Feminism and Kinship Theory

Author(s): Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Aug. - Oct., 1983), pp. 511-516
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
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ReferencesCited
1983. "Concluding remarks," in The origins of
Chinese civilization. Edited by David N. Keightley and Chang
Kwang-chih, pp. 565-81. Berkeley: University of California Press.
MACINTOSH, N. W. G., and S. L. LARNACH. 1976. "Aboriginal affinities looked at in a world context," in The origin of the Australians.
CHANG KWANG-CHIH.

Feminismand KinshipTheory'
byANNA LOWENHAUPT
YANAGISAKO

TSING and SYLVIA JUNKO

DepartmentofAnthropology,
StanfordUniversity,
Stanford,
Calif. 94305, U.S.A. 17 Iv 83

A conference on feminism and kinship theorywas held August

1-7, 1982, at the Bellagio Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy,
with funding provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research, the National Science Foundation,
and the Rockefeller Foundation. The conference, which was
organized by Jane Collier, Sylvia Yanagisako, and the late
Michelle Rosaldo2 of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, gathered 19 anthropologists from the United
States, Europe, and Australia to explore new perspectives on
kinship arising fromfeministinvestigations of gender. The aim
of the conference was to generate discussion of the ways in
which recent analyses of gender and women's lives both draw
upon and require a reformulationof prevailing assumptions in
the literature on kinship. Six half-day sessions were devoted
to the discussion of previously circulated papers; two additional
sessions were reserved for general discussion of the conference
issues.3 The participants were Maurice Bloch (London School
of Economics), James Boon (Cornell University), Jane Collier,
John Comaroff (University of Chicago), Daryl Feil (University
of Queensland), Jack Goody (Cambridge University), Carolyn
Ifeka (Australian National University), Shirley Lindenbaum
(New School for Social Research), Vanessa Maher (Universita
degli Studi di Torino), Fred Myers (New York University),
Rayna Rapp (New School for Social Research), Judith Shapiro
(Bryn Mawr College), Raymond T. Smith (University of Chicago), Verena Stolcke (Universidad Aut6noma de Barcelona),
Marilyn Strathern (Girton College, Cambridge University),
Anna Tsing (Stanford University), Annette Weiner (New York
University), Harriet Whitehead (Johns Hopkins University),
and Sylvia Yanagisako.
Questions about gender and kinship have been closely linked,
and the centralityof kinship in anthropological inquiry places
the feminist reexamination of gender at the heart of the discipline. Early feminist scholarship was drawn to the issue of
the universal subordination of women, and established anthropological perspectives on kinship were used in cross-cultural analyses of the position of women (e.g., Rosaldo 1974,
Ortner 1974, Friedl 1975, Schlegel 1972). With the refinement
of feminist analysis in anthropology, however, the focus has
shifted to the construction of gender in specific social systems
(e.g., Ortner and Whitehead 1981, MacCormack and Strathern
1980). This kind of analysis requires a critical rethinking of
the analytical frameworks employed in the study of gender and
kinship and the ways in which they incorporate assumptions
about the uniformityof gender organization in kinship systems.
I C) 1983 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, all rights reserved 001 1-3204/83/2404-0005$1.00.
2 Michelle Z. Rosaldo was from the beginning involved in conceptualizing and planning the conference and seeking funds forits support.
In October 1981, shortly after the conference was fully funded, she
died while conducting fieldwork in the Philippines.
I We would like to thank Jane Collier and Sherry Ortner for their
helpful comments in the preparation of this conference report.

Edited by R. L. Kirk and A. G. Thorne. Canberra. Australian

Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
McELHINNY, M. W. 1968. Northward driftof India: Examination of
recent palaeomagnetic records. Nature 217:342-44.
WHYTE, R. 0. 1983. "The evolution of the Chinese environment," in
The origins of Chinese civilization. Edited by David N. Keightley
and Chang Kwang-chih, pp. 3-19. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Such a rethinking of analytic strategies for understanding

variation in gender and kinship organization was the focus for
the conference. On the one hand, established kinship categories
central to anthropological inquiry were reexamined. On the
other hand, various strategies were suggested to redirect feminist analysis. In particular, the analytic utility of a universal
distinction between "domestic" and "politico-jural" domains
and the cross-cultural significance of types of descent were
challenged. Instead of rooting their analyses of gender in conventional kinship categories, participants demonstrated that
the interrelationshipof gender and kinship can only be understood as embedded in particular cultural, economic, and political systems.
Three analytical strategies for this reformulationof the feminist directive were stressed in conference discussion. The first
is detailed attention to the symbolic organization of gender. As
Strathern pointed out, we cannot assume that we know what
it means to be a "woman" or a "man" in any cultural system;
similarly,we must investigate what constitutes"power" before
arriving at an analysis of gender asymmetry. Stofcke added
that such a critique of "essentialist" tendencies in feminism is
necessary for a more comprehensive feministchallenge to the
naturalization of social phenomena, prevalent in Western ideologies, that has allowed the equation of biological sex and
culturally constituted gender roles. The second strategyis the
investigation of gender in the context of power and inequality.
Contradictory usages and representations of gender within a
single ideological system particularly lead us to the relationship
between gender inequality and other formsof domination. The
thirdis the investigation of historical transformationsin gender
systems. As Weiner pointed out, attention to historical change
highlights the interaction of symbolic and material aspects of
social life. Comaroff noted that a historical perspective helps
us to escape the predicament of seeing "systems" as isolated,
self-reproducingunits and thus to understand structure as it
develops in interaction with external forces. Such strategies of
analysis not only refocus questions about gender, but also demonstrate how gender may be a key to an understanding of
particular symbolic systems, systems of social stratification,
and historical transformations. Moving away from received
assumptions about universal linkages between gender and kinship, conference participants stressed the relevance of the analysis of gender for broad areas of anthropological investigation.
We have organized the following summary of conference
papers and discussion in terms of topics that may be a bit
disorienting to readers accustomed to the more conventional
categories of descent, alliance, marriage transactions, and domestic groups. Yet, it is this very disorientation, and the new
sense of direction that may emerge from it, that can transform
the apparently known into an area of exciting new inquiry.

Domesticand politico-juraldomains. A numberof confer-

ence papers reexamined the analytic distinction between domestic and politico-jural domains, a distinction elaborated in
the work of Fortes (1958, 1969) and still influential. This distinction challenged Western assumptions about the biological
basis of kinship by claiming that kinship had a jural, political
dimension, but, as conference participants noted, it left intact
assumptions about a "domestic" core built upon the affective
ties and moral sanctions of the mother-childbond. Historically
specific "political" institutions and concerns tended to be as-

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511

sociated with, although not restrictedto, relationships between

men. Women were seen as primarily constrained by and oriented toward "domestic" relations. Although the two domains
were said to be interrelated and mutually shaped, they were
posited as universally differentiatedaspects of social relations
linked with universally differentiatednormative orientations.
The exploration of variation in gender has led feminists to
reevaluate both the empirical evidence for such universal orientations and the utilityof this opposition as an analytic strategy.
Comaroff's paper reviewed feminist critiques of this analytical distinction, ranging from reevaluations that leave the
distinction intact to proposals that we do away with it altogether. He contrasted a number of alternatives for reconstituting our vision of society in light of these critiques: a
"comparative" solution, in which domains are assumed to be
a general sociological phenomenon whose variation can be appreciated through empirical investigation in differentsocieties,
a "transactional" solution, in which structural domains appear
only as an emergent propertyof interactional processes, and a
"systemic" solution, which looks to how domains are wrought
by the particular logic of certain political and economic systems. Comaroff saw the most analytic promise in the last alternative but registereda few reservations-in particular, that
attempts at a "systemic" solution tend to create ideal types
based on an artificialdichotomybetween "pre-state"and "state"
societies, an approach that obscures the variation, contradiction, and potential for change of a given system.
In reviewing new approaches to structural domains, Comaroff highlighted Rapp's contribution to our appreciation of
"public" vs. "private" as an ideological distinctionthat emerges
in state societies (Reiter 1975). In her conference paper, Rapp
went on to suggest that a related ideological commitment to
the positive value and autonomy of "the family" has contributed to an uncritical acceptance of the hegemony of maleheaded nuclear families in analyses of kinship in contemporary
Europe and America. Her concern to disentangle the ideological constructs of informantsfrom the tools of anthropological
description and analysis was furtherdeveloped in Yanagisako's
paper, which demonstrated that analytical domain distinctions
are misleading even in the study of the modern Western societies to which they would seem most relevant. Her paper displayed the differences in gender domain constructs between
two generations of Japanese Americans. First-generationJapanese Americans organize the differentorientations of women
and men in terms of socio-spatial domains (an "inside" vs.
"outside" distinction),while second-generation Japanese Americans organize them in terms of functional domains of "family"
versus "work." The use by anthropologists of domestic and
public domains as analytic categories lumps these different
metaphors and obscures their differentimplications for gender
relations and hierarchy. Yanagisako contended that to understand the changing relations between men and women shaped
by the historically particular economic, political, and ideological conditions of Japanese American life we must explore the
symbolic meanings of domains for informants and abandon
domains as analytic categories.
The domestic/politico-jural distinction as ideology was also
addressed in Maher's paper. Her discussion of the unusual
degree of independence of seamstresses and dressmakers in
Turin between the two world wars highlighted variation and
contradiction in the usage of domain constructs by different
classes and sexes and showed how "domestic" and "public"
can be rhetorical devices in the negotiation of class and gender
privilege. By definingclothesmaking as "domestic," these seamstresses were able to achieve a mobility most women of their
class did not enjoy. Simultaneously, their involvement in creating class symbolism and staging the presentation of upperclass women allowed them to appropriate forthemselves something of the showy display essential to bourgeois definitionsof
512

"domesticity."Through these bourgeois definitions,these working-class women constructed notions of their romantic life and
independence, although it was working-class notions of "domestic" that enabled them to realize this independence in mobility and financial resources. The domain status of these
women's work was never unambiguous, however, and its negotiation was particularly revealing of class and gender dynamics. Dressmakers emphasized the domestic aspects of their
ties to clients, while their husbands often cited clients' visits
as intrusions into the domestic sphere. At another level of
negotiation, factory owners pointed to the "domestic" nature
of seamstresses' work in an attempt to avoid "public" labor
legislation.
Smith's consideration of West Indian marriage also revealed
the analytical barrenness of a universal constructof "domestic."
His paper was at once a critique of and an advance from his
earlier work (Smith 1956), which began with the concept of
"domestic" units and showed how these were undermined by
limitationson the prestige and resources of black men in British
Guiana communities. The analysis he proposed at the conference focused on the way in which concepts of marriage and
kinship developed out of the historical dynamics of race and
class in the West Indies. White men wanted sexual relations
with black and colored women but did not want to marrythem;
these women, for their part, preferredlover relationships that
produced lighter-coloredoffspringto legal marriages with lowerprestige, darker men. The fragmentation of "domestic" functions-sexuality, coresidence, household chores, responsibility
for children, etc.-and their distribution among a number of
individuals who did not constitute a "domestic" group was due
not to the breakdown of a domestic ideal, but to a historically
specific race, class, and gender hierarchy maintained through
class- and color-endogamous marriage and hypergamous concubinage.
Conference participants agreed that analyses of women's activities and relationships should not begin with assumptions
about their association with a "domestic domain" and that one
cannot assume that the "political" world is equivalent to the
social world of men. As Myers pointed out, feminists have
changed the meaning of "political." No longer does it seem
useful to equate politics with "public" institutions, statuses,
and social groups previously considered a predominantly male
"domain"; instead, politics should be seen as a system of power
relationships and value hierarchies, which necessarily includes
both women and men. When male activities, groups, and ties
are studied, Shapiro stressed, it must be recognized that these
are gender-marked phenomena and do not constitute the "human" social universe. By considering men as men rather than
conflatingmen and society, it is possible to illuminate the different ways in which kinship principles, groups, and hierarchies involve women and men.

Deconstructing
descentthroughthe analysisofgender.Be-

cause the interaction of gender and kinship varies among social

systems, gender is a useful starting place for a reexamination
of the role of descent in social life. Descent groups have been
seen as a key to the relationship between kinship and politics
in a number of social systems. Through descent groups jural
authority and genealogy have been viewed as linked to constitute discrete interest groups that are the basic units of political organization. Because jural authority is generally
associated with men, the position of women as a feature of
social structurehas tended to be slighted. The feministrethinking of political organization demonstrates the necessity for investigating the connections between descent and gender before
assessing the meaning and political significance of descent in
particular societies.
The papers by Shapiro and Whitehead addressed the varying
interaction between gender and descent within a region. Shapiro reexamined "patrilineal descent" in lowland South America, findingthat what has been called descent is not a principle
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ANTHROPOLOGY

of corporate group formation, but the idiom for male cult activities or the political factions of the male social world. She
concluded that "patriliny" in these cases expresses the centrality
of gender as a principle of social differentiationand must be
differentiatedfrom the "patriliny" that formscorporate groups
in Africa. Whitehead approached the analysis of gender and
kinship in New Guinea societies by tracing differences and
similarities in sexual-substance symbolism among various
groups, focusing particularly on the importance of sperm and
blood in male cult activity. She found a distinction between
societies of the lowlands and the eastern highlands, in which
male cults are a major preoccupation, and societies of the central and western highlands, in which attention to male cult
activity dwindles as interest in ceremonial exchange and bigman leadership increases. Although sexual-substance symbolism, especially menstrual blood pollution, is elaborated in societiesof both groups, it has verydifferentmeanings. In lowlands
and eastern highlands societies the emphasis is on uniting men
with a number of differentagnatic affiliationsin a single community,while in central and western highlands societies "blood"
may become the symbol of an agnatic connection that excludes
those of different"descent." This variation provides an example
of the differentways in which societies juxtapose gender and
descent as components of differentsystems of politico-territorial integration. The lowlands and eastern highlands system is
integratedby male ties, while the central and western highlands
system emphasizes descent ties.
Feil's paper also reanalyzed descent in New Guinea by showing that the political role of women is as crucial to an understanding of Tombema Enga social organization as is patrilineal
descent. Men's interclan exchange partnerships are the basis
of the social networks necessary for marriage and political
alliance; however, these ties can only be formed through a
woman-a wife, sister, or mother-as a mediating link. In
addition, women's activities are essential for the production of
pigs necessary for these exchanges. Agnatic descent itself is
only part of a systemin which both clan identitiesand exchange
networks organize social relationships in a system highlighting
women's roles in exchanges. Feil contrasted this system with
that of the eastern highlands, in which exchange is less elaborated and gender and kinship principles are used to construct
a more inward-focused community organization.
Discussion raised a number of additional perspectives on
these examples. Yanagisako suggested that since we cannot
assume gender and descent to be competing principles of social
alignment locked in a "zero-sum game," we must ask how
gender and descent reinforceeach other as much as how they
undermine each other in any social system. She also pointed
out that we cannot assume that gender as a mechanism of
political bonding is logically or historically prior to descent.
Collier noted that in focusing on the formation of internal
divisions on principles of gender and kinship Shapiro and
Whitehead had not detailed the nature of the larger social
groups or the cultural constructionof women and men. Several
other conference papers were to address these questions more
explicitly.
Creating difference. Conference participants agreed that a
study of the cultural construction of maleness and femaleness
is important not just because it tells us something about men
and women, but because gender oppositions and hierarchies
often serve as idioms for other kinds of social differentiation.
Bloch showed, for example, how symbolism from boys' initiation ceremonies was used in state ritual to legitimize the Malagasy state. Yet gender owes its power as a metaphor to the
fact that gender constructs ultimately affectthe identities and
relationships of real men and women. Because men and women
use gender constructs in a variety of social contexts, these
constructs are often essential to an understanding of many
aspects of a cultural system. Certainly an analysis of kinship
meanings requires attention to gender constructs. As Strathern

stated, kinship is about both "connections and disconnections"

and, thus, necessarily involves the cultural creation of difference as well as similarity. A number of papers discussed two
ways in which gender may be significantin this regard: gender
itselfmay be an idiom of difference,and other ways of thinking
about difference and similarity may affect men and women
differentlyas members of social groups and actors in systems
of power.
The paper by Boon showed how gender is used in Bali to
create distinctions that structure notions of marriage, exchange, and alliance. Male-male relations are symbolically defined as "parallel," that is, symmetricaland cooperative, while
male-female relations are seen as "cross," asymmetrical and
definingrelations of exchange. In contexts viewed as exchange,
women are thus signs of the symbolic "other." Balinese culture,
Boon suggested, builds from the cross-parallel distinction a
complex statement about endogamous groups, hierarchy,and
political alliance. This can be seen through the three idealized
forms of marriage: the auspicious endogamy of parallel cousin
marriage, the politically astute alliance with another house or
line, and the "love" marriage of romantic desire. Each of these
forms of marriage-positing ideal wives alternately as sisters,
alliance partners, and love objects-combines elements from
the cross-parallel distinction in differentways. The Balinese
obsession with twinship-both the identityof parallel-sex twins
and the sexual association of cross-sex twins-collapses these
elaborations of the cross-parallel distinctioninto a single "atom"
of kinship symbolism: the twins who are brother and husband
to the same woman concentrate "sameness" and "difference"
in the same kinship unit.
Bloch commented that the Balinese concern with endogamy
and incestuous twinship might be seen not just as another
cultural elaboration of the cross-parallel distinction, but as an
attemptto transcend gender, affinity,
and exchange. This theme
emerged in his own paper on the Merina of Madagascar, which
demonstrated that the elaboration of gender differencemay be
only one component of an ideological system that also includes
"contradictory" concerns for gender transcendence, gender
neutrality,and even the blurringof gender roles. Bloch showed
how the Merina circumcision ceremony uses contradictoryrepresentations of gender as it simultaneously develops gender
opposition-"male" orderly continuityvs. "female" chaotic vitality-and its transcendence through the symbolic power of
timeless, "hermaphroditic" ancestral control. The contradictory nature of gender representations in this system is not entirelyresolved, however, and males represent ancestral power
at the same time that they claim its hermaphroditic character.
This second contradiction can be explained only as it relates
to the experienced relationships of real men and women and
thus illuminates the limits of ideological integration. Merina
women are simultaneously denigrated and expected to participate as equal partners in endogamous "communities"; thus,
mixed messages about "femaleness" play a role in maintaining
and reproducing these communities and women's inferiorposition within them.
The issue of how women and men are parts of "communities"
was also a major concern of Strathern's paper. Strathernbegan
not with gender difference,but with kinship as making a difference between certain kinds of people. The types of connections and disconnections that kinship makes are related to the
differentialinterpretationof men's and women's relationships
to kin and affinesand thus to differencesbetween gender systems as well as prestige systems. In Hagen society, according
to Strathern, kinship ties are capable of being "disconnected,"
and certain persons assume the status of detachable "things."
Thus the marriage of a woman disconnects her from her natal
clan in such a way that she becomes an "additive" element
with respect to her husband's clan. In the same way, prestige
is seen to reside in the acquisition of "things" (wealth, exploits)
as additions to clan identity.Augmentation of prestige through

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513

wealth exchangesis extendedto buildingleadershipin nonkinshipcontexts.In contrast,in Wirusocietykinshipis understoodas a partofpersonswhichcan neverbe disengaged.Thus
Wirumarriagessetup networksofaffinaltieswithoutbuilding
separategroupidentities.Womenneverbecome disconnected
fromtheirnatal kin:exchangesconstantly
referto thisidentity
and cannotassume a nonkinshipreferent
as in thebuildingof
"prestige."Women,therefore,
cannotbe "exchanged,"butonly
participatein buildingfieldsof connections.
Both theseNew Guinea cases contrastwiththeWestAfrican
materialpresentedin Ifeka's paper. Ifeka delineatedhow the
use of wood carvings,earthmounds,and otherobjectsto represent"male" and "female"aspectsof the selfevincedtheimportanceof gender-differentiated
kinshipresponsibilities
for
Igbo notionsof the individual'sparticipationin society.Carvingsrepresenting
bothmale and femalekin wereused, mainly
by men but also by women traders,to symbolize"male"
achievement,prestige,and authorityand theirconnectionto
cosmicvalues and ancestrallegitimacy.Womenhad mounds
of clay symbolizingmaternalaffectiveties but also included
"phallic"sticksin theirritualkits. Thus, the "difference"
between male and femalewas symbolicallymanifested-as authority
vs. love, accomplishment
vs. naturalfertility-butreal
men and women had to incorporateboth maleness and femaleness.In discussion,Strathern
contrastedtheHagen analog
betweendescentgroupsand whole personswiththeIgbo representationof kinshipand genderas a numberof attributes
corresponding
to thedifferent
objectsIfekahad described.These
attributes,
she suggested,werejurallydefinedand recombined
by individualsin theirachievementof kinship"offices."Hierarchyand prestigewere builtnot by augmentingclan identity,as in the Hagen case, but throughthe appropriationby
individualsof officesboastingof the powerfulcombinationof
variouskinshipand genderelements.
The paper by Weineralso contrastedculturalsystemsaccordingto thewaysin whichtheyconstruct
theinterplay
among
kinship,gender,and personsand paid explicitattentionto the
roleofobjectsin thisprocess.Weinerdemonstrated
how malenessand femalenesscan cometo be seenas attributes
ofobjects,
which also take on meaningthroughtheirassociationwith
different
stages of the life cycle. Objects representing
social
relationsare centralto the buildingof understandings
of the
relationsbetweenthe sexes and the generationsin the construction
ofsocial groupsand hierarchies.Usinga New Guinea
example,Weinershowedhow bones are made to representthe
relationshipbetweenthe living and the dead, a relationship
thatpromotesan ideal ofsocial regeneration
in whichmenand
womenare unequallyinvolved.The use of moredurable objects to representsocial relationshipsis associatedwithmore
extensivesystemsof hierarchy.Mats in Samoa, forexample,
establishlong-termhistoricalcontinuityof hierarchicalrelationswithinand betweengroups.Weiner'scases displayedsome
ofthevariationpossiblein theway objectsare used to advance
a setofmeaningsabout thephasesofpeople'slives-meanings
thatallow the construction
ofhierarchies
just as theypromote
social reproduction.
Weiner'sanalysissuggestedthatsignificant
differences
among
social systemsare revealedby an examinationof genderin the
constructionof persons throughthe life cycle. A numberof
conference
papersmovedtheinvestigation
ofgenderideologies
towardthequestionofhow personsare culturallyconstructed.
Strathernnotedthather interestin how specificculturalsystemsconstructgenderand kinshipboundarieshad led her to
explorehow personsare culturally
conceivedand created.Ifeka
turnedto ideas of the "self" to challengeWesterncharacterizationsof an African"self" subordinatedto externalspirits
and to illuminateIgbo notionsofgender,kinship,and selfhood
definedthroughthe interplaybetween individual roles and
communityresponsibilities.Whitehead commentedon the
commonthreadconnectinggender,inequality,and conceptsof
514

the person:since statushierarchiesrequiredifferent

kindsof
persons,an investigation
of personhoodcan unearththe ideologicalunderpinnings
ofhierarchies.Colliersuggestedthatthe
analysis of personhoodalso helps clarifythe way in which
people realizeideologies.This concernshiftsthe discussionof
personhoodaway froma focuson the integration
and mutual
ofassumptionsaboutpower,gender,and kinship
reinforcement
to an investigation
of whyindividualsput up withand reproduce systemsof inequality.
Inequalityand marriage.Collier'spaper addressedanother
themeevidentin a numberof conferencepapers: the relation
of genderideologiesto systemsof marriageand inequality.As
Comaroffnoted,marriagehas been importantin analysesof
inequalitybecause it is a momentwhen inequalitiesare negotiated,the divisionof labor actualized, and cyclesof productionand exchangearticulated.Collier'slargerprojecthas
been to constructa typologyofsocietiesbased on thedynamics
of marriageand inequality;these dynamicsgeneratein each
typea characteristic
genderpoliticsand set of concernsabout
personhood.Her conferencepaper outlinedthe typeshe calls
'"unequalbridewealthsocieties,"a typeillustrated
bytheKiowa
of the Great Plains. In such a society,high-ranking
men are
able to marryand keep more wives than low-rankingmen
because theycan depend on thelabor of lower-ranking
clients
forsupportwhich,in turn,givesthemtimeto engagein prestigiousactivities.High-ranking
Kiowa menhad timetoacquire
horsesthroughraidingwhich theycould distributeto affinal
relatives,thus ensuringtheircontrolover wives. In thistype
ofsociety,Colliersuggests,rankbecomesan obsessionforboth
men and women. Men mustcast theiractionsas appropriate
to highrankto gain thesupportofsiblingsand affines;women
mustupholdtheirrankdesignationsto maintainprivilegesfor
themselvesand theirchildren.
Anotherpaperthatconsideredtheconnections
amonggender
ideologies,marriagesystems,and inequalitywas ShirleyLindenbaum'sanalysisof male cultsand bride-service
and bridewealthmarriagein New Guinea. Lindenbaumdiscussedbeliefs
in the importanceof sementransference
forthe development
of boysintomen and arguedthatin a numberofNew Guinea
societiesmale homosexualrelationsare partofthesame system
of affinaltransactionsas sister-exchange
marriage.Sexual relationsbetweenmen and women and betweenmen and boys
createa dominanceorderbased on age and genderjust as they
create equality and reciprocityamong the maturemen who
inseminateboth women and boys. Systemscombiningbrideservicemarriageand male homosexuality
contrastwithbridewealth marriagesystems,in which genderideologyfocuses
on the leadershipand prestigeof big-menratherthan on the
growingofall menfromboys.Bridewealthmarriageobjectifies
"women's psychicenergies"in wealth objects and createsa
dominanceorderthat goes beyondage and genderto distinguisha few men as higherthan the rest.
Lindenbaum'stypologyofNew Guinea societiesdrewon the
regionalcontrastproposedin otherconference
papers:thelowlands and easternhighlandsvs. the centraland westernhighlands. In lowlandsbride-service
societies,she suggested,gender
ideologiesfocuson male reproduction
and the transmission
of
semen,mystifying
women'sreproductive
labor; in centraland
westernhighlandsbridewealthsocieties,genderideologiesemphasizemale productionof wealthin systemsofexchangeand
prestige,thusmystifying
women'sproductivelabor.These two
regions,however, were viewed by Lindenbaum as linked
throughan ongoing historicalprocess, the highlands type
spreadingat the expense of the lowlands type. The eastern
highlands,whereherown fieldworkwas based, seemedto her
a zone of transition,and she describeda dramaticchangein
rituallifein this area-from a lowlands typeto a highlands
type-followingrapidlyupontheadoptionofbridewealthmarriage and moreintensivepig production.
Marriage may also be centralto an understandingof the
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connections between gender and class inequalities. Smith's paper, for example, showed the key role played by the system of
intraracial, intraclass marriage and interracial, interclass consensual unions in shaping relations between men and women
both of the same class and of differentclasses. His paper also
illustrated, as Stolcke noted, the mixture of rebellion and acceptance with which women approach marriage in such a raceand class-stratifiedsystem, their desire to have whiter children
by taking white lovers being both rebellion against their position in the hierarchy and acceptance of the terms of that
hierarchy.
Historical transformations.A number of papers adopted a
historical perspective to illuminate the organization of gender
in a social system. Comaroff noted that the advantage of a
historical approach lies in its capacity to elicit the specific character of gender dynamics in any period without reifyingthese
dynamics as a closed system capable only of reproducing itself.
In his presentation on the Tswana, he described the internal
logic of kinship and power in the precapitalist period and its
transformationwith capitalist expansion into the area and traced
the historically specific meanings of agnation and matrilateral
kinship in these differentperiods. Agnation was the idiom of
the competitive rivalry of "equals," while matrilateral kin were
spoken of as supportive, complementary "clients." Because
people were related through multiple genealogical connections,
those interested in building their own power could do so by
trying to change agnates into matrilateral kin. The tension
between hierarchical and egalitarian forms allowed the development of several kinds of systems in differentareas. Highly
centralized chiefdoms were formed and tried to consolidate
theirascendancy by changing the rules of marriage and kinship.
In one period of decentralization, however, the system was
changed more radically through peasantization, resultingin an
agrarian capitalism in which agnation came to represent intraclass relations and matrilateralityinterclass relations. Thus
"male" and "female" ties of kinship acquired a new set of
meanings in a new context of power relations.
That a historical approach also prods us to expand the
boundaries of "social systems," the better to understand the
forcesacting to change them, was demonstrated by Jack Goody
in his presentation on the transformationof kinship and marriage in Europe under the influenceof the church. In the period
with which he is concerned, the 4th through 6th centuries A.D.,
the field of the church was Western Europe, and hence this
broad unit is appropriate for an analysis of church influence.
Goody's paper and presentation reflectedhis long-standing interest in the implications of differentforms of property transactions for marriage systems by looking at economic, political,
and religious influences on Western European patterns of family, kinship, and marriage. He showed how the church's interferencein the system of inheritance and marriage enabled
it to appropriate the wealth it required to build itself as an
institution. Close marriage, the levirate, and adoption were
discouraged as the church established new definitionsof legitimate marriage and inheritance making it possible for individuals to turn over property to the church itself for the
"accumulation of salvation." During this period, church models
of kinship, marriage, and the family were in conflictwith the
interests of both nobility and peasant proprietors; because of
the church's power, "lay" models survived only as "underground frames" emerging in places and periods in which resistance and rebellion were feasible.
Goody's presentation stimulated a productive interchange
on the interaction of the church, the state, and the class system
in shaping notions of marriage and familyin European society.
Maher suggested that for a later period of European history
positing church "imposition" of new marriage forms oversimplifies the situation: folk models may win out over church
models unless the church has a state ally. Rapp elaborated on
differencesin the relations between the church and the state

in differentperiods. In the period to which Goody's presentation was addressed, the church was the most powerful institution. Later, state and church struggled forpower; the state
eventually achieved dominance, and the church was reduced
to a kind of "multinational corporation." An example of the
subtle interaction of church, state, and class interestswas provided by Smith's discussion of West Indian society, which in
an early period was a "churchless outpost of European society."
Concubinage between white men and slave and colored women
developed freely in this period without religious opposition;
even when the church became stronger, it viewed the dual
system with some ambivalence, encouraging marriage but depending upon the race and class privilege that underlay the
persistence of concubinage alongside it. After national independence, the system took on a more complex form involving
notions of "inner" versus "outer" marriages and men's need to
form unions with a variety of women.
Boon suggested that anthropological studies of kinship would
do well to examine the complex interplayof economic, political,
and religious influences in creating notions of "legitimacy." A
cultural analysis of "marriage" and "family,"forexample, would
be incomplete at best without an analysis of "adultery." Rapp's
paper also spoke to this issue, showing how ideologies of "legitimate" family forms are used to justify other forms of social
hierarchy, for example, race and class privilege. The terms
people use to identifyfamily forms convey normative claims;
thus "single mother" gives positive value to an experience denigrated by the label "broken family." Because of these normative claims men and women continue to hold onto dominant
ideologies of the family even as they change their application
of these ideologies in everyday life. In her study of migrants
from a French village, Rapp discovered that women who had
moved to cities spoke of a reassuring continuity between kinship in the village and kinship in town. In their view, in each
case nuclear-familycores were similarly extended by networks
of sex-segregated sociability. In fact the common village pattern
of reliance on mothers, sisters, and aunts had been replaced
for migrants by reliance on siblings and mothers-in-law. Old
notions of kinship had been appropriated to new ends.
Complementing Rapp's point about the use of an ideology
of "the family" to legitimate broader social hierarchies, Yanagisako's paper suggested that the symbolic power of both
ideologies of the family and ideologies of the state is reinforced
by homologies between gender opposition and state-familyopposition. The transformationin Japanese American notions of
gender domains she described parallels a change in theirmodels
of the domain of the familyin society. First-generationJapanese
Americans, educated in the public schools of the nascent Japanese state, hold a socio-spatial model of women encompassed
by ("inside") male authoritythat parallels a model of households
encompassed by state authority. Their American-born children, educated between the two world wars in the advanced
industrial-capitalistsociety of the United States, adhere instead
to a labor-specialization model in which "work" and "family"
provide the core metaphor of opposition that makes sense of
both the separation of productive activity from the household
and the differentorientations and relations of men and women.
Area concerns. The changing discourse on "domesticity" in
the Euro-American tradition provided rich material for a discussion of the interrelationship between the state, religious
institutions,and class interestsin shaping gender ideology and
organization. Although area-focused discussion was only a secondary concern of the conference, it contributed to conference
goals by situating theoretical issues. Other than the EuroAmerican discussion, the most prominent area concern was the
relationship between descent and gender in New Guinea, to
which five papers (Feil, Lindenbaum, Strathern, Weiner,
Whitehead) were at least partly devoted.
New Guinea has been of exceptional interest to feminist
anthropologists because of the striking elaboration of gender

Vol. 24 * No. 4 * August-October 1983

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515

in a numberof societiesand the perceptionthat themesof

genderoppositionand hierarchy
are bothfamiliarand different
about the
amongthesesocieties.As thelocus of a controversy
ofdescent,New Guinea also invitesan analysisof
significance
therelationbetweendescentand gender.The commonconcern
of the fivepapers was to leave behind simplestereotypesof
"patrilinealdescent"or "sex antagonism"in New Guinea by
in therelationshipbetweengenderand
focusingon differences
kinshipin particularsocieties.A focus on regionalvariation
withinNew Guinea seemeda mostfruitful
way ofuncovering
thedistinctive
dynamicsofspecificsystems,especiallybecause,
in contrastto the situationin Europe, materialon historical
transformations
is here difficult
to obtain and of littledepth.
Participantsgenerallyagreed that groupsof the centraland
westernhighlandscould be distinguishedfromlowland and
easternhighlandsocietiesand thatthedifference
is seen strikinglyin the elaborationof ceremonialexchangeand big-man
prestigesystemsin the formerand the emphasison male cult
activityin the latter.
Two lessonsmay be usefullydrawn fromthe New Guinea
discussionand generalizedto the studyof kinshipand gender
in all societies.First,we mustnot assume thatlabels such as
"patrilinealdescent"describesocietiesin whichdescent,marriage,exchange,prestige,and genderare interrelated
in such
a way as to constitutea singlekind of social system.Second,
we mustnot assume thatgenderhas the same social meaning
and structural
rolein all societiesand therefore
constructs
"men"
and "women" who are the same kinds of actors in kinship
relationseverywhere.
Summary. Feministanthropologists
began theirinvestigationof genderconstructsand hierarchiesby combingethnographies for informationon "the position of women." Such
information
was generallyfoundin chapterson kinship,marriage, and the family,and received perspectiveson kinship
therefore
seemed appropriatetools forthe analysisof gender.
A closerexaminationof genderorganization,however,has led
us to reexaminelinkages between genderand kinshiponce
thoughtto be universal.In particular,this conferencequestioned the universalityof the domestic/politico-jural
domain
distinction
and thecross-cultural
ofdescentcatcomparability
egoriessuch as "patrilineality."

EthnographicAtlas ofIfugao: Implications forTheories of Agricultural

Evolutionin SoutheastAsia'
byMICHAEL R. DOVE
TheRockefeller
Foundation,P.O. Box 63, Yogyakarta,
D. I. Y,
Indonesia. 17 II 83

The Ifugao are a tribal people, numbering slightlyover 100,000

(as of 1970), who inhabit the upland interior of north-central
Luzon, the Philippines. Since firstcontacted by outsiders (the
Spanish) in the late 16th century,they have been renowned for
their spectacular irrigated mountain rice terraces. There are
approximately 20,000 km of these terraces, 7,000 km of which
are built of stone, and they date back at least 400 years. They
are currentlythe subject of an atlas prepared by the Yale University anthropologist Harold C. Conklin (1980).
Conklin says (p. 1) that he began the Ethnographic Atlas of
Ifugao in an attempt to address the following questions: "How
have these [irrigated terraces] and similar tropical upland agI'? 1983 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, all rights reserved 0011-3204/83/2404-0006$1.00. An earlier
version appeared in Indonesian in Prisma (Jakarta), the publishers of
which have given their permission for reprintinghere.

516

In reconceptualizing
"kinship"as an analyticaltool,conferenceparticipantsalso raisedprovocativequestionsabout "gender" as a principleof social organization.Conferencepapers
and discussionsdemonstratedthat we mustsituategenderin
historically
specificsocial and culturalsystemsbeforewe can
assess itssignificance
and thecharacterofitsrelationshipwith
kinship.Rather than diminishingthe importanceof gender
studies,this approach highlightsthe ways in which feminist
perspectiveson gendermust be incorporatedinto anthropological analysisof culture,stratification,
and history.
The conferencepapers will be publishedin a volumeedited
by JaneCollierand Sylvia Yanagisako. The collectionwill be
dedicatedto thelateMichelleRosaldo, whosepioneeringscholarshipand personaldedicationto the anthropological
studyof
genderwere rememberedthroughoutthe conference.

ReferencesCited
M. 1958. "Introduction," in The developmental cycle in domestic groups. Edited by Jack Goody, pp. 1-14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1969. Kinship and the social order. Chicago: Aldine.
FRIEDL,
E. 1975. Women and men: An anthropologist's view. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
MACCORMACK,
C., and M. STRATHERN. 1980. Nature, culture, and
gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ORTNER, S. 1974. "Is female to male as nature is to culture?" in Woman,
culture, and society. Edited by M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, pp.
67-88. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
ORTNER, S., and H. WHITEHEAD.
1981. Sexual meanings. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
REITER, R. 1975. "Men and women in the South of France: Public
and private domains," in Toward an anthropology of women. Edited
by R. Reiter, pp. 252-82. New York: Monthly Review Press.
ROSALDO, M. 1974. "Woman, culture, and society: A theoretical overview," in Woman, culture, and society. Edited by M. Rosaldo and
L. Lamphere, pp. 17-42. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
SCHLEGEL, A. 1972. Male dominance andfemale autonomy: Domestic
authority in matrilineal societies. New Haven: Human Relations
Area Press.
SMITH, RAYMOND T. 1956. The Negrofamily in British Guiana. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
FORTES,

ricultural systems developed? What are their long-termeffects

on soils, terrain, vegetation, and animal life as well as on
human activities?" Thus the Atlas complements Conklin's earlier work (1955, 1957) on another Philippine group, the Hanun6o, in which he made a major contribution to the study of
systems of unirrigated, swidden agriculture, by making an
equally major contribution to the study of systems of irrigated
agriculture. It merits an in-depth review both forits theoretical
interest-what it has to say about how such systems evolve
and for its perhaps unique combination of ethnographic, photographic, and cartographic analysis.
The Atlas (measuring 41 x 47 cm) consists of a 40,000-word
text, 184 black-and-white photos, and 57 colored map-plates.
It was put together over the 18-year period from 1961 to 1979.
It is based on a total of over 1,000 aerial photographs of a 96km2 area in the north-central Ifugao region. Conklin interpreted and checked these data during a total of 38 months of
fieldworkin the region, supplemented by archival research (in
cartographic and photographic archives) in the Philippines,
Spain, and the United States.
The book is divided into two main sections. The firstis an
illustrated essay on Ifugao life, with subsections entitled "Introduction," "Land and Society," "The Agricultural Year," and
"Interpretation."The text, which dwells most on the technology
and ecology of the irrigated rice terraces, is keyed by number
to the photographs, whose number, technical quality, inforCURRENT

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ANTHROPOLOGY