Kinship and
Social Organisation

By
W. H. R. RIVERS, M.D., F.R.S.,
Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge

LONDON
CONSTABLE & CO LTD
1914

CONTENTS

PREFACE.

These lectures were delivered at the London School of Economics in May of the present year. They are largely based on experience gained in the work of the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Melanesia of 1908, and give a simplified record of social conditions which will be described in detail in the full account of the work of that expedition.

A few small additions and modifications have been made since the lectures were given, some of these being due to suggestions made by Professor Westermarck and Dr. Malinowski in the discussions which followed the lectures. I am also indebted to Miss B. Freire-Marreco for allowing me to refer to unpublished material collected during her recent work among the Pueblo Indians of North America.

W. H. R. Rivers.

St. John’s College,
Cambridge.
November 19th, 1913.

KINSHIP AND SOCIAL
ORGANISATION

LECTURE I

The aim of these lectures is to demonstrate the close connection which exists between methods of denoting relationship or kinship and forms of social organisation, including those based on different varieties of the institution of marriage. In other words, my aim will be to show that the terminology of relationship has been rigorously determined by social conditions and that, if this position has been established and accepted, systems of relationship furnish us with a most valuable instrument in studying the history of social institutions.

In the controversy of the present and of recent times, it is the special mode of denoting relationship known as the classificatory system which has formed the chief subject of discussion. It is in connection with this system that there have arisen the various vexed questions which have so excited the interest—I might almost say the passions—of sociologists during the last quarter of a century.

I am afraid it would be dangerous to assume your familiarity with this system, and I must therefore begin with a brief description of its main characters. The essential feature of the classificatory system, that to which it owes its name, is the application of its terms, not to single individual persons, but to classes of relatives which may often be very large. Objections have been made to the use of the term “classificatory” on the ground that our own terms of relationship also apply to classes of persons; the term “brother,” for instance, to all the male children of the same father and mother, the term “uncle” to all the brothers of the father and mother as well as to the husband of an aunt, while the term “cousin” may denote a still larger class. It is, of course, true that many of our own terms of relationship apply to classes of persons, but in the systems to which the word “classificatory” is usually applied, the classificatory principle applies far more widely, and in some cases even, more logically and consistently. In the most complete form of the classificatory system there is not one single term of relationship the use of which tells us that reference is being made to one person and to one person only, whereas in our own system there are six such terms, viz., husband, wife, father, mother, father-in-law and mother-in-law. In those systems in which the classificatory principle is carried to its extreme degree every term is applied to a class of persons. The term “father,” for instance, is applied to all those whom the father would call brother, and to all the husbands of those whom the mother calls sister, both brother and sister being used in a far wider sense than among ourselves. In some forms of the classificatory system the term “father” is also used for all those whom the mother would call brother, and for all the husbands of those whom the father would call sister, and in other systems the application of the term may be still more extensive. Similarly, the term used for the wife may be applied to all those whom the wife would call sister and to the wives of all those whom the speaker calls brother, brother and sister again being used in a far wider sense than in our own language.

The classificatory system has many other features which mark it off more or less sharply from our own mode of denoting relationship, but I do not think it would be profitable to attempt a full description at this stage of our enquiry. As I have said, the object of these lectures is to show how the various features of the classificatory system have arisen out of, and can therefore be explained historically by, social facts. If you are not already acquainted with these features, you will learn to know them the more easily if at the same time you learn how they have come into existence.

I will begin with a brief history of the subject. So long as it was supposed that all the peoples of the world denoted relationship in the same way, namely, that which is customary among ourselves, there was no problem. There was no reason why the subject should have awakened any interest, and so far as I have been able to find, it is only since the discovery of the classificatory system of relationship that the problem now before us was ever raised. I imagine that, if students ever thought about the matter at all, it must have seemed obvious that the way in which they and the other known peoples of the world used terms of relationship was conditioned and determined by the social relations which the terms denoted.

The state of affairs became very different as soon as it was known that many peoples of the world use terms of relationship in a manner, and according to rules, so widely different from our own that they seem to belong to an altogether different order, a difference well illustrated by the confusion which is apt to arise when we use English words in the