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Ann. Rev. AnthropoL 1982. 11:71-95
Copyright @ 1982 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
LINEAGE THEORY: A
CRITICAL RETROSPECT
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Adam Kuper
clans and local and political communities." He cited particularly the classi
cal studies of Maine, Fustel de Coulanges, Robertson Smith and Pederson
-"but I think that one of the first systematic field studies of a lineage
system was my own study of the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan,which
began in 1929. A more prolonged and detailed study was Professor Fortes'
investigation of the Tallensi of the Gold Coast, begun in 1934" ( 19, p. 10).
Meyer Fortes himself offered a different version. In Kinship and the Social
Order (26) he constructed a tradition dating back not only to Maine but
to Morgan, and developed by Rivers and Radcliff-Brown before Evans
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of how to handle the data of Nuer descent groups came from a conversation with
RadcliJfe-Brown in 1931 . ..I was present on this occasion. Evans-Pritchard was describ
ing his Nuer observations, whereupon Radcliffe-Brown said, as he stood in front of the
fireplace: "My dear Evans-Pritchard, it's perfectly simple, that's a segmentary lineage
system, and you'll find a very good account of it by a man called Gilford" (see 34).
Thereupon Radcliffe-Brown gave us a lecture on Gilford's analysis of the Tonga system
(27, p. viii).
There is some truth in all these versions, but I shall argue that the history
of the models is to be grasped not at the level of individual borrowing or
development but rather at a deeper level, at which revisions and criticisms
and even empirical applications appear as transformations of a single struc
ture.
The development of lineage theory can be divided conveniently into two
periods for purposes of exposition, the classical and modem, each marked
by three phases. The classical period was inaugurated by the publication of
the original models of Maine and Morgan. Almost at once these models
were modified by contemporaries, most notably perhaps McLennan. There
followed a third phase, in which hypotheses drawn from these models were
subjected to empirical testing on the basis of new ethnographic reports, a
phase associated particularly with Boas's students in the United States.
Then, when the classical models had finally been stripped of all their origi
nal pretensions and appeared to be no more than harmless survivals of an
earlier period of speculation, they were unexpectedly revived in a new guise
in the studies of the British Mricanists. This then initiated a new cycle of
elaboration and of ethnographic application and criticism.
Throughout these two periods the central issues remained remarkably
constant. First there was the question of the relationship between "blood"
and "soil," kinship (or descent) and territory. Second there was the relation
ship between the "family" on the one hand and the "clan" or "gens" or
LINEAGE THEORY 73
"sib" on the other. These two topics were related to each other, and they
were rooted in older questions about "nature" and "culture," "savagery"
and "civilization." The underlying issue was the constitution of the primi
tive polity and the implications for a civilized political order.
Sir Henry Sumner Maine published his Ancient Law in 1861. Looking back,
many years later, he recalled: "When I began . . . the background was
obscured and the route beyond a certain point obstructed by a priori theo
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ries based on the hypothesis of a law and state of Nature." In contrast, his
own view of early society was grounded in the evidence of Greek and
Roman authors, particularly the early records of Roman jurisprudence.
These led him to formulate the "Patriarchal theory," "the theory of the
origin of society in separate families, held together by the authority and
protection of the eldest valid male ascendant" (70, pp. 192-93) (Even
Homer's Cyclops had been organized in families: "every one exercises
jurisdiction over his wives and his children, and they pay no regard to one
another"!)
The next step in social evolution was the aggregation of families. When
the Patriarch died his sons and their families stayed together, forming the
basis of a broader polity. In this way extended ties of kinship became the
basis of societies. Only very much later did territorial attachment come to
rival blood ties as the basis for social organization.
The history of political ideas begins, in fact, with the assumption that kinship in blood
is the sole possible ground of community in political functions; nor is there any of those
subversions of feeling. which we term emphatically revolutions. so startling and so
complete as the change which is accomplished when some other principle-such as that,
for instance, of local contiguity-establishes itself for the first time as the basis of
common political action (69, p. 106).
promiscuity rather than family life, and that subsequent, more ordered
systems of procreation initially highlighted the mother/child bond and so
generated matriliny rather than patriliny. Patriliny would represent a later,
more sophisticated development, presupposing marriage and the recogni
tion of legal paternity.
Morgan's central thesis, however, echoed Maine.
. . . all forms of government are reducible to two general plans ... The first, in the order
of time, is founded upon persons, and upon relations purely personal, and may be
distinguished as a society (societas). The gens is the unit of this organization. . .. The
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second is founded upon territory and upon property, and may be distinguished as a state
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The initial developments of the model were of two main kinds. First, rival
theorists rearranged the elements in fresh patterns, to suggest alternative
lines of putative historical development.
Secondly, and more interestingly, the model was applied to classical
sources and to ethnographic reports from exotic societies. These drew
attention to specific
into the general models or given greater prominence. McLennan and Mor
gan stressed the necessity for exogamy in the clan or gens. In Morgan's
formulation the gens established itself in part as a biological mechanism.
"As intermarriage in the gens was prohibited, it withdrew its members from
the evils of consanguine marriages, and thus tended to increase the vigor
of the stock" (73, p. 69; cf p. 75). "Totemism," discovered in Australia, was
soon thought to be a common attribute of kin groups, perhaps even explain
ing kin group exogamy. Both these ideas owed much to the advocacy of
McLennan and the industry of Frazer. On the basis of classical sources,
Fustel de Coulanges (32) argued that it was ancestor worship that had led
to the enlargement of the patriarchal family into the ancient gens. (Fortes
was later to make much of these relationships, though in a functional rather
than an historical framework.) Robertson Smith applied McLennan's thesis
to ancient Semitic societies and emphasized the importance of the "blood
feud." "The key to all divisions and aggregations of Arab groups lies in the
action and reaction of two principles: that the only effective bond is a bond
LINEAGE THEORY 75
of blood, and that the purpose of society is to unite men for offence and
defence. These two principles meet in the law of the blood-feud. . . . " (80,
p. 56). (Evans-Pritchard was to develop this line of thought.)
Durkheim, in The Division of Labor in Society (first published in 1893),
tried to work out on first principles how a clan-based society might operate
in practice. He argued that the segments of such societies would recognize
their mutual similarity and be inspired by a sense of what he termed
"mechanical solidarity." Clan-based societies were, however, only a special
case of what he called segmental organization, societies based on repetitive
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The impression might thus be conveyed that the sib represents a wholly fictitious cate
gory corresponding to no one reality, that it is but a term, more useful in the scientist's
study, with its abstractionist inclinations, than realistic in connotation or univocal in
meaning.
'
Fortunately, it is not necessary to accept so extreme a conclusion. Whatever the
differences, clans and gentes, wherever found, have certain trru.ts in common. Among
these we can recognize the traits indicated in the definitions of clan and gens: the fiction
of blood-relationship, the hereditary character, the unilateral aspect, as well as a sib name
(39, p. 306).
This was a sterile conclusion, little more than a tautology, but Rivers, in
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The British anthropologists were engaged more directly with Maine and
McLennan than with Morgan, and their empirical evidence was drawn
largely from Oceania. Nevertheless, their discoveries closely paralleled
those of their transatlantic colleagues, and Rivers, for example, freely cited
their conclusions. The debate on the historical priority of "father-right" or
"mother-right" was abandoned, the rival theses proving equally untenable
(e.g. 79, p. 98). The early existence of the family group was also accepted,
as a consequence especially of the work of Westermarck and Malinowski.
Clans were generally associated with a particular territory, and "at present
we must be content to accept the territorial tie as one form of bond between
the members of clan," although Rivers considered it "probable that in all
LINEAGE THEORY 77
territorial clans the real bond is belief in common descent rather than
habitation of a common territory" (79, pp. 22-23).
The "classificatory kinship terminology" identified by Morgan and asso
ciated by him with forms of group marriage was now generally linked to
the presence of exogamous clans. This was Lowie's view, though he hedged
it cautiously at times (66; cf 12). Rivers, who had earlier experimented with
elaborate marriage-rule explanations of kinship terminologies, now advised
his readers: "If you are dissatisfied with the word 'classificatory' as a term
for the system of relationship which is found in America, Africa, India,
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Australia and Oceania, you would be perfectly safe in calling it the 'clan'
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tions would usually be unilineal descent groups, since only unilineal groups
would unambiguously define group membership on a descent criterion.
Radcliffe-Brown illustrated his argument with material drawn from Aus
tralia, and his short monograph, The Social Organization o/the Au stra lian
Tribes (76), prefigured the "lineage theory" studies which appeared a
decade later. In that monograph he described the two bases of Australian
Aboriginal social structure as the "family" and the "horde." The horde was
a local group which controlled rights in a territory. Its members were
recruited by patrilineal descent, and in consequence each horde was asso
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ciated with a "clan." The clan was usually exogamous and was attached to
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the local totems found in the territory of the horde. The local clan/horde
was the political and war-making unit, "tribes" being no more than linguis
tic categories. The other kinship groups (moieties, sections, and sub-sec
tions) were also based on unilineal descent, patrilineal or matrilineal.
Kroeber, in one of the most radical critiques of the period, challenged
Radcliffe-Brown's insistence on the central importance of descent in Aus
tralia. Foreshadowing in his tum many of the critiques which were to be
aimed at lineage theory, Kroeber wrote: "Instead of considering the clan,
moiety, totem, or formal unilateral group as primary in social structure and
function, the present view conceives them as secondary and often unstable
embroideries on the primary patterns of group residence and subsistence
associations" (53, p. 308). These institutions were "secondary or super
structural even as regards their functional value in many particular soci
eties. They are in a sense epiphenomena to other, underlying phenomena,
such as place of residence" (53, p. 307).
THE TRANSFORMATION
I have argued that the central issues raised by Maine and Morgan concerned
first the evolutionary relationship between territorial and kinship groups
and second the relationship between the family and the clan. The generation
of empirical criticism initiated by Swanton and Lowie successfully estab
lished an informed consensus on these questions. The institutions and prin
ciples of group organization were not related in firm historical sequence.
Where clans were important they were always found together with elemen
tary family units. The additional properties which had been associated with
clans or sibs (totemism, the blood feud, ancestor worship, and even ex
ogamy) were now known to occur in the absence of clans or sibs. Nor were
they necessarily found associated with clans or sibs where such groups were
identified.
The clan model did not die, nevertheless, nor did it simply fade away. In
America, Murdock tried to clarify matters by distinguishing a totemic and
LINEAGE THEORY 79
for reasons he never explained (e.g. 33, p. 393), but in the new version the
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lineage was actively contrasted to the clan. The clan was now a vague 'entity
defined
or exogamous. Its importance lay in the fact that "it consists of several
lineages, which may be segmented" (72, p. 4). These lineages were corpo
rate, localized, exogamous, unilineal descent groups. In short, they were
endowed with all the attributes formerly associated with the clan, sib, or
gens.
But more than a sleight of hand was involved. The functionalist version
of the old model did more than just change some of the labels. The function
alists were not concerned with sequences of institutional change but rather
with the relationship between contemporary institutions. Moreover, they
were ethnographers, studying particular systems. The old model was now
replaced by specific African
Fortes later called "paradigmatic" cases, concrete ideal types. These lent
the model a feeling of reality and considerable persuasive power. The devel
opment marked the full exploitation of the Malinowskian premise that a
field
lar culture from within, was in a position not merely to offer descriptive
materials for purposes of comparative research (in the Boasian manner) but
even to develop a "theory" of a particular society, a theory which might
then serve as an exemplary model that could be applied to other societies
(cf 54).
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This implied that the associations between territorial groups and descent
groups, or between lineages and families, should be treated as sociological
questions, not as historical issues. Clans and families coexisted; kinship and
territorial bonds were intertwined. How did they interact? These questions
led to genuinely novel developments of the old model.
Tribe Clan
Primary tribal sections Maximal lineages
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For the moment it is enough to present just the bare outline of this model,
to indicate how elegantly it resolved the classical antithesis between descent
groups and territorial groups in political organization. The model has been
discussed by many authors (e.g. 8, pp. 72-75; 10; 35; 42; 47; 52, pp. 290--98;
78). The most common kind of criticism is that it is too formal and idealist
to do justice to what happens on the ground. Audrey Richards, whose
review of The Nu er was perhaps the first published version of this critique,
argued, for example, that her own African field experience had taught her
that:
nothing is more remarkable than the lack of permanence of particular lineages or
"segments"; the infinite variety there is in their composition, their liability to change
owing to historic factors, the strength of individual personalities and similar determi
nants. Such societies, in my experience, are not divided into distinct and logical systems
of segments, but rather owe their being to the existence of a number of different principles
of grouping . . (78, p. 51).
.
suggested that the disjunction between the descent system and the system
of territorial political groups arose because the Nuer were in a state of
transition from a pure lineage system to a territorially based polity. Genera
tions of war and expansion "broke up clans and lineages to an extent which .
must have greatly impaired the unifying influence of kinship." Clans were
consequently diffused, dispersed "into small lineages which . . . were in
frequent feud with their relatives and neighbours. This means that commu
nity of living tended to supplant community of blood as the essential princi
ple of social cohesion though in a society based upon ties of kinship the
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ties." He even argued that the clan system now constituted "the main
obstacle to political development" (14, pt. 3, pp. 86-87). In short, he offered
a traditional evolutionist argument.
The Nu er marked the replacement of this historical model with a syn
chronic perspective. In the earlier essays the Nuer had been represented as
a society in a process of change through conquest and accretion of new
peoples. The old clan system was giving way to a more developed territori
ally based polity. [This is exactly contrary to Sahlins' later idea that the
segmentary lineage system was a tool for "predatory expansion" (8 1) ] .
In the functionalist model the principles of descent and territory were not
historically opposed but functionally united. The empirical discrepancies
could, therefore, no longer be attributed to the inevitably untidy process of
transition, and Evans-Pritchard no longer argued that the lineage model
corresponded to a former type of organization. Nor did he suggest, like
Gluckman, that the model referred to actual groups out there, camped
along the Nile. The segmentary lineage system was rather "a system of
values linking tribal segments and providing the idiom in which their rela
tions can be expressed and directed" ( 15, p. 2 1 2).
The obvious contrast between Evans-Pritchard's model and what he
sometimes termed "the actualities" was no longer a source of embarrass
ment. Evans-Pritchard, indeed, increasingly came to glory in the lack offtt
between the model and the empirical reports. This was the source of those
famous paradoxes which made Evans-Pritchard a sort of G. K. Chesterton
of African anthropology. I cite two examples. Both treat the apparently
perplexing importance of kinship ties traced through the mother.
It would seem it may be partly just because the agnatic principle is challenged in Nuer
society that the tracing of descent through women is so prominent and matrilocality so
prevalent. However much the actual configurations of kinship clusters may vary and
change, the lineage structure is invariable and stable (1 8, p. 28).
Nuer make any kind of cognatic relationship to several degrees a bar to marriage and,
at least so it seems to me, it is a bar to marriage because of the fundamental agnatic
principle running through Nuer society (18, p. 47) (my emphasis).
(Does this imply that a society based on "a fundamental cognatic principle"
would not ban marriages with cognates?)
The argument is formulated in essentialist terms. "The underlying ag
natic principle is . . . in glaring contrast to social actualities. But the actuali
ties are always changing and passing while the principle endures" ( 17, p.
65). The Nuer model was not a description of "social actualities," nor even
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of all Nuer values. Rather it was intended to capture the deep, unchanging
essence of Nuer society, the core of Nuer values.
Some critics have pointed out that the model clearly does not capture
some basic Nuer values. Indeed, some Nuer values appear to contradict it.
Holy and Kelly, however, suggest that the values encapsulated in the model
are central to the Nuer, but exist in a state of conflict with other values
which emanate from other domains of social life (47, 52). My own position
is more radical. I see no reason to salvage any part of the Nuer model.
In an early essay in Su dan Notes and Records, Evans-Pritchard remarked
on the difficulties of his fieldwork conditions and on the rapid changes the
Nuer were experiencing. In consequence, he confessed:
I was more successful, for these reasons, in grasping their kinship system and the daily
contacts of cattle camp life than the organization of the less tangible clan and tribal
groups . . . in the case of the second I had to rely largely upon what little information
could be dragged out of the occasional informants by question and answer methods of
enquiry. I am therefore compelled to generalise upon what may sometimes be insufficient
data and to regard some of my conclusions as working hypotheses though I feel that I
have drawn the outlines correctly (14, Pt. 3, p. 76).
What exactly is meant by lineage and clan? One thing is fairly certain, namely, that the
Nuer do not think in group abstractions called clans. In fact, as far as I am aware, he
has no word meaning clan and you cannot ask a man an equivalent of "What is your
clan?" (14, Pt. 1, p. 28).
. ..it is only when one already knows the clans and their lineages and their various ritual
symbols, as the Nuer does, that one can easily place a man's clan through his lineage
or by his spear-name and honorific salutation, for Nuer speak fluently in terms of lineage.
A lineage is thok mac, the hearth, or thok dWiel, the entrance to the hut, or one may
talk of kar, a branch (15, p. 195).
84 KUPER
Apparently the Nuer, like the British anthropologists, had achieved a new
certainty by abandoning a "clan" model for a "lineage" model. What, then,
was their idea of "lineages," of which they "speak fluently?"
A Nuer rarely talks about his lineage as distinct from his community, and in contrast
to other lineages which form part of it, outside a ceremonial context. I have watched a
Nuer who knew precisely what I wanted, trying on my behalf to discover from a stranger
the name of his lineage. He often found great initial difficulty in making the man
understand the information required of him, for Nuer think generally in terms of local
divisions and of the relationships betwee,l them, and an attempt to discover lineage
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affiliations apart from their community relations, and outside a ceremonial context,
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This representation and Nuer comments on it show several significant facts about the
way in which Nuer see the system. They see it primarily as actual relations between
groups of kinsmen within local communities rather than as a tree of descent, for the
persons after whom the lineages are called do not all proceed from a single individual
(15, pp. 202-3).
There is not space for an exhaustive analysis, but it is evident that the
Nuer do not clearly distinguish "lineages" from "local groups" (cf 46, 47).
It is extremely doubtful that there is a Nuer folk model which corresponds
even loosely to the model of the segmentary lineage system. It is hardly
credible that the model captures values which are so powerful and enduring
that they explain the apparent lack of pattern in Nuer social action. It is
more reasonable to conclude that the Nuer model provides reliable guid
ance neither to Nuer social behavior nor to Nuer values. Even the Nuer are
not like The Nuer. To what then does the model relate? It relates in the first
place to the work of earlier anthropologists, and in particular to the concep
tualizations of Morgan, Maine, Durkheim, Robertson Smith, and Radcliffe
Brown. Secondly, it transmutes something of Evans-Pritchard's experience
of the Bedouin, as mediated by his reading of Robertson Smith (13, pp. 37,
1(0).
One line of development from the Nuer and Tallensi monographs was in
the form of theoretical elaboration of the model and the definition of typolo
gies. The most important paper in this series was without question Fortes's
"The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups," published in the America n
Anthropologist in 1953 (24). Here he presented the segmentary lineage
model as the great theoretical contribution of contemporary British an
thropology. "We are now in a position to formulate a number of connected
generalizations about the structure of the unilineal descent group and its
place in the total social system which could not have been stated twenty
years ago" (24, p. 24).
Fortes stressed particularly the corporate and hence putatively perpetual
nature of these lineages in Africa, and their political role, especially where
political centralization was slight. With respect to the relationship between
territory and descent, Fortes took an extreme position, and one which by
no means followed inevitably from his Tallensi analysis. "I think it would
be agreed that lineage and locality are independently variable and how they
interact depends on other factors in the social structure. As I interpret the
evidence, local ties are of secondary significance, pace Kroeber, for local ties
do not appear to give rise to structural bonds in and of themselves" (24, p.
36).
The family/clan opposition was restated in terms of the new concept of
"complementary filiation."
It appears that there is a tendency for interests, rights and loyalties to be divided on
broadly complementary lines, into those that have the sanction of law or other public
institutions for the enforcement of good conduct, and those that rely on religion, moral-
LINEAGE THEORY 87
ity, conscience and sentiment for due observance.Where corporate descent groups exist
the former seem to be generally tied to the descent groups, the latter to the complemen
tary line of filiation (24, p. 34).
Other classificatory studies followed (e.g. 6, 31, 40, 72, 90). The issues
addressed were the range and type of descent groups, the criteria of corpo
rateness, and the importance which should be attached to unilineality, an
issue which especially irked Oceania specialists, who felt that they were
being denied use of the model by Africanists. No consequences of any
interest were attached to the distinction between "unilineal" and "nonunili
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neal" or "cognatic" descent groups, and the debate, surely the most arid
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In Evans-Pritchard's studies of the Nuer and also in Fortes's studies of the Tallensi
unilineal descent turns out to be largely an ideal concept to which the empirical facts
are only adapted by means of fictions. Both societies are treated as extreme examples of
patrilineal organisation. The evident importance attached to matrilateral and aflinal
kinship connections is not so much explained as explained away (62, p. 8).
But, Leach argued, kinship and descent principles do not actually guide
men's actions. They are mere idioms, ways of talking about property inter
ests. The community is not defined by kinship or descent; it is "simply a
collection of individuals who derive their livelihood from a piece of territory
laid out in a particular way" (62, p. 300). The traditional opposition be
tween descent and territory was thus reintroduced. Territory is reality in
this version, descent fiction. "Pul Eliya is a society in which locality and
not descent forms the basis of corporate grouping; it is a very simple and
perhaps almost obvious finding, yet it seems to me to have very important
implications for anthropological theory and method" (62, p. 30 1). "It might
even be the case that 'the structure of unilineal descent groups' is a total
fiction; illuminating no doubt, like other theological ideas. but still a fiction"
(62, p. 302).
Leach failed to distinguish "kinship" relations between individuals,
which were demonstrably the source of independent interests and pressures
in Pul Eliya, from "descent groups," which perhaps few would have ex
pected to find in a Singhalese village in any case. Nor did he attempt to
relate this critique to his earlier advocacy of "alliance" models. Neverthe
less, Pul Eliya stands as a convenient source for another strand in the
modern critique of descent theory, albeit, like alliance theory, a critique
from within the same historical tradition, a critique which at a profound
level adopted the terms of the model it attempted to displace.
In Africa the application of the model followed a conservative path for some
time, though there were some ingenious modifications such as Southall's
LINEAGE THEORY 89
In part the problem was one of the levels of abstraction. As Langness put
it, "the comparisons made are often between jural rules (ideologies) of the
lineal-segmentary societies of Africa, and presumed (but not actual) statisti
cal norms of New Guinea" (57, p. 163). But there appeared to be other,
more fundamental, difficulties as well.
90 KUPER
. . . we may be hard put to decide, for example, whether descent groups are mainly
agnatic with numerous accretions, or cognatic with a patrilineal bias. We find that people
are more mobile than any rules of descent and residence should warrant, that genealogies
are too short to be helpful, that we don't know what "corporate" means when applied
to some groups, that local and descent groups are fragmented and change their align
ments. (7, p. 57).
Different ideologies, in other words, might be associated with the same sort
of local grouping. "In major territorial descent groups, there is no particular
relation between the descent ideology and group composition," Sahlins
argued. "A descent doctrine does not express group composition but im
poses itself upon the composition" (82, p. 104). This line of thought was
developed at length by Scheffler, in a penetrating review of descent theory
(85). Schneider (88, 89) took a similar position and tried to foster the
cultural study of "descent constructs" (cf 41, 51, 52.). The culmination of
this critique is Schneider's superb new monograph, which contrasts an
earlier "lineage theory" model of Yap society with a cultural model in
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CONCLUSION
Literature Cited
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London Sch. Econ. Monogr. Soc. An 50. Keesing, R . M. 1970. Shrines, ancestors
thropol. No. 33. London: Athlone and coptatic descent: the Kwaio and
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