That would work, I guess. ;-) I was thinking more of one that would less equivocably align her with the clan she lives in, since a Vinga weaponthane you can't depend on to defend the clan against all-comers is a questionable asset. OTOH, Vingans are probably not married, and certainly not married _out_ all that often, so maybe not so much of an issue after all?
> >Again you're assuming bloodline property, which is (in the sense
> >my pedantic philsopher friends would approve of) begging the
> >question. I'm not at all sure about the social dynamics of this,
> >either: why is a large mix of occupations/statuses necessary? It'd
> >be quite possible for a smallish stead, at least, to be focused on
> >just one main economic activity.
>
> That level of specialisation in agriculture is a modern trend. A
> stead would usually grow its own vegetables and fruit, keep its
> own livestock, make it's own clothes etc. Trading between steads
> at clan markets would be for luxuries, surpluses and occasional
> crops which could not be grown in a particular location.
I'm not suggesting a degree of 'specialisation' remotely approaching that of a modern agribusiness (or even a not so modern post-medieval farm), but the economic activity of a stead is in large part determined by geography, rather than pointedly being self-sufficient from the next stead, 500 yards down the (complete lack of any sort of a) road.
> Equally to maintain an ox team for ploughing
> you need a herd of cattle so that involves herders and milkmaids.
> On a small stead many of those occupations will be combined but there
> will still be specialisation and that inevitably leads to differing
> status.
It's probably a rare stead that wouldn't have some cows, but I certainly don't see anything like a 'smooth' distribution of cattle across an entire clan. It makes a lot more sense for them to be correlated with the 'natural' (I hesitate to go so far as to say 'logical') distribution of land use between arable and pasture. If your stead is predominantly wheat-growing, you don't exactly need to rush out on a daily basis to get a new ox, do you? So I'm not convinced that each stead is really a closed micro-economy in such matters.
It's also something of a leap to say that different work strongly implies different classes of people. Low-status or 'niche' work can certainly be done by younger members of a stead, where it's not the predominant activity. And while you may be right in saying it's unlikely to have a rich carl and a half-starving stickpicker of the same bloodline, in the same stead, I don't think the correlation between bloodline and status is _that_ strong, either.
> This doesn't of course mean that every stead produces
> everything in exactly the same proportions they will tend to produce
> surpluses in whatever they are best at but it will be a rare stead
> which trades for common neccesities.
I think it's misleading to suggest that this involves 'trade', which implies a far greater degree of formality than seems likely. But traditional mutual obligations, clienteeism, informal dealings with your relatives, and outright micro-managing by supra-stead busy-bodies (such as bloodline highheidyins, on a very informal basis, and clan leaders on a more official one) all strike me as being likely conduits for your cheese ending up in my larder, my venison in John's, and John's bread in yours.
> >But the example is handy enough, since it illustrates what I think
> >is the key question: where you have a stead or household consisting
> >of several bloodlines, which of them is the 'social unit', in
> >operative terms?
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'social unit' here. If you're asking
> who makes decisons it will be the senior specialist in the matter
> with conflicts resolved by the acknowledged leader who will usually
> be the head of the senior bloodline.
I'm not entirely sure what I mean by social unit myself, at least not in crisp terms. But what I'm attempting to draw out from the advocates of the 'strong bloodline model' is: how the heck are they supposed to operate? The implication is that they're often spread across a number of steads (never mind hearths); that they hold property in common; that they have acknowledged leaders; that they have legal co-responsibility for other members. These assumptions seem to me to be at odds, since it implies an organising principle for the running of a stead (or a hearth) that separate from, and entirely at odds with, the "running" of a bloodline.
What I'm saying is basically that IMO, the dominant means of small-scale organisation is the stead (or in larger steads, perhaps more practicably the hearth, even), rather than the bloodline. There's in fact if not in law 'stead property', simply because stead property is often _used_ by everyone on a particular stead (which isn't true of a bloodline). Steads will generally have in fact, though not in law, a single recognised leader (same again).
> >It strikes me as odd, to say the least that one
> >would have 'communal property' which is actually owned at social
> >right-angles to the actual (micro-)community in which ones lives.
>
> I think the difficulty lies with the idea of communal property
> itself which has virtually disappeared in our modern society. All
> that's left is the communal property of a married couple which
> tends to be based around a single place. So the closest modern
> comparison would be where one partner takes an item of communal
> property to work. It's still communal property but exists in a
> different community.
It has indeed disappeared, which is what makes it such a hard concept for us to get our heads around, in any sort of intuitive manner. Especially all these Orlanthi-playing Republicans John H. keeps warning us about, I imagine! But I'm not in any way disputing the 'communality' of property among the Orlanthi, just that it has any association with the bloodline.
> >> More likely an unrelated bloodline
> >> chooses to live near to a good source of income and so becomes
> >> part of the stead. KoS confirms this but uses the word household
> >> rather than stead.
> >
> >Because they're not the same thing. What's KoS's "confirmation",
> >specifically?
>
> Aren't they? The paragraph I am referring to is in Jalk's book;
> the last paragraph under bloodline, family and household (Pg. 250
> in my copy):
>
> "A household is a settlement which often includes members of more than
> one bloodline. The families live co-operatively, each receiving their
> offical allotted part of the stead from the clan, and with the daily
> management handled by the local household head."
>
> That I take to mean that a stead is where a household lives and
> works.
(John, please note: I _warned_ you about the use of 'household'... <g>) Mea culpa, terminology confusion, I haven't referred back to KoS recently enough, evidently. That now makes _three_ different usages of the word 'household' that I'm aware of... (Not even counting the likes of Household of Death.)
OK, thanks for the reminder, and I take the point. I'm still not instantly enthralled of the idea that this is a sort of 'horizontal integration' of bloodlines, in the way you describe above, but I admit there are wrinkles I haven't fully worked through (to my own satisfaction, much less anyone else's).
> I suppose stead could alternatively refer to all the clans land
Nope, I'm certainly not suggesting that.
> >Bloodline property OTOH I see no evidence of, and no logic for.
>
> In a sense it's a legal issue only. If Harald takes Ragnar's spade
> and they are of the same bloodline they will take the disagreement
> to the bloodline head who has the final say.
I don't think bloodlines have formal leaders in that sort of sense. I think it's not so much a matter of bloodlines having a legal apparatus for settling disputes: rather it something of the character of "it's a domestic, luv" -- no legal resolution is even possible, sort it out among yourselves.
> If they are not of the
> same bloodline then it becomes a matter for the clan lawspeakers and
> potentially the clan chief
Agreed. And/or the ring, in some manner that's by no means clear to me...
> At the same time it
> defines a clear set of resources to collect fines from, with the
> law being able to take the most convient bits to satisfy the
> judgement and leave the bloodline head with the job of sharing
> the penalty among the members. Certainly where the property is
> on different steads and used by different people that's going
> to be an awful headache.
To the point of negating your claim that there's anything 'clear' about it, I'd suggest!
I think that this sort of business makes more sense at the _clan_ level, as I attempted to argue in ye olde wergild dispute. (Is that where we came in?) Clans definitely have common property, and definitely have organised formal leadership, so if I get sued by the member of another clan, then my clan as a whole is the obvious unit of legal responsibility to take to task. How that's handled _internally_ is another matter...
I think this is where several RW comparisons come a cropper. In none of the Generic Northern European Unwashed Hairy Barbarian cultures it's traditional to compare the Orlanthi with, is the clan such a socially dominant institution. Unless in the brave new revisionist world of HW <g> is there going to be _wholesale_ back-pedalling from Report on the Orlanthi, the Orlanthi Player's Guide, and perhaps most of all (yes, and the devil will quote scripture if it suits his purposes!) KoDP.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #848
Powered by hypermail