KINSHIP (among primitive peoples). — Even primitive peoples distinguish a threefold kinship: by blood, by affinity, and by legal-spiritual relationship, based respectively on descent from a common ancestor, on legitimate marriage, and on adoption.
Kinship by blood and by affinity exists among all peoples; its extent and therefore its effects vary. Close kinship is ordinarily linked to the law of exogamy, which obliges one to seek a spouse outside one’s own group of relatives. Moreover, one can distinguish kinship of clan and large family (Ger. *Sippe*) and of tribe.
The narrowest form of kinship is that observed by Man among the Andamanese in the Andaman Islands (Indian Ocean). They did not recognize or know how to count kinship beyond the third generation. Marriage between first cousins was prohibited. Similarly, it was forbidden for a man and a woman to marry within the family of a brother-in-law or sister-in-law. Kinship, counted in both lines, was of the greatest importance in their daily life and in contracting marriage, which was never permitted between even distantly related persons. There was no prohibition against marrying a person of the same name, whether from another tribe or from one’s own community. In addition to consanguinity and affinity, the impediment to marriage arising from adoption also applied. The closest relatives were considered to be parents, children, brothers, and sisters, which corresponds to the distinction made by the Romans between agnates, i.e., consanguinei. However, the Andamanese were conscious of belonging to a tribe and believed themselves to descend from a first human couple. This system of kinship, which is very close to our Western one, exists more or less among other peoples classified in ethnology as collectors.
Another type of kinship, opposite to this, is that of nomadic pastoral peoples, whose social organization is based on the principle of consanguinity. Among the Mongols, for example, each tribe traces its descent to a common ancestor. The reckoning is such that, from the different colors associated with each tribe, they are called the "Nine Colored." The Mongols believe themselves to descend from nine brothers who were the original ancestors. The head of the tribe is assisted by a tribal council. There are various manifestations that keep kinship alive; however, the Mongols observe clan exogamy. But, according to some authors, they also observe tribal exogamy, or name exogamy. This type of kinship among nomadic pastoral peoples is also found among other groups: Turks, ancient Indo-Europeans, Semites, Tungus, Manchus, ancient Mexicans, nomadic Tibetans, noble tribes of the Chatti, Tai, Lolo, etc. While kinship with clan exogamy extends over many generations—i.e., until the need arises to form a new exogamous social unit—kinship by affinity, instead, ends at the first or second degree, since marriage between cousins, children of brothers and sisters, is permitted and, among some peoples, even preferred. This type of kinship also existed in ancient China, attributed however to the Chou, considered a Turkic people of cattle breeders, who continued to found the feudal empire in the 12th century B.C. They in fact observed the law of name exogamy, so that they could not marry even after a hundred generations, i.e., never. Among all these peoples there is a belief in a common origin of all mankind. Thus they have a consciousness of belonging to a particular family, a clan, a tribe, a people, to the human race, believing in a "universal brotherhood," as indeed a disciple of Confucius said when consoling an orphan.
Another type of kinship is that of totemistic peoples, characterized by the strange belief that the individual clans of the tribe descend from a totem, i.e., an animal or a plant, or more rarely, from a thing. All members of a clan, who share the same totem, are bound to exogamy. Children belong to the father’s clan, and kinship is reckoned through the paternal line, as in the previous types of kinship under consideration. Opposite to the foregoing appears the type of kinship in which the tribe is divided into two exogamous groups, i.e., members of each group must seek a wife from the other group of the tribe. This is the marriage known in ethnology as cousin exchange, or exchange of women between two clans, facilitated by their cohabitation in the same place; hence they are very closely tied to kinship by affinity. Children belong to the mother’s group; hence we have the kinship characteristic of matriarchal civilization, in which women enjoy a privileged position relative to men (v. MATRIARCHATE; LAW, IX. Law among primitives). Here exogamy is called class exogamy.
Where totemistic civilization intersects with matriarchal civilization, a very complicated system of kinship arises; the tribe is subdivided into four, six, or even eight exogamous classes, called in ethnology phratries. Children do not belong to the class of the father or the mother, but to that of the grandfather or grandmother. Kinship is reckoned through the maternal line.
Despite the diversity of types of kinship, there are relatives who are everywhere considered the closest. Among consanguineous relatives in the direct line: parents and their offspring; grandparents and their grandchildren, the offspring of their sons and daughters; in the collateral line: brothers and sisters, first cousins, i.e., the sons and daughters of the brother or sister of the father and mother (except, however, among peoples who contract marriage between cross-cousins); among relatives by affinity: father-in-law and mother-in-law, son-in-law and daughter-in-law. Generally, among these relatives, incestuous relations are regarded with the utmost horror and are even punished by death (v. INCEST).
Among the Bambuti of the Ituri, in Africa, for example, clan exogamy exists, but ordinarily that of the large family (*Sippe*) is observed. Yet Father Schebesta noted that when, for some reason, a large family is divided and two exogamous groups are thus formed, the impediment of consanguineous marriage does not immediately apply, but one waits for the passage of several generations and especially for separation of place. The Lolo, scattered in southwestern China, Indochina, and Burma, likewise have clan exogamy; however, they do not contract marriages between collateral relatives until the feeling of consanguinity has completely vanished. For, according to the Lolo, as Father Martin observed, if the common male ancestor is not sufficiently remote, then the same tribe (= clan) is practically still the same family. As long as the name of a sufficiently large group of families has not come to be equivalent to another tribe, one still considers oneself too closely related, and to marry within the same tribe would be as if a brother were to wed his own sister.
Naturally, kinship is regulated by the tradition of the people and by the laws of the ancestors, but it is clear that certain laws are founded in the nature of things and have a supernatural sanction: e.g., among the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands in Melanesia, their explorer Malinowski noted that exogamy and incest are considered traditional (they say: “it has been ordained from antiquity”), but it is also believed that they are rooted in the primordial nature of things, and the transgression of kinship taboos entails a supernatural penalty, namely, a disease that covers the skin with sores and produces pains and general malaise throughout the body—a punishment that one seeks to avoid through a specific magical practice.
There are peoples, such as the Tungus, the Manchus, the Chinese, the Annamites, the southern Tibetans, the Tai, the Koreans, the Japanese, who, in case of necessity, form a new exogamous group or clan based on the principle of five generations; that is, the new group is constituted by all the patrilineal descendants who can be traced back to a common ancestor within five degrees of kinship. Among other peoples, instead, such as the Yakuts, the same Manchus, and some peoples of ancient China, a new exogamous group is formed according to the principle of nine generations.
There are peoples, such as the Tungus, the Buryats, the Manchus, the Chukchi, the Koryaks, the Aleuts, the Amerindians, the ancient Hsien-pi and Hsiung-nu, who observe particular rules affecting kinship, such as the levirate, sororate, and the inheritance of wives from the father as personal possessions. Among the Tungus, for example, in the case of the widow of an elder brother, the levirate is obligatory; the son inherits the wives of his father, except for his own mother. Among the Tungus tribes that raise reindeer herds, a younger relative may inherit the wives of an elder relative, that is, the elder brothers and ascendants of his clan, as do the Buryats and as the ancient Hsien-pi and Hsiung-nu once did.
Among the Chukchi and the Koryaks, the levirate is permitted only with the younger widow, a younger cousin, or with a niece, the daughter of the brother or sister of the deceased wife, but not vice versa, except among the Koryaks of Kamenskoye. The levirate is considered a right, and even if not exercised, the man becomes the father of the deceased’s children and the husband of his wife.
Among the ancient Chinese, there was a custom that when a prince gave his daughter in marriage to the Emperor or to another feudal prince, nine or twelve women had to be given respectively, one of whom had to be the younger sister of the bride, another the niece, the daughter of the brother of the bride, and all the others had to belong to the same family name, and they would become part of the groom’s harem.
Among the particular duties of kinship is that of vengeance, which in lower societies supplants the weak authority of the State. The manner of conceiving this duty varies from people to people; sometimes the obligation of vengeance lasts for several generations. Among the Bambuti of the Ituri, vengeance falls to the head of the group, and the causes that provoke it are varied.
The nomenclature of kinship naturally reflects the different types of kinship. At one time, great importance was given to the so-called “Malaysian system of kinship,” which was observed among the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, in Micronesia, and later in Melanesia. According to this system, one calls “father” not only one’s own father but also every other man who could be a father by virtue of his age, that is, all the men of the same clan belonging to the immediately preceding generation, and one calls “mother” not only one’s own mother but all the women of the clan who, by virtue of their age, could be mothers. Those of one’s own generation are called “brothers” and “sisters”; those of the following generation are called “sons” and “daughters,” and so on up to the degrees of kinship of grandfather and grandmother and of grandson and granddaughter: the ancestor and the great-grandson are named like the grandfather and the grandson. The entire system encompasses five generations. The American ethnologist Lewis Morgan arbitrarily deduced from this nomenclature that it could only derive from a previous period of promiscuity or general agamy.
For many years this argument was considered valid, along with that of matriarchy, in support of the evolutionist theory, which denied the existence of marriage and the family in the earliest epochs of humanity. It was later demonstrated that this system of nomenclature referred to the age relationships of the members of the same clan, relationships based on the conditions of social life. It was also noted that in the Malay and Polynesian languages, kinship relations are sometimes even more subtly distinguished than in our own. Moreover, one could question the seriousness of the argument by reflecting that, even if paternity could be ignored, maternity could not, yet the nomenclature was the same for both sexes (v. FAMIGLIA).
For canon law and moral theology, V. AFFINITÀ; COGNAZIONE: I. c. legale, II. c. spirituale; CONSANGUINEITÀ.