Kinship

This, the second issue of the journal Kinship, features a major article, “Crow-Omaha Kinship: Revitalizing a Problem or Generating a Solution?,” in which the author, German Dziebel (USA), argues that the Crow-Omaha terminologies should not be viewed on a case-by-case basis but from a systems perspective.  The article is followed by five comments that discuss the issues raised in the article, followed by the author's Reply to the comments.  The issue also includes the English translation of an important Russian article on Crow-Omaha terminoiogies referenced in the Dziebel article.  Finally, there is a review of the film, In My Mother's Hous e, that connects the present life of the film maker in the United States with her Italian and Eritrean past through her kin ties.

The article discusses the long-standing Crow-Omaha problem in kinship studies with a focus on the volume Crow-Omaha: New Light on a Classic Problem of Kinship Analysis (2012), edited by Thomas Trautmann and Peter Whiteley. While successful in restoring the importance of the Crow-Omaha problem to kinship studies and contributing to the revival of “traditional” kinship studies in anthropology, the book misses an opportunity to advance a solution to this problem. Drawing on a global database of kinship terminologies and the author’s own treatment of the Crow-Omaha problem in The Genius of Kinship: The Phenomenon of Human Kinship and the Global Diversity of Kinship Terminologies (2007), the article uses empirical material from multiple language families represented in the Trautmann & Whiteley volume to demonstrate the im-portance of alternate-generation equivalences, Bifurcate Collateral grouping and sibling termi-nologies in the evolution of “Crow-Omaha skewing.” Methodologically, it is recommended to shift kinship terminological analysis from using representative “case studies” to drawing on large-scale databases of global kinship-terminological variation, from discussing narrow “types” to discussing kinship terminologies as systems, from anthropology-only approaches to interdisciplinary studies marrying anthropology and linguistics, from semantics-only approaches to approaches combining semantics, etymology and speech pragmatics.

Kin terminology research—as reflected in Crow-Omaha and Dziebel (2021)—has long been interested in “deep time” evolution. In this commentary, I point out serious issues in neoevolutionist models and phylogenetic models assumed in Crow-Omaha and Dziebel’s arguments. I summarize the widely-shared objections (in case kin term scholars have not previously paid attention) and how those apply to kin terminology. Trautmann (2012:48) expresses a hope that kinship analysis will join with archaeology (and primatology). Dziebel misinterprets archaeology as linguistics and population genetics. Although neither Crow-Omaha nor Dziebel (2021) make use of archaeology, biological anthropology, or paleogenetics, I include a brief overview of recent approaches to prehistoric kinship in those fields—some of which consider Crow-Omaha—to point out how these fields’ interpretations are independent of ethnological evolutionary models, how their data should not be used, and what those areas do need from experts on kinship.

Lea focuses on Dziebel’s analysis of the section on South America, composed of two chapters that deal with the Northern Jê (Gê) societies, some displaying Omaha features, others Crow, or a mixture of the two. In his review article, Dziebel argues enthusiastically about the merits of large kinship data bases. However, there is not even consensus among social anthropologists concerning the characterization of the Northern Jê peoples. Dziebel is very critical of the book edited by Trautman and Whiteley, but he naively takes T. Turner’s model of societal reproduction at face value, despite it not even dealing directly with the kinship terminology. The other contributor, Marcela Coelho de Souza, sums up her position affirming that kinship is made, not given. Both of these authors dismiss Lea’s alternative analysis of the Mẽbêngôkre as a house-based matrilineal society, but Dziebel sidesteps this issue.

This comment is directed critically at certain arguments made by German Dziebel concerning the derivation of Crow-Omaha terminologies. Dziebel asks why such features cannot be derived from alternate generation equations. It is shown that this would have to happen indirectly, if at all. Dziebel's difficulties with the mixing of cross and parallel and the place of bifurcate merging and collateral terminological features in this context are also commented on, it being argued that they are all perfectly compatible with Crow-Omaha and indeed regularly found with such terminologies.

German Dziebel considers it more likely that the Crow-Omaha terminologies derive from terminologies that already have the vertical skewing associated with the Crow-Omaha terminologies than from terminologies without such a property. Thus, he argues, the horizontal skewing of genealogical relations that is characteristic of the Iroquois terminologies makes them unlikely candidates for being the kind of terminology from which Crow-Omaha terminologies originated. Vertical skewing does occur with self-reciprocal kin terms, and for this reason Dziebel posits that the Crow-Omaha terminologies had their origin in terminologies with self-reciprocal kin terms. While Dziebel is correct that the Iroquois terminologies lack vertical skewing, vertical skewing is introduced by simply adding the equation, ’son’ of ‘maternal uncle’ = ‘maternal uncle’ to an Iroquois terminology, along with its logical implications for kin terms relations, to derive an Omaha terminology, or add the equation ‘daughter’ of ‘sister of father’ = ‘sister of father’ to derive a Crow terminology. One of these equations may have been added to the kinship terminology of a group with an Iroquois terminology when unilineal descent groups were introduced into the social organization of that group since the added equation would resolve what otherwise would be structural inconsistency between an Iroquois terminology and the introduced unilineal descent groups.

German Dziebel’s critique of our Crow-Omaha volume of nine years ago rests on his book of fourteen years ago. He acknowledges that crossness and skewing may in some instances covary but denies the covariance has any causal significance. Instead, he argues, Crow-Omaha systems derive from kin-terminologies marked by intergenerational self-reciprocals, which are purely linguistic in nature and uninfluenced by social organization; that sibling terminologies emphasizing relative age evolve into Omaha systems, and those emphasizing relative sex into Crow systems; and that in kinship-system evolution it is sibling terminologies—rather than crossness that predicates marriage alliances—which are the driving force.

We show in reply that systems with skewing are intimately and dynamically associated with crossness, even more robustly than previously thought, both empirically and, through reinterpretation of Lounsbury’s work, analytically. The interaction of crossness and skewing through linguistic or geographic contiguity is the best and most promising way forward in the study of Crow-Omaha, and work since the appearance of our book bears this out. We show too that works of Popov, Hornborg and Barnard, that our critic cites in his favor, support our position and not his. And we suggest that the argument of his 2007 book, for all its strengths, hitches his evolutionary model to a belief that Homo sapiens arose and spread “out of America” rather than “out of Africa”, an entailment of his kinship analysis that readers will likely find off-putting. We affirm the deep embedding of skewed systems within systems having crossness, controvert his (Kroeber-like) insistence that kinship is purely linguistic and not social-organizational, and dispute that the many who find the “out of Africa” thesis well-grounded are all wet.

My reply continues the discussion of Crow-Omaha skewing, Alternate-Generation equations, Bifurcate-Collateral and Bifurcate Merging kinship terminological types in the contexts of the contributions by Trautmann & Whiteley, Read, Parkin, Lea and Ensor. Special attention is given to the logical pitfalls in the definition and usage of the notion of “crossness” and to the need to re-focus on a more accurate notion of “merging.” Empirical evidence for the transition from Alternate Generation equivalences to Crow-Omaha and from Bifurcate Collateral to Bifurcate Merging is revisited. Further information is provided regarding correlations between Alternate Generation equivalences and Crow-Omaha skewing, on the one hand, and patterns of sibling and cousin terminologies, on the other hand. Among the topics of general methodological and theoretical interest, my reply specifically addresses the scope of kinship studies and the methodology of integrating anthropology and linguistics in the study of kinship terminologies. Finally, the author presents an update on the “Out-of-America” theory of human kinship evolution in the light of recent advances in population genetics and ancient DNA analysis.

This is the first English translation of Vladimir A. Popov’s important 1977 article on Crow-Omaha kinship systems. Popov’s global comparison proposes an historical typology of these systems covariant with socio-evolutionary stages. His six subtypes are configured by the variable operation of bifurcation and linearity among G+1 and G0 kin-terms, with Popov suggesting three possible evolutionary trajectories. While directly addressing contemporary Western kinship theory, Popov simultaneously engages a robust Soviet tradition little known to Western scholars. Of special note, Popov deploys the “Levin code,” a logically elegant formalist notation that commands comparison with other componential systems. Broader attention to Popov’s perspectives on the Crow-Omaha problem is long overdue.

An attempt is made to determine the place held by the Crow and Omaha types in the historical typology of systems of kinship terms. Attention is centred upon structural differences between individual systems within each of these types. The author groups all these differences into six variants and advances the view that they should be considered as stages in the development of the Crow and Omaha systems. All the variants are mapped. Two suppositions are made to explain the preservation of the peculiarities of the Crow and Omaha systems in the earliest phase of the secondary stage in the evolution of kinship systems. The author regards it as the more probable explanation that certain features of these systems survive from the preceding stage of development in the course of evolution. However, another possibility should not be dismissed, namely that in the course of evolution the terminology of the Crow and Omaha types acquires a novel content and, in fact, represents a combination of the same elements but possessing a new quality.

The author also emphasizes that to attach the names of types within the general typology of kinship term systems to particular ethnicities is unwarranted. This is especially true since these types are identified on the base of two structure-forming characteristics: bifurcation and linearity. Taking this into consideration the author proposes that the types should be named by termsdenoting these characteristics.

An attempt is made to determine the place held by the Crow and Omaha types in the historical typology of systems of kinship terms. Attention is centred upon structural differences between individual systems within each of these types. The author groups all these differences into six variants and advances the view that they should be considered as stages in the development of the Crow and Omaha systems. All the variants are mapped. Two suppositions are made to explain the preservation of the peculiarities of the Crow and Omaha systems in the earliest phase of the secondary stage in the evolution of kinship systems. The author regards it as the more probable explanation that certain features of these systems survive from the preceding stage of development in the course of evolution. However, another possibility should not be dismissed, namely that in the course of evolution the terminology of the Crow and Omaha types acquires a novel content and, in fact, represents a combination of the same elements but possessing a new quality.

The author also emphasizes that to attach the names of types within the general typology of kinship term systems to particular ethnicities is unwarranted. This is especially true since these types are identified on the base of two structure-forming characteristics: bifurcation and linearity. Taking this into consideration the author proposes that the types should be named by terms denoting these characteristics.

In 2005 Brown University anthropologist Lina Fruzzetti unexpectedly hears from two unknown Italian women, her cousins. Shortly thereafter she interviews her visiting mother. Lina’s father, an Italian official in colonial Eritrea, died when Lina was three. Previously he had a wife and daughter in Carrara, Italy, since deceased. Although Lina goes to Italy to meet her relatives, the film is not an exercise in “finding your roots” but rather is a “life history document”---Lina seeks to understand Italian-Eritrean colonialism. Footage goes back and forth. In Providence, Lina’s mother explains that, widowed, she went to Sudan to work and prosper, placing Lina to board in a Catholic school. Lina finds more relatives, including a nephew and his wife in faraway Barcelona. Experts explain how her father’s Carrara, once an epicenter of Anarchism, supported fascist military adventures. “Repatriated” mixed-race Eritreans discuss Italy and racism. In Eritrea she interviews her mother at home, then maternal kin. She tours Asmara, the Italian colonial capital, hearing reminiscences of Italian rule. The film’s denouement is Lina’s mother’s spectacular funeral. All of Lina’s interviewees are ambivalent. They neither condemn nor exonerate Italy’s Eritrean imperialist adventures.  Although Lina’s Catholic schooling enabled her spectacular path to respected US academic, she interviews no nuns or priests. This reviewer posits that since 476 AD Rome has had no empire, but the papacy revived an ecclesiastical empire. The Ethiopian College inside the Vatican figures in a recent study of homosexuality in the Vatican. Its author concludes that while hardliners fulminate against homosexuality, the rank and file tolerate it, as long as no masks are publicly removed. These conclusions mirror Lina’s about the Eritrean colonial adventure. Finally, contemplating kinship rituals of pilgrimage and reunions, we conclude that Lina’s mother’s grave constitutes a shrine that may spiritually enrich future pilgrims from her bloodline, while their reunions with Italian kin may resemble a Protestant model: the pilgrim’s journey to meet Italian kin validates solid status already achieved as a member of the educated international elite.