W. Shapiro Asymmetric marriage in Australia and Southeast Asia In ...

W. Shapiro Asymmetric marriage in Australia and Southeast Asia In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 125 (1969), no: 1, Leiden, 71-79

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ASYMMETRIC MARRIAGE IN AUSTRALIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

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here seems to be two main approaches in the study of positive marriage systems: one of these is concerned with connubial relationships between descent groups, the other with the structure of cultural categories. A recent paper by Maybury-Lewis provides a particularly concise definition of matrilateral marriage seen from this latter standpoint: In such a system Ego's conceptual universe is divided into three parts. There

are groups like Ego's and two classes of group unlike Ego's. These two "unlike" classes are defined in terms of each other as opposites. Ego's wife must be subsumed under a certain category of one "unlike" class in the model. Let us call that Class TJV Let the other "unlike" class be U 2 - If the descent groups in this society are patrilineal, then certain marriages, either Ego's or that of previous men in his group, will bring certain other groups into a XJ1 relationship with Ego's group. Ego's group will be U 2 to such other groups. Such a model may be described in terms of a unilateral passage of women from U x groups to groups like Ego's to TJ2 groups (Maybury-Lewis 1965:224-25).

Systems of this kind are apparently common in Southeast Asia, the best-known case being Kachin (Leach 1954, 1961: 28-53, 81-90). Most Australian systems, on the other hand, are clearly of a different sort, though in three fairly well documented cases there are certain resemblances to this pattern. Thus the controversial "Murngin" system, for example, has been analyzed by Leach (1961: 68-72), Berndt (1955) and others as basically similar to Kachin and divergent from other Australian systems. It will be argued below that, on the contrary, the Murngin, Karadjeri, and Yir-Yoront systems are structurally dissimilar to Kachin, do not fit Maybury-Lewis' model, and, as Radcliffe-Brown (1951) believed, offer only variations of typically Australian patterns of social organization. My sources of information on the Karadjeri and Yir-Yoront are the published materials on these societies; these materials will be cited in the appropriate contexts. In the case of the Murngin 1 I draw 1

I use the term "Murngin" in this paper because it has become standard in the literature. It should be pointed out, however, that the aborigines of northeast Arnhem Land have no ethnic name for themselves.

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upon my own field materials,2 though for comparative purposes occasional reference will be made to the work of other investigators. * * * *

First, I shall translate Maybury-Lewis' definition into a more familiar, though admittedly less logically elegant, form: FZHF FZH

FZS(ZH)

FF

F/FZ Ego/Z

MF M/MB(WF) MBD(W)

L

The three vertical sequences correspond, of course, to Maybury-Lewis' three classes and are so designated (with the addition of "L" for Ego's class); arrows indicate the "direction" in which women go in marriage. This mode of representation has the advantage of comparability with most previous theoretical contributions and with the majority of existing ethnographic statements of relationship terminologies. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that in such a system Ego need not marry his genealogical MBD and that the meaning of, say, the category labelled "MB" is not "mother's brother". Now many Southeast Asian systems do not seem to be quite this simple. Thus the relationship terminology of the Jinghpaw Kachin contains five patri-sequences, though apparently not for sociological reasons (Leach 1961: 41, 46-47), while among certain Chin tribes the wife-givers of one's wife-givers cannot also be one's wife-givers, though analysis of the relationship terminology has in this case been too rudimentary to determine whether this is reflected in the cultural sphere (Lehman 1963: 130, 137-39). But these considerations need not concern us here; for present purposes it is sufficient to note that systems of this area have been analyzed as if they contain only three patri-sequences. 2

I carried out fieldwork in northeast Arnhem Land from November 1965 to September 1966, and then from May to November, 1967. The first period was spent more or less entirely on the Methodist Mission Station on Elcho Island, just off the Australian mainland, the second partially on the Mission Station but also on four aboriginal camps on the mainland and nearby islands. My research was financed by a grant from the Research School of Pacific Studies of The Australian National University.

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It may well be that no matter how many they contain, the three represented above are of greatest sociological importance.3 We may now compare the relationship terminologies of the Karadj eri, Murngin, and Yir-Yoront with the foregoing model. Fig. 1 is an adaptation of the Yir-Yoront system, as reported by Sharp (1934: 413).

FZDHFF FZDHF FZDH

FZHF FZH FZS(ZH)

FF F/FZ Ego/Z •

MF M/MB(WF) MBD(W)

MM/MMB MMBD(WM) MMBSD(WBW)

Fig. 1. Patri-sequences in the Yir-Yoront and Murngin relationship terminologies. (Arrows indicate wife-takers in a dyad.)

The Murngin system is somewhat more difficult to represent because it contains certain terms which have an entirely matrilineal significance (Shapiro 1967a). But if these terms are excluded, as indeed they should be in a diagram of patri-sequences, this system is identical with YirYoront and thus does not require a further representation. The Karadjeri terminology, as analyzed by Elkin (1964: 69), is represented in abbreviated form by Fig. 2.

FF

MF

MB

F/FZ

M/MB(WF)

MF

Ego/Z

MBD(W)

FZHF


Fig. 2. Patri-sequences in the Karadjeri relationship terminology. (Note the incomplete separation of the "FZHF" and "MF" sequences.)

As Lane (1960: 291) has noted, this system has certain Kariera features; those that can be seen in Fig. 2 are the lack of categorical separation of MF and FZS, and of MB and FZH. Lane (1960: 291-92), following Elkin's first Karadjeri analysis (1932: 299), sees the -terminology as containing three patri-sequences, though more recently Elkin (1964: 69, 82-84) has shown that a fourth sequence is distinguished, if only in rudimentary form. It seems likely that the Karadjeri system represents a roughly intermediary stage in a transition from a Kariera pattern I am indebted to Dr. Donald Tugby for this suggestion.

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to the more developed form of Australian asymmetric terminology represented by Yir-Yoront and Murngin.4 It will be seen from the foregoing that, while the Southeast Asian model is not violated by the Australian terminologies, it is nonetheless inadequate to represent their common properties. Rather, the common denominator of the Australian matrilateral marriage systems must be represented by something like the following: FZHF

FF

MF

FZH

FZS(ZH)

F/FZ Ego/Z

M/MB(WF) MBD(W)


Un

L

U,

U,

These systems, in other words, distinguish not two but three "unlike" classes and thus consist of (at least) four, not three, patri-sequences. How is this to be explained? Is it simply a culture-historical fact, as with the five Kachin patri-sequences, or does it stem from more basic elements in the structure of these societies ? Two such elements suggest themselves. First, moieties are present in all three of the social organizations under consideration (Piddington & Piddington 1932: 347; Sharp 1934: 421; Shapiro 1967b); it may be thought that moiety organization requires an even number of units and in an asymmetric system a minimum of four of these. It was considerations of this kind that seem to have led Leach (1961: 70-72) to conclude that the Murngin relationship terminology, viewed ontogenically, can be regarded as being composed of four patri-sequences. The basic difficulty in this view is, I think, a failure to distinguish between patrilineal descent groups and patri-sequences in a relationship terminology; the history of the "Murngin Controversy", it will be recalled, abounds with this error (see esp. Lawrence & Murdock 1949; Radcliffe-Brown 1951). Actually, the existence of only three patrisequences in no way implies that the society in question is grouped into but three patri-sibs, and we do in fact have cases of a triadicallystructured terminology associated with moiety organization and asymmetric marriage (see e.g. Gifford 1916; Maybury-Lewis 1956, 1965: 222-23). Further, we have already seen that the Murngin and Yir4

An earlier stage in this process would seem to be embodied by the relationship terminology of the Forrest River tribes (Elkin 1932:306-07; Kaberry 1935: 421-22). Here, however, there is only one "cross-cousin" category; hence the marriage system cannot, in the present context, be regarded as asymmetric.


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Yoront systems have not simply four patri-sequences but five, i.e., an odd number. It seems plain, therefore, that there is no necessary connection between moiety organization and the number of patrisequences recognized in a relationship terminology. A more satisfactory explanation is suggested by an examination of the composition of the U 3 patri-sequence, particularly in relation to the distinctive features of jural authority in Australian societies. In the Southeast Asian systems it seems invariably to be the case that a girl's marital destiny is controlled solely by her agnates, hence that the Ui sequence represents, for a male Ego, both his wife and those who bestow her upon him. But this is not so in the Australian systems. Thus Elkin (1932: 304-05) reports that among the Karadjeri ... in arranging a marriage, the chief consideration is to find a mother-in-law in a horde which is not closely bound to the suitor's horde by blood ties or by nearness of locality... And even though a man marries his own mother's brother's daughter.:., he only does so if mother's brother's wife satisfies these conditions.

Further, . . . choosing the mother-in-law from a distant horde binds one's own horde to hers, that is, to the wife's mother's brother's. Gifts are exchanged between the two, and when opportunity offers, the bridegroom arranges for the marriage of his sister's daughter to his wife's mother's brother, thus being himself a link between the latter's horde and the horde of his sister's husband and their children (Elkin 1932:333).

For the Yir-Yoront, we have the following remarks from Sharp (1934: 417-18): Not only does Ego feel an obligation to the fathers and brothers of his wife, but he has the same feeling for the wife's mother a n d . . . the wife's mother's brother...; and he also feels himself subordinated to mother's mother and her brother, this last being his wife's mother's father... The native states explicitly, "I get my wife from that mother's mother's brother's group; I avoid them, give them presents, and take care of them when they are old." A woman usually selects a husband for her daughters by arrangement with one of the sisters of her own husband... (Sharp 1934:427).

Among both the Karadjeri and Yir-Yoront, then, a girl's marital destiny is at least partially in the hands of individuals of her mother's patriline (see also Hiatt 1968 on the Karadjeri). A more explicit statement of this sort of jural authority comes from Hiatt's study of the symmetrically-marrying Gidjingali of north-central Arnhem Land: A man's right to marry certain women was defined by specifying the kinship category and patrilineal groups of their mothers. The patrilineal group affiliations

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of the potential brides were irrelevant (Hiatt 1965:38). A woman and her brothers had a joint right to bestow her daughters in marriage (ibid: 41). A father did not share the right to give his daughter. He often tried to influence his wife, but she was not obliged to heed him. The Gidjingali said that on this occasion 'the father is nothing' {ibid: 44).

A recent examination of the Australian literature by Hiatt (1968) reveals several other cases of this kind. Marriage arrangements in northeast Arnhem Land are rather different. In the Murngin system, in its traditional form, a woman is first bestowed as a mother-in-law and only derivatively as a wife. This is ideally done by individuals of her matriline — her mother, MB, MM, and MMB, though there is also a strong feeling that her father has a right to bestow her as a mother-in-law, particularly if he is in the "MMB" category with respect to the suitor and a member of the patrilineal group of the latter's MM.5 The bestowal usually takes place while the girl is still a child; later, when she marries and bears children, the promised son-in-law has exclusive claim to ail her daughters. This man is, by the native model, in the "ZS" category with respect to her husband — more particularly, the latter's actual sister's son —, but a man does not have a right to bestow his daughters as wives; 6 indeed, they are already so bestowed long before their birth and before he marries their mother. This may be compared with the ideal bestowal procedure of the symmetrically-marrying Tiwi of Melville Island (Goodale 1962: 454); this procedure comes into effect . . . during the five-day period in which a girl is isolated in the bush at the time of her first menstrual period. Although she has been living with her first husband, she is separated from him at this time. When she again returns to her husband's camp, she is not only considered to have reached the status of a woman but also that of a mother-in-law. While she is in the bush, her father places a spear between her legs as she sleeps and then presents it to a boy or man whom he selects to serve his daughter as a son-in-law. The spear is regarded... as a symbol of a bestowed wife yet to be born to his young mother-in-law. By accepting the spear, the son-in-law becomes obligated to his mother-in-law; from that moment on he must supply her with food and goods and such services as she may request at any time. In return, she is held solely responsible for seeing that her

5

6

After my first period of fieldwork I believed that this latter form is the ideal bestowal and published to this effect (Shapiro 1967a; 1967b :463n). I am aware that this statement runs counter to certain remarks in the Murngin literature (e.g. Warner 1958:480-81; Berndt 1965: 82-84); I shall deal with these divergent findings elsewhere. The present brief discussion is not intended as a comprehensive treatment of jural authority in northeast Arnhem Land.


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first daughter is sent to his camp when she reaches the wifely age of eight or ten. After receiving the first daughter, the son-in-law is expected to continue his services to his wife's mother, in return for which he can expect to.receive other daughters subsequently born to her. The initial contract continues until either the son-in-law or mother-in-law dies.

It can be seen, then, that the existence of the U 3 patri-sequence in Australian asymmetric terminologies is rendered sociologically intelligible in terms of the importance in marriage arrangements of the wife's mother and her agnates — as agents of jural authority and, in the case of the Murngin mother-in-law, as the primary object of bestowal. Further, it has been shown that similar patterns of bestowal and jural authority occur in symmetric systems in Australia. These arrangements seem, however, to be unknown in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. * * * •

In the foregoing discussion, my focus has been on' patri-sequences in relationship terminologies. Obviously, the comparison can be pushed considerably further. In the Murngin case, at least, there are other ways of looking at the relationship system, and there are other schemes of social classification. Further, the general properties of Australian terminologies are in many ways radically different from those of Kachintype systems; thus, to take but one example, it is well-known that Australian relationship systems are unbounded in terms of the universe of individuals to which they apply, whereas Kachin and related systems seem to cover a more' restricted field. But these considerations are outside the scope of the present paper.7 Here I have attempted only to meet Maybury-Lewis — and Rodney Needham as well — on their own terms. In so doing, I believe I have shown something of the essential unity of Australian societies, and the invalidity of Needham's oft-repeated assertion (see esp. Needham 1962: 172-80) that matrilateral prescription is in itself sufficient to mark off a distinctive kind of social organization. The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

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As is the obvious relevance of the foregoing to a debate begun a few years ago by a paper by Barbara Lane (1961).

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REFERENCES Berndt, R. M. 1955 " 'Murngin' (Wulamba) social organization," American Anthropologist 57, 84-106. 1965 "Marriage and the family in north-eastern Arnhem Land," in Comparative family systems, M. F. Nimkoff, ed., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, pp. 77-104. Elkin, A. P. 1932 "Social organization in the Kimberley Division, north-western Australia," Oceania 2, 296-333. 1964 The Australian Aborigines, Garden City, Doubleday. Gifford, E. W. 1916 "Miwok moieties," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 12, 139-94. Goodale, Jane C. 1962 "Marriage contracts among the Tiwi," Ethnology 1, 452-66. Hiatt, L. R. 1965 Kinship and conflict: a study of an Aboriginal community in northern Arnhem Land, Canberra, The Australian National University Press. 1968 "Authority and reciprocity in Australian Aboriginal marriage arrangements," Mankind, forthcoming. Kaberry, P. M. 1935 "The Forrest River and Lyne River tribes of north-west Australia," Oceania 5, 408-36. Lane, Barbara S. 1960 "Varieties of cross-cousin marriage and incest taboos," in Essays in the science of culture, Gertrude E. Dole and Robert L. Carneiro, eds., New York, Holt. 1961 "Structural contrasts between symmetric and asymmetric marriage systems: a fallacy," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17, 49-55. Lawrence, W. E., and G. P. Murdock 1949 "Murngin social organization," American Anthropologist 51, 58-65. Leach, E. R. 1954 Political systems of highland Burma: a study of Kachin social structure, Boston, Beacon Press. 1961 Rethinking anthropology, London, Athlone. Lehman, F. K. 1963 The structure of Chin society, Urbana, University of Illinois Press. Maybury-Lewis, David 1956 "Kinship and social organization in Central Brazil," Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists 32, 123-35. 1965 "Prescriptive marriage systems," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21, 207-30. / Needham, Rodney 1962 "Notes on comparative method and prescriptive alliance," Bijdragen tot de Tool-, Land- en Volkenkunde 118, 160-82.


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Piddington, Marjorie, and Ralph Piddington 1932 "Report on field work in north-western Australia," Oceania 2, 342-58. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1951 "Murngin social organization," American Anthropologist 53, 37-55. Shapiro, Warren 1967a "Preliminary report on fieldwork in north-eastern Arnhem Land," American Anthropologist 69, forthcoming. 1967b "Relational affiliation in 'unilinear descent systems," Man 2, 461-63. Sharp, Lauriston 1934 "The social organization of the Yir-Yoront tribe, Cape York Peninsula," Oceania 4, 404-31. Warner, W. Lloyd 1958 A Black civilization: a social study of an Australian tribe, revised edition, New York, Harper.