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R. Needham Notes on Comparative Method and Prescriptive Alliance. (Met 1 Figuur)

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R. Needham Notes on Comparative Method and Prescriptive Alliance. (Met 1 Figuur) R. Needham Notes on comparative method and prescriptive alliance. (Met 1 figuur). (A reply to nr. 1604) In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 118 (1962), no: 1, Leiden, 160-182 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:32:45PM via free access NOTES ON COMPARATIVE METHOD AND PRESCRIPTIVE ALLIANCE ne must regret to see Berting and Philipsen so exercised (1962), and in a personal fashion, by my critical examination (1961a) of their approach to the study of asymmetrie prescriptive alliance (1960), and if I have given them just cause for offence I offer them my apologies. But I must say at once that they have misconceived my concern: I was not worried on my own account, but was perturbed by erroneous argument. Their own emphasis on "tone" and "bitter- ness" makes me wonder how I could have made myself clearer, for I began with the express and sincere affirmation that I did not wish to reply in any contentious spirit or with any conviction that my own views were finally correct (1961a, p. 93) ; and I waited nearly a year before writing my rejoinder, surely a period long enough to permit the evaporation of any sentiments of the kind they apparently infer.1 I shall try to make clear my intentions, as well as emphasise my attitude to rejoinders (cf. 1961a, pp. 94—5), by presenting another article of the same kind. That is, in what follows I shall first deal as expeditiously as possible (in section I) with particular points in Berting and Philipsen's surrejoinder, and then proceed (in sections II and III) to more positive and extended discussion of issues in the study of prescriptive alliance which the present debate has brought into pro- minence.2 1 The point of my first footnote, indeed, was precisely to show sign of having attained a proper state of detachment in composing the rejoinder (1961a, p. 94). I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it is scarcely gallant of Berting and Philipsen polemically to exploit the candour of my admission by giving the word "piqued" a misleading prominence to their own advantage (1962, p. 155). 2 I am grateful to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for a Fellowship (1961-2) which provided the idyllic liberty in which this paper was written, and to the University of Oxford for generously permitting me to enjoy it. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:32:45PM via free access NOTES ON COMPARATIVE METHOD. 161 1. It was no part of my purpose to complain of mere neglect of my work. I was concerned, riot with what Berting and Philipsen did not say about it (whatever the reasons), but with what they did say; and what they did say was almost totally incorrect, as I tried to demonstrate in empirical detail. I note with disappointment that they pass over nearly every one of these issues of factual debate without mention, either to concede my arguments or to try to rebut them. 2. At least half of my 24 pages were not concerned directly with their article, but consisted of what I explicitly intended as independent- ly useful observations on asymmetrie alliance. As f or the space required by direct rejoinder concerning the Purum analysis, my response is that it was necessary: a false assertion may be agreeably brief, but to refute it is commonly a task of tedious and unavoidable length. Their numerous critical comments, incidentally, fall on six pages (viz. 57—8, 59, 60, 67, 68), and are not confined to "only one page". 3. The very advance of any science entails a search for novelty, which I do indeed regard as highly important, and I am perplexed that Berting and Philipsen should seem to deny this. My point in this regard was that it seemed improper on their part so to castigate my alleged amusing errors while at the same refraining from recognising that I had already arrived in print at certain of their own conclusions. Berting and Philipsen themselves seem in fact to think novelty and priority of some importance, for they devote most of one footnote expressly to the claim that Dutch anthropologists had recognised the phenomenon of asymmetrie alliance "sooner" than others (1960, p. 60, n. 13). If they do think this an issue of importance they will not object if I point out that I said this first too (1957, p. 169; 1958a, p. 99, n. 16; 1958b, pp. 199—200). 4. The use of a significance test is not relevant to the issue of whether or not systems of patrilateral prescriptive alliance actually exist. All we have to do is read the books and see if one solitary case can be discovered. The more books we read, the more significant the conclusion that there is no such case. 5. The part played by formal argument in Berting and Philipsen's article is not the same as in mine. They state that there is no need to discover the empirical correspondences of asymmetrie alliance with the cyclic character of the model. Now societies of this type actually exist, and I tried to show in what respects the notion of "cycle" is empirically Dl. 118 11 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:32:45PM via free access 162 RODNEY NEEDHAM. usef ul in their analysis. On the other hand, I reported that no instances of patrilateral alliance were to be found in the ethnographic literature, and it was thus in necessarily formal terms that I then tried to show just why such a system did not exist. Berting and Philipsen make no error (nor did I accuse them of one) in merely saying that it is logical that alliance cycles should "exist". Their error lay in supposing that this logical consequence of the marriage rule absolved them of the obligation to discover what kind and degree of correspondence was to be established between the formal features of the model and the way people organised their social lives. Furthermore, theoretical propositions have been advanced which depend on the notion of "cycle", and to test their validity it is necessary to establish empirically the social facts to which these propositions relate (Needham, 1961a, pp. 102—11). 6. What is wrong with Berting and Philipsen's belief that Lévi- Strauss thinks matrilateral cross-cousin marriage to be simply "better" than patrilateral is, in the first place, that he nowhere employs such an expression. I deal with this point in another place (1962a, pp. 17—18), and confine myself here to a brief elaborative comment. Lévi-Strauss himself uses the word "better", in connexion with matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, at only two places in his book, of which Berting and Philipsen quote one. This quotation clearly shows that Lévi-Strauss is concerned expressly with a "better integration". This expression may be easily interpreted in its context, and its validity is subject to test (Needham, 1962a, pp. 109—115, 117—8). To say that Lévi-Strauss thinks the matrilateral form is simply "better", on the other hand, is so vague as to be almost meaningless, and is certainly not an exact characterisation of his position.3 It might mean, for example, that the anthropologist considers the matrilateral form a better one because it is morally superior, securing a more harmonious moral consciousness, or that it is economically a more efficiënt form of distribution of scarce goods, that it is sentimentally more satisfying in that it prevents continual breaches of affective ties, that it is a neater arrangement and therefore less wasteful of energy, that it constitutes a form of organisation from which superior social advances of some kind can be made, that it more satisfactorily meets the evolutionary requirements of a certain type of society at a particular 3 Still less is it so to say that he regards the matrilateral form as "finer", which is an elaboration of Berting and Philipsen's own (1960, pp. 58, 74). Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 12:32:45PM via free access NOTES ON COMPARATIVE METHOD. 163 point in its development, that it is esthetically a more pleasing kind of order, that it accords more closely with certain values of societies that employ it, or that it more easily permits the attainment of certain ends. These propositions are some of many plausible inferences from the mere statement, ascribed to Lévi-Strauss by Homans and Schneider and then by Berting and Philipsen, that the "matrilateral form is 'better' for the society"; but none of them is stated or intended by Lévi-Strauss himself. Berting and Philipsen may or may not have adopted their phrasing from Homans and Schneider (they decline to say whether my inference was correct), but one may continue to think it significant that no other critics, reviewers, or commentators characterised Lévi-Strauss's work in this fashion until Homans and Schneider, in the attractive but seductive simplicity of their monograph, induced people not familiar with the original to believe that this was his argument.4 7. In the light of their elucidation of the passages in question, I can see that I misinterpreted Berting and Philipsen on the issue of efficiënt cause in relation to Lévi-Strauss's theory; but I must ask them to believe that my reading of their position was due to an idiomatic diffi- culty and not to the carelessness they suppose. It rested on the use of the words "for the theory of Lévi-Strauss . .. ", which would commonly be interpreted as meaning "for the purposes of", or "in the context of", or "according to" Lévi-Strauss's theory.
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