Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER EIGHT

KINSHIP

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Page 162

Lineage membership finishes at the village boundary. Where for some reason an agnatic branch of a lineage exists in another village the special duties of agnates lapse.1 Migrants from one village to another are thus left without agnatic defence in their new village. In practice, in all cases I knew of, a man setting up house in another village went to the village of his mother, and married a girl of her natal lineage. He would then normally become de facto a member of his mother's lineage, which was also his wife's lineage. Since lineages had no formal structure, it was impossible to know how far active support would in fact be carried.

In one or two other cases, genealogical ties were not precisely known, and the actual affiliation of people was not clear. These may have resulted from immigration along an affinal link, or from the attempt to compensate for a loss of agnatic kin by shadowy affiliation to another group. Even fairly definite groups of agnates often had one or two peripheral households associated with them. For lineages consisting of a core of loyal households I shall use the word `effective'. In the next two sections, I analyse briefly the lineage composition of the two villages.

Sakaltutan Lineages

Of the ten recognisable lineages listed, only seven are without any shadow of doubt worthy to be called effective. Of these, one might well be described as two effective lineages. Fourteen other households belong to none of the ten named lineages. (See Fig. 3, p 19.)

V Lineage, Twenty Households.

Thirteen of these households were directly descended from the father of old Hamit, still alive at about eighty, through him or three of his brothers. Three other segments, one of four households, one of two and one of one household, were descended from Hamit's father's brothers. Some, including one or two of the thirteen gave the impression of taking little interest in their affiliations. The head of one of these, Durdu, was later shot dead in a lineage quarrel, proving that im-
  1. There may be a time-lg. I observed no very recent cases.

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