, colloquia, articles and books about kinship. Toidentify the causalfactors that made the conceptof kinship unattractiveand show how they areinterrelated is the maintask ofan epidemiologicalexplanation in this case. One mainfactor emphasized by 1In denyingthat imitationis the fundamentalmechanism ofcultural transmission,these epidemiologicalapproaches should not becon ated with amemetic approach– neither in the meme-as-virus,nor in the meme-as-gene version.For a criticism ofmemetics, see Sperber 1996(Chapter 5),2000. For an overviewof traditional memetic versions,and a new proposal,see Aunger 2002. 2Beingimportant here shouldbe interpreted in terms ofClaudia Strauss’ s notionof socialdominance (see Strauss 2000). 268 PAULO SOUSA the authorsquoted above is the skepticalreappraisal of the basiccon- ceptualframework that supported kinship studies. I describethe criticisms involved inthis reappraisal in the next section.The authorsalso allude toalterations in the general view ofanthropological knowledge as another factor(“ anti-formalisttendency,” “ the kindsof problems have changed”). In the followingsection, I characterizethe epistemologicalshift that is mostrelevant toexplain the fall ofkinship. In the nal section,I formu- late the epidemiologicalexplanation by addressing how these twofactors areconnected, and by integratinginto the explanationsome additional factshighlighted above as well (e.g.,the dilutionof kinship themes into otherareas of research, and the exaggeratedclaims of decreased interest inkinship). TheSkeptical Dilemma Duringthe 1960s,skepticisms concerning the foundationof kinship theories startedto popup. These criticisms,which heightened duringthe seventies, raiseddoubts about the very possibilityof the existence ofkinship theory. In thissection, focusing on the possibledemarcations of the basiccontent ofkinship as a theoreticalconcept in anthropology, I describethe main argumentsput forward by two in uential “ kinshipskeptics” – the British anthropologistRodney Needham andthe Americananthropologist David Schneider.3 Morgan,the fatherof kinship studies, conceptualized kinship with an explicitreference toagenealogicalgrid de ned in biologicalterms: Asystem ofconsanguinity, which is foundedupon a community ofblood, is butthe formalexpression andrecognition of these [family]relationships. Aroundevery personthere is acircle orgroup of kindred of which such personis the center, andthe Ego,from whom the degreeof the relationship is reckoned andto whom the relationshipitself returns. Abovehim arehis father andmother and their ascendants, belowhim arehis children and 3Forthe sakeof concision, I’ ll neglect oneaspect they havein common that reinforces their criticisms –bothNeedham and Schneider tend toassume a globalapproach to the semanticsof kinship terms in the sensethat they reject adivisionbetween the primary (kinship)meanings of relationship terminologies and other derivativeor metaphorical meanings.See Needham (1974), Schneider (1976,1980), and also Leach (1958, 1967) for another versionof this semanticposition. THEFA LLOFKINSHIP 269 their descendants; while oneither sideare
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