KINSHIP, POWER AND WEALTH
I will end this overview with a few words about the relationship between kin ties, power(s) and wealth. In many societies, concluding a marriage alliance between two groups gives rise to transfers of wealth and services, sometimes even political and/or religious titles, between wife-givers and wife-takers. The young couple may receive a dowry from their respective families, or the groom’s family may pay bridewealth to the family of the bride, or, in the event that two women exchange brothers (as among the Rhades of Vietnam5 or the Tetum of Timor6), the woman’s family may pay the sisters of the future husband a ‘groomprice’. In short, the establishment of a matrimonial alliance is the occasion for transfers of wealth – in the form of cattle, jewellery, and sometimes land or titles – which give rights in persons and are often followed by counter-gifts in various proportions. Generally speaking, however, the greatest flow of wealth, functions, titles and crests, and knowledge, circulates between ascending and descending generations along certain kin ties and following rules that regulate the procedures of inheritance and succession.
Several remarks are called for here. All of these titles, these functions, this knowledge, this wealth, circulate in the form of gifts that always have a personal character because establishing new kinship relations or reproducing old ones always means entering into relationships that subsequently bind the individuals or the groups of individuals involved, even if the personal character of these bonds varies with the distance that separates the parties. These gifts are not simply a demonstration of generosity on the part of the givers, they are part of the obligations incumbent on them (and on the groups to which they belong) because they are or wish to become kin.
In short, once they have entered the universe of kinship, this wealth, this knowledge, these functions or titles, however they may have been acquired, circulate along relations of descent or alliance as gifts, unilateral gifts with no possible or expected reciprocation, or as gifts followed by counter-gifts, as reciprocal gifts. Which leads us to another important point. Generally speaking, the exchanges that occur within the domain of kinship and in the name of kinship do not come under the heading of commercial exchanges and do not obey market logic. This can give rise to idealization of kin ties in societies where the bulk of exchanges have become impersonal and are carried out through commercial relations. In contemporary Western societies, the relationship between money and kinship is ambiguous if not a subject of conflict. There are some relatives from whom you do not dare buy anything because they will never accept payment, and this creates a debt that is hard to live with. There are those who give you a good deal ‘because you’re a relative’. There are some who never give you a ‘break’ and whom you secretly reproach for treating you like a stranger, in other words like non-kin. These are relatives who do not feel ‘obligated’ to do something for you, even though you are a relative. For in all societies, kin ties, or at least the closest ties, are a source of obligations and debt – and are lived as such.
A few concluding remarks on the relationship between kin ties and political-religious powers, and with the production of the material conditions of existence and wealth. Because political and/or religious functions come into the possession of certain kin groups (family, lineage, household) and are transmitted to persons occupying a certain position within the kinship relations that structure these groups (from father to eldest or youngest son, from maternal uncle to nephew, etc.), the perpetuation of these groups – in other words the reproduction of the kinship relations that allow them to exist – is one of the major conditions for the reproduction of the political-religious system, which in turn enables the society to exist as a whole. It is important to remember here that, even though these functions reside within kin groups, this does not mean they are kinship relations. If we look at all of the functions and titles, which are always unequally distributed among kin groups – as is the case in Polynesian chiefdoms such as Tonga – we see that taken together they constitute a global system of political-religious relations obtaining between all local kin groups but which are not the same thing as the kinship relations that actually exist between these groups; on the contrary, the political-religious relations co-opt kinship relations and use them for their own reproduction.
It is the existence of this global system and the hierarchy between the various titles and functions that oblige or forbid various kin groups (household, clan, lineage) to contract a given type of alliance and that oblige men and women to marry within their status or to develop complex strategies to marry above their rank (in the hope of procuring a more elevated title). In such societies, certain kin groups (clans, houses) can disappear, others may lose their title, while yet others rise to a higher status; but these events merely change the place of the person within the system, they do not compromise its existence, quite the opposite.
Alongside ownership of titles and functions which are often not redistributed among all of the kin groups that make up a society but concern only a fraction of them (for example the eight Baruya clans that own the Kwaimatnie and cooperate in the initiation of the boys of all of the clans, including those that do not have sacred objects), there are other forms of property: horticultural lands, hunting or fishing grounds, tools and weapons. Owning these forms of property in combination with the labour and know-how of the members of the kin groups (and/or their dependents, clients, servants, slaves, etc.) enables these groups to produce the bulk (or a significant portion) of their material means of existence, in other words both their means of subsistence and the share of material wealth they need to exchange or redistribute on the occasion of weddings or funerals, or which will be offered to the gods, or paid as tribute to the chief or as taxes to the state.
In short, in many societies, kin groups are at the same time units of production, of redistribution, of consumption and of exchange of means of subsistence and wealth. Depending on the society – and I will give some examples below – land can be owned in common by a lineage while being redistributed for use by the families of the lineage, who work it separately. Sometimes each of these families keeps their harvest in their own silo, sometimes they gather their harvests into a common silo placed under the authority of the lineage elders, who set aside the portion to be used as seed the next year and then, each day, mete out to each family the amount it needs.7 In short, on the basis of the social division of labour between the sexes and generations, which is not itself part of kinship, the production and the redistribution of the means of subsistence and wealth are carried out by persons occupying different positions in the relations that structure their kin group.
The authority wielded over those involved in the work process or in the redistribution of subsistence goods or wealth is identical to that found in the kinship relations, which thus take on directly the functions of social relations organizing production. The redistribution and the consumption of the material conditions of existence in these contexts, and the material tasks necessary to the existence and the reproduction of the kin group, thus appear as obligations imposed on its members by their kin ties, as attributes of kinship relations. It is also an obligation connected with kinship that compels the elder men of a lineage to collect the bridewealth (pigs, bird-of-paradise feathers, money) that will enable one of their young men to marry when he comes of age. Once again, kinship appears as a universe of personal ties – ties of solidarity and sharing, but also of dependence and authority – between the individuals that comprise the group, not only those born to the group but also those who have entered it through adoption or marriage.
A remark is necessary concerning economic relations and functions as compared to political-religious functions and relations. The role of the economy and its connections with kinship relations are not the same in societies without castes or classes and in societies where these exist. In the first case, there is no, or only a limited, social division of labour. In the second case, in caste-based societies for example, everything that serves material reproduction (means of subsistence, wealth, services) is produced in these societies by different social groups, each