Alexandria with Arius and his followers, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, ordered an oecumenical ..... (or sexual) interaction, such as with Virgin Birth.
Structure and Substance: Combining ‘Classic’ and ‘Modern’ Kinship Studies in the Australian Western Desert
Laurent Dousset Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Anthropology, University of Western Australia This paper attempts to participate in the reconciliation between ‘modern’ and cultural studies styles of approaches to kinship, and the more formal and structural analyses of the ‘classical’ type. It is argued that it is the methodological combination of these approaches that produces intelligible descriptions of social structure and process in relation to kinship. The fundamental assumption is that individual strategies play within, and to a certain extent (consciously) exploit, the structural particularities a kinship system provides. A heuristic tool is proposed from which such an analysis can be elaborated. The notion of ‘consubstantiality’ as a reflector of modes of ‘relatedness-conception’ is discussed, because such modes do exhibit interactionist processes while being framed within the structural precepts of the formal kinship system with its terminology and prescriptions.
In many ways, the name of David Schneider embodies the image of a seemingly irreconcilable rupture that occurred in the 1970s in the domain of kinship studies. Since that rupture anthropologists have been (self-)classified following a binary and inflexible opposition: those researchers who adopt a ‘classical’ approach, and those who, on the contrary, embrace a ‘modem’ understanding of kinship as being merely, if at all, one aspect of relatedness. Idiosyncratically, from a ‘classical’ researcher’s point of view, the field and its actors are distinguished (structurally, one could say) as pro- or contraSchneider, while for ‘modern’ researchers such a distinction has a more historical character illustrated in the categorisation of a pre- and a post-Schneiderien era. Simultaneously with Rodney Needham’s (1971) and David Schneider’s (e.g. 1977, 1984) virulent criticisms of the study and notion of kinship, others had a more constructive approach to the question, acknowledging some of the problems without, however, systematically rejecting acquired methods and concepts. One of the better examples in this respect is Julian Pitt-Rivers (1973), who proposed ‘consubstantiality’ as an investigative concept and thus prepared the way for an alternative mode of thinking about ‘relatednessconstructions’, including those based on kinship. This paper investigates this notion in relation to Australian Western Desert ethnography and more specifically to the Ngaatjatjarra-speaking people. The drive towards applying ‘substance’ and ‘consubstantiality’ in relation to kinship has, since Pitt-Rivers, been
THEAUSTRALIAN JOURNALOF ANTHROPOLOGY, 2005,16: 1,18-30
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frequent, as many publications testify (e.g. Gibson 1985; Carsten 1995; Lambert 2000; McDonaugh 2000). However, an explicit depiction of their methodological and analytical implications is lacking, and in many cases the use of these notions reflects a metaphorical extension of consanguinity, rather than an innovative empirical tool. In a previous paper (Dousset 2002a), I explained that former interpretations of the Aluridja-type of kinship system (found amongst the Westem Desert people including the Ngaatjatjarra with whom I have worked) were based on the conflation of structural, contextual and consubstantial uses of the kinship terminology. However, ‘relatednessconstructions’ based on consubstantial phenomena or understandings were, in that paper, interpreted as constituting merely ‘noise’ within a more general and formal framework, which I showed to be of a Dravidian bifurcate-merging type. In this paper, I would like to engage further with the idea of consubstantiality and the social realities from which it is generated. But, instead of looking at consubstantial relatedness-constructions as mere interferences in a systemic grid, my aim here is to demonstrate that these interferences, while illustrating individual interactions and agencies, are also structurally part of the culturally accepted and explicated formal grid of the kinship system. I argue that the principles inherent in modes of relatedness-constructions that rely on the notion of consubstantiality as being an acting-together (see below) constitute a fruitful starting point for interpreting the formal system itself. In this sense, what I have termed above ‘classical’ and ‘modem’ kinship studies have, in the context of the present discussion at least, to be conceptually distinguished, but methodologically combined. There is no eithedor, but, rather, the possibility of an intelligible combination of the study of particular agencies and the understanding of the globally recognised formal framework. There is neither pro- and contra-, nor pre- and post-Schneider. Instead, there are phenomena that reflect ‘classical’ interests, and others that accord with ‘modem’ preoccupations, and only the combination of the two provides a coherent picture of social reality in relation to kinship structure and practice.
Consanguinity or consubstantiality? From the title of Morgan’s (1997 [ 18711) Systems of Consanguinity and Afinity of the Human Family alone, it should be obvious that the use of the plural form Systems demonstrates his understanding of consanguinity, and that of the great majority of subsequent anthropologists, as being a social or cultural construct. This paradigm reflects the various-for Morgan, historically determined4mic conceptualisations of extending a universal biological idiom.’ Morgan himself placed this idiom within the idea of ‘family’. Here again, Morgan’s understanding of the family reflects a form of organisation that, far from being universal, is and was transformed in accordance with the evolution of property patterns and political organisation. In Morgan’s work, consanguinity is rather a container than the content, a notion reflecting simultaneously both cultural variations and their historic (or evolutionary) transformations. However, while he allows for cultural modes of sharing the substance inherent in the notion of consanguinity itself, that is blood, the semantic intrinsic to its use is also tied to a specifically Occidental, and to some extent Middle-Eastem, etymological and literal understanding. There, consanguinity and its extrapolation, consubstantiality, are tied to metaphysical explanations of being, rather than being interpreted as a device within a social technology. There are traces of consubstantiality as an elucidatory mechanism in the early anthropological literature, such as in Smith’s, Durkheim’s (see Jones 1986) and LtviBruhl’s (see Bullock 1931) works. These authors endeavour to explain religious
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phenomena as mechanisms of socialisation based on consubstantiality, for example among the clan, its members and its ancestor or totem. As Bullock (1931:185) explains, LeviBruhl ‘speaks of the mystic consubstantiality in which the individual, the ancestral being living again in him, and the animal or plant species that forms his totem are all mingled’. Such usage, however, does not effectively evolve from an understanding of consubstantiality as being a metaphorical extension of consanguinity: while clan members are tied by descent, their relationship with the clan’s ancestor, with whom a straight ‘blood’ relationship cannot be demonstrated but is nevertheless implied, is bridged through the use of a symbolic or metaphorical type of consanguinity, termed consubstantiality. In this sense, the latter is merely a general label for a set of paradigmatic choices, in which consanguinity is simply one alternative: if consubstantiality is the sharing of substance in general, then consanguinity is the sharing of the specific substance named ‘blood’ in particular. Moreover, the principles underlying, and the social consequences resulting from, such sharing are essentially identical. I believe that recent uses of the notion of consubstantiality in relation to kinship and relatedness have not effectively evolved the above-mentioned understanding (and analytical authority), despite Schneider’s warnings, and despite many recent researchers’ explicit approval of the latter’s criticisms. An alternative and more constructive use of the notion was proposed by Pitt-Rivers (1973: 92), who defines consubstantiality as ‘the prime nexus between individuals for the extension of self. Indeed, unless one is able to demonstrate its universality with respect to a common signified as well as signifier (or sign and designata), consubstantiality as a concept must be restricted to a solely methodological and analytical device, rather than be defined as a (metaphysical) character underlying relationships. Pitt-Rivers (1973: 92) distinguishes his understanding of consubstantiality from that used in Christian theology; as he writes, ‘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 consubstantiality’. Let us, nevertheless, recall its Christian use since the Council of Nicea (in the year AD 325), because this understanding of the notion is in many ways complementary to that developed below. Emperor Constantine the Great, in an attempt to reconcile Saint Alexander from Alexandria with Arius and his followers, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, ordered an oecumenical council at which he proposed homoousion (consubstantiality) to be the intrinsic nature of the Trinity. Constantine suggested that the Son and the Father were consubstantial: ‘if we speak of a true uncreated Son of God, we begin to confess him “consubstantial” with the Father’ (Beatrice 2002: 245).* Consubstantiality in the Christian (and Middle-Eastern) tradition is a cosmological fait accompli and not an analytical tool.3 Despite Pitt-Rivers’ progressive definition of the use of consubstantiality, he does not actually apply it, but rather concentrates on the principal aim of his article, which is to revive Meyer Fortes’ notion of amity. My paper does not therefore rely heavily on PittRivers himself, but rather refers loosely to Kenneth Burke’s (1969a, 1969b) complex analysis of rhetoric, reflecting an existential-versus an essential-signification of consubstantiality. As we will see, the Christian usage of consubstantiality provides a means for labelling certain emic types of relationships, while the understanding of substance that I describe below illustrates the notion as an agency within motives. Here again, as with the classic-modem opposition, it is the combination rather than the separation that provides insights. Burke investigates the question of motivation, which involves the ‘semiotic of the who, where, how, and why of action’ (Meadows 1957: 81) or, as Burke (1969a: xv) terns it himself, the Act, Scene, Agent, Agency and Purpose, which necessitates an understanding
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of the way individuals put signs together (to interpret and behave within motives)! One fundamental step in this endeavour relates to the problem of definition, which, according to Burke (1969a: 21ff), is undertaken either by semantic placement of words within their context, or by their genealogical placement (that is, previous usages). To define by context is to place a word within boundaries, and Burke relies on the notion of substance and its ambiguity in this respect. He explains that substance is used to define what a thing is, but that it derives from something that this thing is not, as the decomposition of the word into sub (below) and stance (stand) makes clear. ‘The word, in its etymological origins would refer to an attribute of the thing’s context’ (Burke 1969a: 23). This already gives us some clues as to how an existential understanding of consubstantiality takes form: it is an identity of things based on a common context, not necessarily on a common essence. In the course of analysing motives, Burke refers to the notion of appeal and its tactics, which are tied to processes of identification, which in turn are linked to the ambiguities of substance. Basically, the tactics of appeal play with the idea of an identity of contexts, which induces an identity of the subjects themselves within the contexts and, indeed, renders them consubstantial. Burke (1969b: 21) refers to the ‘old philosophies’ id which substance was an act, and concludes that consubstantiality is the consequence of actingtogether, for in ‘acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes’. Consubstantiality is, in Burke’s terms, a practice-related concept based on stylistic identifications and symbolic structures, which persuade and produce acceptance: an acting-together within, and defined by, a common context. What are the lessons to be drawn from this all-too-brief sketch of the notion of consubstantiality? Within the ethnography analysed below, the underlying understanding is that, while consubstantiality, or phenomena reflecting its principles, may be embedded within essentialist discourses about identity of person, spirit, intellect or even bodily characteristics, such discourses, as well as associated practices, need to be understood as elements of the domain of motive, or intent, in which the production of consubstantiality is largely the result of identifying (or creating) common contexts, and is the engine for acting-together. From a sociological point of view, it is therefore an expression of similitude of being, but also agency (the means to act) within a social technology.
The context in which consubstantiality is agency Within the structural precepts of a kinship system there is, of course, room for individual and collective agency and strategy. However, the cases illustrated below demonstrate that in Aboriginal Australia such agency and strategy are framed with respect to a rather formal grid of rules and expected behaviour tied to marriage prescriptions, kinship terminologies and kin categories. Agency, and the social technology labelled consubstantiality here, cannot be depicted appropriately if not explained in context with the more generally accepted, and expectable, social norms. The distinction between the formal kinship system and the more flexible forms of relatedness constructed upon--or analysable through-the notion of consubstantiality is best illustrated by the similarly defined distinction between langue andparole (de Saussure 1972: 36ff). One must understand the formal aspects of the system (langue), in order to evaluate the way consubstantiality reflects aspects of the motives (parole), for it is only in contrast to norms that practice has signification. I take my examples from the Ngaatjatjarra-speaking people of the Australian Western Desert cultural bloc who have a kinship system that, for this entire culture area, has been labelled Aluridja by Elkin (1938-40).5 The Ngaatjatjma system is based on a Dravidian type of bifurcate-merging pattern6 and terminology, in which cross-relatives are termed
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and classed as affines-people who may become ego’s actual in-laws-while parallelrelatives are termed and classed as persons who cannot become in-laws-and that we therefore label consanguines. As should be obvious by now, the use of consanguinity in this context does not imply that people actually consider themselves as sharing some sort of substance (certainly not blood), nor does it imply that they are linked through actual filiation or descent. It rather technically denotes those people and categories who, following the simple algorithm inherent in a bifurcate-merging system, cannot become actual in-laws unless there is transgression of socially recognised norms. Another feature of the system, which is general, but not exclusive, to Australia, is that there is no limitation of range in the extension of kin-categories (Radcliffe-Brown 19303 1). As Tonkinson (199 1: 57) explains for a western group of the Western Desert cultural bloc, ‘the moral universe of the Mardu is populated solely with relatives’. The implications of this principle are important, as it is possible for two people to recognise their mutual kin-category, and therefore to be kin, without the sharing of substance or acting-together being a condition. All that is necessary is the common acceptance of the authority of a context (in Burke’s sense) with its symbolic structures defined by the bifurcate-merging principle. The extension of kin-categories without horizontal and vertical limitation is the consequence of independently accepted norms and an inherent expectation for actingtogether. Why should kin-categories be extended? In the Western Desert, as everywhere else, each kin-category is tied to a range of normative behaviours from restraint to complete avoidance towards mothers-in-laws, for e ~ a m p l eIn . ~a first step, such as when foreigners meet, mutual kin-categories need to be determined, for they constitute the framework against which behaviour is adapted and evaluated. Being in a kin-category is, for the Ngaatjatjarra and other Aboriginal peoples, a ‘natural fact’, as natural as having legs and arms. Therefore, acting-together is, above all, conditioned by two individuals’ knowledge of each other’s formal kin category; not knowing another person’s kin category disallows interaction. While this principle is true among Aboriginal people, whether they are familiar or foreign to each other, it has been modified with respect to non-Aboriginal staff living and working in Western Desert communities, probably as a consequence of the latter’s high turn-over and frequent lack of participation in those aspects of community life that are irrelevant to their administrative duties. The mode of determining another person’s kin-category is neither arbitrary, nor necessitates deep genealogical memory. The process is one I refer to as the ‘domino effect’ of the ‘relational triangle’ (Dousset n.d.). When two foreigners can both trace their classificatory relationships towards a third person, the remaining relationships among all other members of the community can be deduced from this set. The notion of relationship that contains the above-mentioned categories consanguinity and affinity is, here again, not a physiological idea alone, but often the result of previously applied relational triangles: hence the domino effect. Most examples of consubstantiality presented are related to the realm of marriage. Some considerations of the formal aspects of marriage are therefore warranted as well. As in all Dravidian bifurcate-merging systems, a spouse is a classificatory cross-cousin, or a crossrelative two generations removed, such as a MF for a female and FM for a male ego. A potential or actual spouse is either a classificatory MBCh or FZCh. Only about three per cent of marriages deviate from this general principle among Ngaatjatjarra-speaking people. This rule is formulated explicitly by the Ngaatjatjarra themselves and is inherent in the terminological system so that it can, following Needham’s (1973) usage, be termed a prescriptive marriage. A potential spouse is a cross-cousin (watjirru), who is the child of a
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classificatory MB (kamuru) and FZ (kumtili), who, once marriage is envisageable (see below), become WF (wuputju)and WM (yumuri) respectively. A wutjirru becomes a kurri (spouse), whether they will actually marry or not. Ngaatjatjarra people, however, emphasise that this rule is not sufficient and add jural regulations that flow from case-by-case evaluations of relatedness conceptions. I will term these regulations proscriptive, because they exclude people (they also reflect the notion of prescription as it was imputed by Needham (1973) to Leach). Such proscriptive or jural evaluations and relatedness conceptions are constructed upon the notions of distance and its semantic-but not necessarily social+onverse, proximity. The central idea in this case is reflected by the term tjiwunkatju (distant, long way). Added to any kin term, but predominantly in relation to parents of cross-cousins, the quality it expresses relates to both social relationships and space structuration; the meaning it conveys is defined by its contrary, proximity, and its purpose is to bring people closer: a cousin has to be distant to be an acceptable spouse. An appropriate wuputju (WF) is a kamuru tjiwunkatju (distant MB); an appropriate yumuri (WM) is a kumtili tjiwuntkatju (distant FZ). Such distance is measured with respect to genealogical, spatial as well as social, criteria. In the first place, a distant cross-cousin is one with whom no direct and unambiguous physiological connection can be established. As genealogical memory is usually limited to two or three ascending generations, a distant cross-cousin is, formally speaking, a third cross-cousin at least. Second, a distant cross-cousin is one who does not predominantly affiliate to one's own sites in space. Conception and birthplace, which are both associated with rights and duties with respect to a site, have, ideally, to be different and if possible distant. Third, people who have grown up together, who have shared food and participated in common activities, that is, people who have lived for prolonged periods within the same community, are avoided as marriage partners. In summary, normative marriage rules are framed as prescriptions through the category system, and are expressed through the terminological system. An acceptable spouse is a cross-cousin (or a person of a similar cross-category two generations removed). Marriage between all other categories is considered incestuous. Additionally, within this set of cross-cousins, some are eliminated for reasons of genealogical, spatial and social proximity, or lack of distance. These rules can be termed proscriptive and jural (versus systemic), because they exclude people rather than include them and are open for negotiation.
Consubstantiality as social technology Most cases illustrated here concern fine-tuning of the affinal category in such a way that it is possible to establish the necessary distinctions among classificatory in-laws, potential in-laws and actual in-laws. Within the affinal categories defined by the structural properties of the kinship system, people have an additional quality attached to them, which is decisive in real-world interaction and political and economic strategies and behaviour. This quality is essential because, while marriages do indeed take place between classificatory affines, they do not take place between just any sorts of affines without strategic or pragmatic distinctions. Some affines are, to put it simply, better than others. The notion of consubstantiality, with its essentialist as well as its existentialist aspects, is beneficial in the description of the mechanisms at work within these distinctions. The pragmatic differentiation between classificatory, potential and actual affines is undertaken in accordance with the proscriptive principles described above, and is framed within a consubstantial conception of relatedness. Importantly, such distinctions are not
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anthropological constructs alone, but are reflected in the Ngaatjatjarra terminological system, in which the three qualities are named. For example, a classificatory WF is referred to as kumuru, a potential WF as kumuru tjiwunkutju (or wuputju), and an actual WF as wuputju only. An unmarriageable opposite-sex cross-cousin is referred to as watjiwu, a potentially afinal cross-cousin kurri or wutjirru, and an actual spouse as kurri only. A same-sex cross-cousin is referred to as wutjirru. If his sister or her brother is ego’s actual spouse, then this cross-cousin becomes tjuwuri (between females) and murutju (between males). Wutjirru and murutju are not simply synonyms, nor are they regional variations, but express distinct qualities inherent in the actual relationship: the former is classificatory, the latter descriptive; the former is defucto, the latter the result of processes of choice and negotiation. Such choices and negotiations, opening the way to an actual alliance, can be expressed through the concept of consubstantiality. Let us begin with those features that induce the proscriptions mentioned earlier and that are most closely related to the formal structure of the kinship system. The first and most elementary example relates to the Ngaatjatjarra conception of first cross-cousins, that is, children issuing from a brother on one side and a sister on the other. The relatedness between such children is summarised in an indigenous expression, which I have discussed previously (Dousset 2002a): kungkunkutju minulinkutj+literally meaning ‘from the woman, from the man’. The expression is glossed in English by Ngaatjatjarraspeaking people with regard to first cross-cousins as ‘they are really the same’. The ‘really’ here is significant, for it articulates a difference that, when considered from its underlying or substantial point of view, implies its opposite. While acknowledging the systemic factor of these children’s classification, which, according to the bifurcatemerging principle positions them as cross-cousins and therefore within the set of classificatory affines, their affinal character is neutralised through a consubstantial reinterpretation of such genealogical relations. The consubstantial character of first crosscousins’ relationships exemplifies Burke’s problem of definition, for it involves an ambiguity in relation to the definition of the thing through what the thing is not (that is, through its context). It also illustrates an emic conception of an essential (versus existential) understanding of consubstantiality, as these cross-cousins are actually and explicitly considered to be sharing such a considerable amount of substance that they cannot possibly be made into those persons who, because of their difference, have to be brought closer (potential in-laws). The principles underlying this example of consubstantiality, however, are far less deterministic than a consideration of the genealogical positions involved seems to articulate, for they are related to an actingtogether (and, from the point of view of mamage, the prohibition thereof) rather than to a commonality of genealogically inherited substances. Further examples will illustrate this. Indeed, similar mechanisms are at work in relation to persons who claim a relationship to identical conception totems or Dreaming (tjumu). Revealed to the mother, father or another close relative shortly after conception is believed to have taken place, tjumu describes an inalienable link between a person’s spirit or essence (kuurti), one of his or her principal Dreaming associations (tjukurrpu) and one or several sites in space (nguwu tjumu) to which that person legitimately claims rights and observes obligations. Not all persons know their tjumu, but all are confident that, during further stages of their religious apprenticeship, its identity will eventually be revealed to them. This absence of knowledge, however, is not an absence of principle, for a person can only exist as a consequence of the tjumu’s penetration into the mother: it is an engendering principle and condition. The tjumu available are limited not by their number but by their possible embodiments. The stock of tjumu-r spirit-children, as they have been called (e.g.
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Tonkinson 1978Fwait in trees to be embodied most frequently in an animal species, but also in plants. Ngaatjatjarra-speaking people refer to this stage of their existence as purkangka nguruluntu (when I was sitting in the tree). The limited number of species available as embodiments is the reason why different persons may have identical tjumu. Consequently, such persons have an identical kuurti (essence) and are consubstantial: they cannot many and engender children together, even though they might be in appropriate formal kin categories, for such a relationship would culminate in apprehensions similar to those implied in incestuous relationships. That the tjumu is indeed an element inherent in the substance-definitionof a person is reflected in events contrary to its expected principle. For example, I remember a psychologically unstable woman, considered rummu rumma (crazy, childish), whose status was explained as the consequence of two distinct tjumu having penetrated her mother and constituted her essence. This woman was suffering, from an emic point of view, from having a double personality. While the two examples of consubstantiality-creation provided so far imply the prohibition against acting-together in relation to marriages, the following example will show how such a prohibition provides an impetus for its opposite. The principles inherent in tjumu which establish similarities and differences within the population based on essential characteristics, have their secular counterpart in the relationship identified as kulyurtu (see Dousset 1997). Kulyurtu denotes a type of relationship, the name of the ritual in which this relationship is established, and is the self-reciprocal term of reference used between the two persons involved. The ritual follows the birth of a child, when a person of the same gender but two generations removed (i.e. a grandparent) holds the child in privacy and, massaging an invisible substance from his or her own body into that of the child, also transmits his or her own bodily and psychological characteristics into it. The child then inherits this grandparent’s name; and being namesake alone implies an identity that is not only social, but also personal and essential. The full strength of employing the notion of consubstantiality as an expression of identical contexts and an acting-together therein is apparent in this example, for the kahurru relationship involves the obligation to ‘look after each other’, a sentiment of solidarity and closeness. Kulyurtu relationships are not established between persons who, for one reason or another, already feel a close relationship, but are a means for instantiating associations where the pre-existing context alone is incapable of engendering social embeddedness. It is, therefore, not surprising that many such relationships were established when Ngaatjatjarra people were, from the 1950s onwards, venturing temporarily westwards to Warburton, Wiluna and other settlements. As they encountered families and groups with whom they clearly recognised a cultural and linguistic affinity, but with whom individual relationships were infrequent, the generation of kulyurtu relationships became one means of expressing, through individual consubstantialities, a social or communal closeness: getting involved in local affairs and being able to act-together. Kulyurru therefore reveals itself also as a social technology. Though such mechanisms may appear arbitrary from a structural point of view, they are nevertheless clearly embedded in the framework of the bifurcate-merging system. Indeed, kulyurtu relationships always involve people who stand in a potential afinal relationship, such as FMB for a male ego or MFZ for a female ego, that is, the opposite-sex sibling of a potential spouse. Moreover, in the same way as children of siblings and individuals who have identical tjumu, such relationships exclude those involved from the general pool of potential affines. In this sense, they become socially defined as consanguines. Consubstantiality in all these cases involves not only an identity of principles but also the definition of a context for acting together. Adoption is my last and probably strongest example in this short catalogue of modes of
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relatedness-constructions exemplifying consubstantiality as a means of analysing the creation of contexts for agency. If there is one phenomenon that delimits the physiologically conceived and inherited identity from that construed through social or cultural mechanisms only, then it is probably adoption. Although frequent in the Western Desert, adoption is nevertheless an experience that does not flow from nature, so to speak, but necessitates social intervention. There may be behavioural and affectional differences in the treatment of actual and adopted children, especially by mothers; however, the structural and jural relationships, rights and obligations that flow from adoption are identical to those that flow from birth. For example, an actual child's proscribed spouses will become proscribed for adopted children as well. The polysemy involved in the nomenclature of adoption is interesting. The adoptive mother is termed nyuyurlpu;' this word, however, is also used to describe 'the one who puts timber into the fire', 'the one who entertains the hearth'. Thus, the host family and the adoptive children are linked and made consubstantial by the sharing of a common mother-hearth, which obviously involves the communal preparation and absorption of identical food, and the sharing of experiences and activities.' The mother-hearth concept constitutes the context in which an actingtogether is possible.
The motives of consubstantiality So far, the material discussed confirms the applicability of the analytical category called consubstantiality in particular cases. We now need to look at the reasons why consubstantiality might be a more general explanatory device, and apply it in order to embed the ethnographic material within a wider social logic. This enterprise involves, following Burke's semiotic approach, the description of the motives or motivation, that is, of the Act, Scene, Agent, Agency and Purpose (Burke 1969a: 21ff). I will concentrate on the Scene and the Purpose here, as they seem to define most appropriately the context in which consubstantiality can be vested with explanatory power. The scene, to state it bluntly, is an environment that Gould (1969: 273) qualified as the harshest ever inhabited by human beings before the industrial revolution. Ecological determinism is not an approach embraced here. However, it is also obvious that the motives or the purpose of a kinship system and of the culturally accepted and practised modes of relatedness-constructionsare compliant with, or at least evolving along with, the environmental situation, be it natural or social. This is particularly true in such extreme situations as in the Australian Western Desert, where the unpredictability of rainfall in time and space led to low demographic densities, with as few as 500 persons per 100,000 square kilomtre." In pre-colonial times, which for some Ngaatjatjarra is as recent as the 1950s, the general scene was, therefore, one of vast spaces in which small family groups were scattered, migrating between waterholes and forage grounds, sometimes as much as 50 kilometres daily. Every now and then they would meet up with other groups, exchange news and goods, perform rituals, and move on again as soon as local supplies were exhausted. Being able to access distant resources in case of local shortages was of existential importance. The absence of both a rigid mode of social groupings in accordance with principles of descent and an inflexible and exclusivist mode of land affiliation is common sense in such a context. However, rights to mutual access do not flow from commonly accepted principles; they are not simply given, but must be negotiated and maintained. There must also be social, and not solely ecological and economic, incentives to such elaborations. The strong local exogamy, consubstantiality among first crosscousins, the kalyurtu relationship, the feeling that spouses with identical conception
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Dreamings are somewhat incestuous are among such incentives, for they articulate a mode of relatedness-construction that mirrors the principles underlying the establishment of extensive social networks with their mutual rights and obligations. These networks, established and maintained through ritual, marriage” or other ways of relatednessconstructions, have been intensified and facilitated with modem means of communication and transportation. However, as many early ethnographies testify, they are neither recent characteristics of the Western Desert cultural bloc, nor a consequence of such modem means. 12 In such a scene, consubstantiality, understood as the creation of a common context for acting-together, is a social technology in which, as Lambert (2000: 75) explains for northern India, ‘the creation of relatedness in any form is, ultimately, premised on differentiating between essentially similar persons’. Tjiwungkatju, the expression suffixed to the affinal terminology and denoting distant kin, mirrors this principle, for it implicitly but mechanically denotes its opposite and the potentiality of bringing the person referred to closer and thus elaborating on mutual rights and obligations. It is applied in social contexts in which people feel a cultural and sometimes social, but lack an individualised proximity: it differentiates among essentially similar persons.
Conclusion The aim of this paper has been to participate in the reconciliation between ‘modern’ and cultural studies styles of approaches, and the more formal and structural analyses of the ‘classical’ type. I have argued that it is the conceptual distinction, but methodological combination of these approaches that produce intelligible descriptions of social structure and process in relation to kinship. The fundamental assumption is that individual strategies play within, and to a certain extent (consciously) exploit, the structural particularities a kinship system provides. Although I did not discuss these individual strategies in this paper, I have proposed a heuristic tool from which such an analysis can be elaborated. In this respect, the notion of consubstantiality as a reflector of modes of relatednessconception has been discussed, because such modes do exhibit interactionist processes while being framed within the structural precepts of the formal kinship system with its terminology and prescriptions. The notion of consubstantiality can be understood and applied in a dual sense. First, it names the existence of practices and conceptions in which people are connected because they are actually considered to be sharing some sort of substance or principle. Such an understanding takes place within essentialist discourses, be they emic or etic, in which relatedness of any sort is expressed through identities of bodily substances or psychological characteristics. Secondly, consubstantiality has been conceived as a heuristic device, as an element of social technology that articulates macro- and microsocial motives by creating contexts for acting-together. The latter use of the notion refers to its existentialist aspects. Discourses about identity of bodily substances may well have cosmogonic legitimation within a cultural framework, but they are also largely an agency for creating a context in which acting-together is envisaged, if not encouraged. In such a context, the cultural explication of substantial identities on cosmogonic grounds appears as a legitimation of negotiation processes. The purpose or motives of these processes are individual and communal strategies creating or maintaining embeddedness within a wider social field than merely among immediate kin. In the Australian Western Desert, such conceptions and processes participate in the elaboration of social networks that, crisscrossing an immense area, join local particulars with a pan-regional commonality.
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Acknowledgements For their helpful comments on an earlier version I would like to thank Gill Hutcherson and Katie Glaskin. Research for this paper was made possible thanks to an Australian Research Council postdoctoral fellowship held at The University of Western Australia.
Notes 1. 2.
See, for example, Malinowski ( 1963: 182) and Heritier ( 198 1: 13). Beatrice (2002), in his stimulating and convincing paper, demonstrates the Egyptian origin of the concept. Interestingly, one should add, the notion is applied in theological philosophies when ‘descent’, actual or spirituaVsocial has to be established without the need (or capacity) for bodily (or sexual) interaction, such as with Virgin Birth. This understanding of consubstantiality evidently constitutes the roots of its ‘Durkheimian’ use mentioned above, in which it is an alternative mode for arguing for a socially legitimising (substance based) identity between persons and ancestors, and is hence one element of the paradigmatic choices in which consanguinity, as mentioned above, is yet just another alternative. In this tradition, consubstantiality has to be distinguished from consubstantiation, according to 3. which the substance of Christ’s Body exists together with the substance of bread, and the substance of His Blood together with the substance of wine. The latter notion does not express an actual identity, but a parallelism of substances. 4. There is no space to investigate in any detail Burke’s complex thinking. I therefore refer the reader both to Burke himself and to Meadows’ (1957) excellent and dense rksumk of Burke’s semiotic. See Dousset (1999, 2002a, 2003) for more details on the Ngaatjatjam system in particular and a 5. discussion of the Aluridja type of kinship system in general. See Trautmann and Bames (1998) and Tjon Sie Fat (1998) for defmitions, but note that, following 6. Elkin’s ambiguous descriptions of the Aluridja type, both class it erroneously within Iroquois (or type B) systems including Hawaiian features. 7 . See Tonkinson (1991 : 63) for a more thorough discussion. An expression used for describing adoption is nyuyurlpa kutjupankatja mantjinu kanyinu 8. purlkanu (literally ‘the adoptive mother from another one took, kept and grew’). 9. See also Carsten (1995). 10. See Dousset (2002b) for a discussion and further references. 11. Keen (2002) calls the diversification and extension of the marriage network through the prohibition on marrying close relatives, ‘shifting webs’. 12. Gould (1980), for example, explains how ‘exotic’ material must have been traded in from huge distances. Bemdt (1941 : 8) reports how he was told at Ooldea that the Wati Kutjarra legend came from the distant north-west, ‘where the pearl-shell comes from’, and that ‘many articles of trade have and still do come down the ancestral tracks, which were probably migratory’. See also Akerman (1973).
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