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Social Structure SOCIAL STRUCTURE George Peter Murdock I r: ,sk fUBEWRESS PAPERBACK MACMILLAN COMPANY .^WEUNIVKS"//. ^lOSANCElfj^ ^lUBRARYQ^;^ -^^HIBR '^ o ^ %UDNVS01^ "^MAINrt-IWV^ ^<»0JnV3JO'^ \Qm ^lOSANCEli-j)x ^OFCAllFOff^ ^OFCAI r-n % ^TiUONVSOl^ "^/iMAINrt-JftV^ ^lUBRARYOc Aj^tUBRARYQ^, v^ ^<!/0d IWOJO^ <riU3NV.S01'^ "^/saaA, ^OFCAilFOR^ ^OFCALIFOi?^ .^WEUNIVERS/A I ^^Q-mmf^ <riuoNVsoi^ %a3Ai .5jAEUNIVERy/^ 3s>:lOSANCEUr^ -^^^lUBRARYQ^ ^tllBR ^\ ^P* «^ fie < i <J5UDNVS01^ "^/SaMINIlJWV ^.tfOJIlVDJO'^ ^^OJIT .5WEUNIVERy/A ^lOSANCElfj^ ^OFCALIFO%, aOFCAI ^^Aavaani^ <riU3NYS01^ %JUAINn]WV> aWEUNIVERS-Za. ^lOSANCElfXx "<rii3DNVsoi^ ^aaAiNfi-gv^** ^^mmy>i^ '^.tfojiivjjo^ aWEUNIVERS-//, ^lOSANCElfj*^ ^OFCAIIFO% ^OFCAIIFO% . - IT" "^J <rj133NVS01^ %iGAINrt-3V^^ '^^Aav«aii#' -^HIBRARYOc. .^sSUIBRARYOa .\MEUNIVERS/A ^lOSANCEl^x %OJI1V3JO^ ^«yOJIlV3JO'^ <rii33NVS01'^ "^/SaJAlNftJVW^ ^OFCALIF0% ^OFCAllFOMi^ J,WEUNIVER%. ^6>Aav!jan# <rii30NYsoi'^ "^/^aaAiNnmv^ ^^WEUNIVER% ^lOSANCEl^r^ -5^1UBRARYQ<- -^j^HIBRARYQa^ "^rjigDNVSOl^ %il3AINn-3V^' ^immii;-^ ^mmms-K ^OFCAllFOff^ ^OFCAIIFO/?^ SOCIAL STRUCTURE 2^ SOCIAL STRUCTURE GEORGE PETER MURDOCK The Free Press, ISIew York Collier-Macmillan Limited, London Copyright © 1949 by The Macmillan Company Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, re- cording or by any information, storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Colher-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Ontario FIRST FREE PRESS PAPERBACK EDITION 1965 Third printing March 1967 To A. L. Kroeber, R. Linton, R. H. Lowie, L. H. Morgan, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, and W. H. R. Rivers Whose creative efforts in the study of social organization are largely responsible for its present development And to S. J. DoLLARD, Freud, C. L. Hltll, and A. G. Keller Whose contributions to sociology and psychology have immeasurably aided the present author in furthering that development Preface THIS VOLUME represents a synthesis of five distinct products of social science—one research technique and four systems of theory. It grows out of, depends upon, and reflects all five. It is the result of a conscious effort to focus several disciplines upon a single aspect of the social life of man—his family and kinship organization and their relation to the regulation of sex and marriage. In intent, and hopefully in achievement, the work is not a contribu- tion to anthropology alone, nor to sociology or psychology, but to an integrated science of human behavior. The research technique upon which the volume depends, and without which it would not have been undertaken, is that of the Cross-Cultural Survey. Initiated in 1937 as part of the integrated program of research in the social sciences conducted by the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University, the Cross-Cultiu-al Survey has built up a complete file of geographical, social, and cultural information, extracted in full from the sources and classified by sub- ject, on some 150 human societies, historical and contemporary as well as primitive. From these files it is possible to secure practically all the existing information on particular topics in any of the societies covered in an insignificant fraction of the time required for com- parable library research. The author began the present study in 1941 by formulating a schedule of the data needed on the family, on kinship, on kin and vii Viii PREFACE local groups, and on marriage and sex behavior, and by abstracting such data from the files of the Cross-Cultural Survey on- all societies for which sufficient information had been reported. In a very few weeks he was able in this way to assemble the relevant materials for 85 societies, which are indicated by asterisks in the bibhography. This number, though large, still fell far short of the cases required for rehable statistical treatment, and the author set out to secure further information by the usual methods of library research. Eventu- ally he secured data on 165 additional societies, making a total of 250 in all. The labor required to secure these additional cases was immense, consuming well over a year of research eflEort or more than ten times that spent in obtaining the original 85 cases. More- over, the results were both quantitatively and qualitatively inferior, since the author had to content himself in most instances with a single book or article in contrast to the complete source coverage for the cases derived from the Survey files. The informed reader who detects factual gaps or errors in our tabulated data will usually find, by referring to the bibliography, that they are due to the failure to use some recognized source. The author's only excuse for his incom- plete coverage in the additional 165 societies is that he simply could not afford the extra years of research labor that would have been required to attain the degree of thoroughness achieved by the Cross- Cultural Survey. If the Survey ever reaches its goal of covering a representative ten per cent sample of all the cultures known to his- tory, sociology, and ethnography, it should be possible to produce several studies like the present one, far more fully and accm^ately dociunented, in the time needed to compile and write this volume. The use of statistics and of the postulational method of scientific in- quiry has been contemplated from the beginning ^ as a major objec- tive in the utilization of the accumulated materials of the Cross- Cultural Survey files. The present author has departed from plan mainly in abandoning the samphng technique in favor of using all available cases in areas such as South America and Eurasia for which there are too few sufficiently documented cases to obtain an ade- quate sample. In other areas, too, he has occasionally chosen a society because a good source was readily accessible rather than ^ See G. P. Murdock, "The Cross-Cultural Survey," American Sociologicd Review, V ( 1940), 869-70. PREFACE IX because a sample was demanded. He has, however, sought con- sciously to avoid any appreciable over-representation of particular culture areas. In short, departures from, strict sampling, where they occur, reflect availability or non-availability of suitable sources and no other basis of selecticfn. This explains why the sample includes 70 societies from native North America, 65 from Africa, 60 from Oceania, 34 from Eurasia^ and 21 from South America rather than an approximately equal number from each of the five. To avoid any possible tendency to select societies which might support his hypotheses or to reject those which might contradict them, the author included all societies with sufiicient information in the Cross-Cultural Survey files and adopted a standard policy for the additional cases. Having first determined that a particular society would meet the sampling criteria, he turned to the available sources and quickly flipped the pages. If there seemed at a glance to be data on kinship terminology, on sex and marriage, and on familial, kin, and local groups, he accepted the case before examin- ing any of the information in detail, and resolved not to exclude it thereafter. This policy resulted in the inclusion of a number of societies for which the data are scanty and possibly unreliable. In nine instances—the Arawak, Fulani, Hiw, Huichol, Jivaro, Kamba, Mohave, Porno, and Sinhalese—the information proved so wholly inadequate in early tabulations that the resolution was abandoned and the cases excluded. In at least nine other instances—the Getmatta; Hawaiians, Hupa, Mataco, Mikir, Nambikuara, Ruthenians, Twi, and Vai—similar inadequacies showed up later, but resolve stiffened and they were retained. It would have been scientifically desirable to examine every negative or exceptional case to determine the countervailing factors apparently responsible for its failiu-e to accord with theoretical ex- pectations, since there can be no genuine exceptions to valid scientific principles. An attempt has been made to do so in Chapter 8 and occasionally elsewhere. To have followed this policy throughout, however, would have been impracticable in view of the fact that the 250 cases have been subjected to hundreds of different tabula- tions. Although most sociologists and tiie functionalists among an- thropologists fully recognize that the integrative tendency in the X PREFACE process of cultural change justifies the treatment of individual cultures as independent units for statistical purposes, many his- torical anthropologists and a few other social scientists still sus- pect that the fact of diffusion—the known dependence of most societies upon borrowing from others for a large proportion of iheir cultural elements—invalidates this statistical assumption: The author could doubtless argue his case at great length without convincing these skeptics. He therefore determined to face the issue squarely in an appendix, recalculating a series of tabulations using as units not individual tribes but culture areas and linguistic stocks, the two most widely recognized groupings of peoples with indisputable his- torical connections. Several trial calculations yielded results practic- ally identical with those obtained with tribal units. This plan was abandoned, however, when a much more satisfactory method was discovered whereby our hypotheses could be validated by strictly historical means. This is done in Appendix A. The fact that our historical test corroborates
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