When Meyer Fortes felt the need to find a term to express the peculiar quality of relationships between kin, that which distinguishes them from other sorts of relationship, it appears to me significant that he should have chosen “amity.” He suggests this word as the succinct rendering of the “set of normative premises . . . focused upon a general and fundamental axiom which I call the axiom of prescriptive altruism.” He “ascribes it to the realm of moral values in contraposi-tion to the realm of jural values ordered to the politico-jural domain” though, he adds, “the actualities of kinship relations and kinship behavior are compounded of elements derived from both domains” (Fortes 1969: 251).
The word “amity” scarcely occurs earlier in his work, but it may be assumed that he did not choose it carelessly, for the concept is implicit in his thinking on
* “The kith and the kin” was first published in 1973 in the edited volume The character of kinship and is reproduced in this volume with permission from Cambridge University Press.
1. The Shorter OED glosses the phrase kith and kin as follows: “orig. Country and kinsfolk; in later use, acquaintance and kinsfolk: now often taken as pleonastic for kinsfolk, relatives.” The word “kith” we are told is obsolete or archaic except in this phrase, and we are also told that it is derived from a root that means “to know” and in later times it was occasionally confused with kin. How this confusion should have been able to occur is a matter on which it is hoped this essay will throw light. It will also be seen that Radcliffe-Brown’s gloss as “neighbor” is an oversimplification.
the subject of kinship long before it appears in print.2 I do not recall him using it in his lectures on the subject which I attended between 1948 and 1950 and my lecture notes (unsurprisingly perhaps) do not mention the word, but when I encountered it in 1970 I recognized that it was naming an idea with which I was already acquainted from his work. The axiom of prescriptive altruism is called into existence by the initial assumption that everyman, individually or in solidarity with a collectivity with which he identifies himself, seeks his own interest and advancement, be it directly or through the medium of reciprocity, immediate or deferred, direct or by some system of exchange as complex and circuitous as the Kula of the Trobriand Islanders and their neighbors. (This initial assumption is indeed a necessary condition for the formulation of the no-tion of reciprocity.) Where reciprocity is lacking it ceases to be true and an ex-planation of another order is required. This is provided by the counter-principle of “altruism,” prescribed for behavior between kin.
But why “amity”? The word is derived from the French word for friendship and it does not appear to contain any sense which is not covered by its Anglo-Saxon synonym. In view of this the choice looks curious, for friendship, far from being commonly regarded as the essence of kinship is usually opposed to it, as indeed it is in the same work by Fortes himself who refers, not only to the testimony of Goody and Malinowski (1969: 63), but of the Tallensi (ibid. 63) and the Ashanti (ibid. 192) who both possess, we are told, contrasting words for kinship and friendship. The terms appear to be exclusive to one another, not only in the case of the Tallensi and the Ashanti, but also in the view of many scholars (some of whom have even supposed, despite many examples to the contrary, including the “bond friends” of Tikopia (Firth 1967a, 1967b), that the concept of friendship is an invention of soi-disant “civilized society” which has abandoned kinship as an organizing principle). It appears, then, that Fortes has chosen to define the essence of kinship by appealing to the very concept of what it is not. To some “kinship scholars” this may look like selling the pass, but I shall argue that it offers the possibility of placing the notion of kinship in a wider framework and of escaping from the polemics concerning its relationship to physical reproduction. Indeed the necessity to do just this is evident when
2. He states that the concept was brought to his notice a dozen years earlier in the work of Peter Lawrence and he refers to the usage of the word “amity” by Burridge (1960) (Fortes 1970: 240). In fact, he had already referred to sacrifice as “both an expression and a pledge of mutual amity and dependence” (Fortes 1945: 98).
we approach the most perplexing kinship system in the annals of anthropology, that of the Eskimo, who appear to attach scant diacritical importance in their designation of their kinsmen to the facts of birth.3
Let me adopt what I believe to be, by implication rather than explicitly, Fortes’
(1969: 239–42) standpoint, and divide social relations first of all into those of amity or the contrary and then divide these (might one say it?) “amiable” rela-tions into kin and non-kin; it then becomes apparent that, despite the common opposition of the terms kinship and friendship, there is room for variants partak-ing in the properties of both, between the pole of kinship, inflexible, involuntary, immutable, established by birth and subject to the pressures of “the politico-jural domain” (in Fortes’ words) and the pole of friendship, pure and simple, which is its contrary in each of these ways. All these “amiable” relations imply a moral ob-ligation to feel—or at least to feign—sentiments which commit the individual to actions of altruism, to generosity. The moral obligation is to forego self-interest in favor of another, to sacrifice oneself for the sake of someone else.
A system of thought that takes the individual as its starting-point and as-sumes that he is motivated by self-interest, faces a difficulty in confronting the examples of behavior that is not so motivated and this difficulty has given rise in Western literature to theories of altruism, moral, religious, and psychologi-cal. We need not here go into them, for the majority of the world’s cultures do not share the individualism of the modern West and have no need to explain what appears to them evident: that the self is not the individual self alone, but includes, according to circumstances, those with whom the self is conceived as solidary, in the first place, his kin. Alter then means not “all other individuals”
but “all who are opposed to self, the non-amiable.” We have been told that in many simple societies relations with all who are not kin are necessarily hostile.
Whether we are right to believe this or not, there is no lack of examples, from equally simple societies, or institutions which create “artificial” ties of kinship on the basis of mutual agreement rather than of birth.4 Thus, if Fortes would make 3. “When a child was adopted at birth or soon afterwards it became, socially, a true child of its adoptive parents. The kinship terms used in this case were exactly the same as those of a consanguinal relationship” (d’Anglure 1967). As the author makes clear, to give a child in adoption was an alternative to infanticide.
4. This was part of Robertson Smith’s argument regarding blood-brotherhood which he believed demonstrated that kinship was originally the only effective form of social tie. See also Fortes (1969: 241).
kinship a category of amity, we must also observe, with him, that non-kin amity loves to masquerade as kinship. This leads us to the question: when is kinship artificial and when is it “true kinship”? The criterion of birth is hardly adequate everywhere, even for defining the relationship between mother and child as Smith’s study of Carriacou5 or the Eskimo, cited above, showed. From this also stems the difficulty of distinguishing analytically between the various forms of ritualized friendship and even non-ritualized friendship. The distinction be-tween blood-brotherhood and spiritual kinship or bond-friendship depends, if not simply on the whim of the ethnographer in his choice of terms, on the particular substance or technique employed in the rite initiating a pseudo-kin relationship. But given the various connotations of blood in different cultures this criterion is clearly inappropriate for setting up a general category of institu-tions. How many forms of what has been called “blood-brotherhood” employ both the concepts of “blood” and “brotherhood”?
Though kinship, the extension of self, cannot be reduced simply to the ties established through birth and marriage, nevertheless physical reproduction fur-nishes everywhere the model of such extensions, for if birth is not a sufficient criterion of filial status in all societies, at least there are none in which it is not the primordial mode of ascribing it. It is also the mode of linkage between kinsmen whichever links may be recognized. This is equally so in the case of affinity which looks to relations of co-filiation in the future, even where they do not yet exist, and even where this hope is not in fact rewarded, it is nonetheless by virtue of the hypothetical child of the marriage that affinal relationships are what they are within the structure of kinship. Moreover even though affines are 5. Smith (1962: 196, 234, 270). The difficulty of distinguishing is not confined to the criteria adopted for filiation. For example, in the highlands of Chiapas the term
“kermano” (my brother) is often found in use between fellow-members of the same township (sometimes also called “tribe”). The word is a Spanish loan from
“hermano” (brother) and this has led a number of anthropologists to argue that this usage of a kin term demonstrates the recognition of kinship to all members of the tribe. In fact kermano is not a kinship term but a pseudo-kinship term introduced by the monks who used it between themselves and no doubt thought it appropriate for use between members of the religious sodalities which are the backbone of the political government of the Indian communities. This becomes plain when we observe that the term kermano is applied without regard for relative seniority and that the first rule of Tzeltal and Tzotzil kinship distinguishes between elder brother and younger brother; there is no “true” kin category of brother undifferentiated as to age. Kermano is not merely a Spanish loan in contrast to the other terms of kinship which are Maya, it is not part of the kinship system at all.
by definition allied through marriage, if the marriage is sterile their relationship does not become fully effective, for their mutual roles hinge upon their relations to the offspring. My brother-in-law is above all my child’s mother’s brother or my sister’s child’s father in any society. For this reason, a sterile marriage, though it may figure in genealogies, is never considered in a kinship diagram. “The full significance of marriage alliance lies in the kinship it creates.” This remains true even though the act of sexual union is in itself a means of establishing ritual alliance, as we can see in the customs of sexual hospitality, wife exchange, or temple prostitution. Brothers-in-law who do not stand as father and mother’s brother to the same child, the two families who have married their children but have no grandchildren, are allied, but one is tempted to say ritually rather than structurally, for they will never become consanguineal kin of the same person.
Their relationship remains frozen at the point of departure, unproductive and immobile like the ties of ritual kinship.
The distinction between natural systems conceived by the scientist and sys-tems of thought devised in different cultures to explain the world of experience must always be made from the start and the latter, not the former, is where the principles of kinship are to be found, but if our explanation of them is to have general validity they must be common to all cultures. Children are everywhere thought to be of the same substance as their parents because they are produced by them; “like breeds like” in every system of thought. How it does so varies greatly, for the necessary conditions for physical reproduction may be inter-preted in many ways. Sometimes the blood is thought to be transmitted from parents to children as in our own culture. Elsewhere other bodily substances may be passed on. In lineally organized societies one may find that a different substance is thought to be acquired from either father or mother. nonetheless this principle of the likeness of those connected biologically provides always the most impelling manifestations of what I should like to call consubstantiality, the prime nexus between individuals for the extension of self. This is what kinship is “made of ” however the selective principles of the kinship system in question may order the classification of those who are connected in this way.
Louis Dumont (1971: 37) has opposed “a logic of substance” to “a struc-tural logic for which each relationship is what it is by virtue of its place in an ensemble.” The stress laid on the notion of substance in the concept I have devised to account for amity should not mislead the reader into thinking that my argument belongs to the former rather than the latter. The “substance” on which consubstantiality is founded is the notion of substance only, a notion as
far divorced from the physical scientist’s concept as that of Christian consub-stantiality. Indeed the consubstantial in religious thought is but one manifesta-tion of the universal nomanifesta-tion that possession of a common substance is the basis of a mystical bond. The very different doctrine of consubstantiation is another demonstration of the same principle.
Amity derives in the first place then from consubstantiality either through birth or through fostering: the ingestion of the mother’s milk. The strongest emphasis is given to foster-motherhood in the thought of the Eskimos where it is equated with birth as the pretext for the maternal bond, but the same notion is surely present, if in a weaker form, in those societies where fostering, though not equated with full motherhood, nevertheless creates between foster children a prohibition of incest. The Koran provides the best-known example6 but we can also point to the pervasiveness of the idea in the custom of sanctuary by which an enemy can render himself immune by touching the breast of his aggressor’s mother (Pitt-Rivers 1970).
Consubstantiality can also be established by the act of love. The idea is most explicit in Christian marriage which makes the spouses “of one flesh.” Con-versely an unconsummated marriage is not a marriage in the eyes of the Catholic Church and the Albigensian heretics who maintained the contrary gave their supposed founders, the Bulgarians, a bad name which is with us to this day.
Moreover, not only the mother’s husband but in many kinship systems her illicit lover is consubstantial with her and the child is recognized as the product of their consubstantiality. Thus the status of genitor may be recognized by people who entertain quite different notions of begetting (Fortes 1970: 96–7). By this principle a Trobriand father is consubstantial with his progeny via his union with its mother regardless of whatever theory of generation the anthropologists manage to attribute to that much-glossed people. Consubstantiality within the nuclear family is thus seen to be in no way dependent upon a “correct” theory of procreation. A curious example from our own culture might be cited to demon-strate the profound roots of the idea: it is often believed in the sporting world that a thoroughbred mare will be spoiled forever for breeding purposes if she is first mounted by an ill-bred stallion. Her subsequent foals will all bear the mark of this first unworthy consubstantiality. In the same spirit I am told that the Kennel Club used to refuse to register litters of a pure-bred bitch subsequent to a mongrel litter. A more mystical idea could scarcely enter the heads of persons 6. Ch IV (Sales’ translation).
concerned practically with breeding. Is it exaggerated to suggest that they have projected on to those animals which they so eagerly assimilate to the human kind the basic premise of all kinship systems? The same principle of consub-stantiality through sexual union can also be invoked to explain the prohibition of incest in relation to a woman with whom a man’s brother has had sexual relations in certain north American tribes, or, vice versa, the establishment of ritual kinship through wife exchange among the Eskimos, as also among the Chamars; among the Plains Indians, the use of the term “brother” between two men who have had intercourse with the same woman bears the same sense. In the first case the man’s paramour has become kin (and therefore inaccessible) to his brother; in the second, two men who were not previously related become pseudo-brothers through the same channel.
The initial tie of kinship can be modified7 or reproduced by acts of individual will. Consubstantiality can be established by other ways than by breeding as the example of blood brotherhood shows. The tie of amity can he formalized even without any demonstration of consubstantiality, but by a mystical analogy with parenthood, as in the compadrazgo. In brief, the reproduction of the tie of kinship appears to follow either the principle of consubstantiality or that of simulation. In the first instance the principle of consubstantiality can be invoked to explain all those forms of blood brotherhood, using the term in a loose sense, which are established through a rite involving direct exchange, as it were: the in-gestion of a bodily substance of the future brother. The rite commonly involves mixing the blood of the two participants before swallowing it and often mixing it with another liquid. But this is not the only way in which such rites can func-tion, for we also find the same bond established, indirectly as it were, through the ingestion together of a sacramental substance, solid or liquid, without any exchange of bodily substance. Thus blood, saliva, semen, milk, meat, fruit, vegeta-bles, or beer can make consubstantial those who are related through no womb, vagina or breast. Moreover, this same principle is to be found in relationships in
7. From my field notes I am able to provide an example of modification in a family of small tenant-farmers in Andalusia: a dominant mother married her son to the girl who came to work for them. The child born of this marriage was taught to call her grandmother “mama” and to call her mother by her Christian name (a practice totally unknown otherwise). In effect the grandmother usurped the status of parent and turned mother and child into siblings. This case was unique in my experience
7. From my field notes I am able to provide an example of modification in a family of small tenant-farmers in Andalusia: a dominant mother married her son to the girl who came to work for them. The child born of this marriage was taught to call her grandmother “mama” and to call her mother by her Christian name (a practice totally unknown otherwise). In effect the grandmother usurped the status of parent and turned mother and child into siblings. This case was unique in my experience