Briefly...
(I'm interviewing people all week - headless chook time!)
EXOGAMY, ENDOGAMY , SEX
exogamy = marry out of your group
endogamy = marry within your group
non-prescriptive = marry who ya like
normative = believed to be so, culturally, true but not necessarily true in
fact. An ideological 'truth' that is rarely questioned.
David:
>An exogamous bloodline marries outside itself. This may or may not be
>outside the clan, depending on whether the clan is exogamous. So it's
>an odd redundancy that, having said clans are exogamous, Greg goes on
>to say that bloodlines are as well. Unless he was clumsily saying
>that you can have sex within a clan (but not within a bloodline),
>just not marriage.
Yip. My interpretation is that bloodlines are usually exogamous, whereas clans are normatively exogamous but with exceptions possible.
(IMG bloodline membership is usually defined by [patrilineal]* and known bonds of descent from a named ancestor (the bloodline founder or his/her family))
An intra-bloodline marriage would be extremely unusual, and probably only permitted for very special ritual purposes. Who pays the dowry? We do. Who to? Us. Where does the bridewealth go? To Us. And whose gifts financed it? Ours. Intra-bloodline marriage makes no sense in the Heortling social universe, - its effectively a form of social masturbation. I'm sure there are intra-bloodlines pairings, but the social identity of those concerned would be 'brother and sister' or 'breath twins' (friends). Lets not go where the wind don't blow...
Clan exogamy I believe has much more variation - "some clans do, some clans won't... some clans need a lot of bridewealth and, some clans don't..." (evidence here of a misspent childhood) . Among the prime determinants would be the size of the clan, the 'kinship distance' (third, fourth or fifth degree) of those concerned, and the amount of assimilation of Lunar customs and world-view. (Heortling society is absorbing many new views and ideas from the Lunars. Culture wars are just as real as spear wars.)
I'd be very relaxed about clan endogamy among clans with variant kinship systems such as matriliny (the Kitori etc.) and among city ring clans that have day to day dealings with powerful outsiders (and where therefore, the traditional kinship system has to be versatile or is breaking down). We haven't yet mentioned inter-marriage with outsiders: a taboo in traditional society but increasingly common since the invasion.
I think that any instance of clan endogamy would be challengeable in law, but since in 'all' Heortling marriage both clans have to agree anyway, this is not such a big issue in practice.
There will always be ritual exceptions and special cases - Earth religion seems big on 'brother and sister' pairings, and creative violation of the incest taboo for magical purposes.
Sex within a bloodline? Well since the incest taboo is one of the perennial debating points in the anthropological literature, I'm not going to try and unravel it here. Couple of points: unless its an extremely repressed society, you rarely are sexually attracted to those you grow up with. (The Kibbutzim defence). So Darra Happan yes, Heortling no. However, it obviously happens sometimes (most likely with bloodline members from another hearth) otherwise, why ban it? Of course, no legal action is possible - the bloodline is a legal 'individual', but informal action from the elders is *definitely* on the cards. *Whack* "Geddorfff...its six months with the mountain herds you me laddo."
(Temptation to speculate on the prominence of incest themes in American pornography strongly resisted at this point. :))
Ian:
>'isogamous'
Whatdat?!?! Its not a term I've ever come across in kinship discussions, and I've checked Keesing, Fox, the IESS, and the Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Do you (or Paterson) mean endogamous, or non-prescriptive? 'Please explain'.
Trotsky:
> > Closest anthropological term I could find is 'homogamous'
>
Ditto. 'Please explain'.
EARTH MALE Keith:
>you could argue that only one of the generations 'needs' a husband, only
one
>'needs' a father, and one needs a 'son', and this can be all the same guy.
>The three most important male/female relationships can all be covered by
the
>same guy.
Very nice! Tokenism in both forms - I like it !
Cheers
John
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