Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER EIGHT
KINSHIP

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into their constituent agnatic genealogical segments. Most people lose interest in their more remote agnates. They seldom know thir patrilineal ancestors beyond their great-grandfather and the connections become forgotten altogether. Even in a large stock like A Lineage, who retain an awareness of agnatic connections over a much wider span, internal quarrels, or simply mutual indifference, take the place of forgetfulness in breaking the effective lineages down to the same size - something less than twenty households at the outside.

Mother's Close Kin

In many patrilineal societies the mother's brother has a sharply contrasting role to the father and the father's brother. So long as clear exogamous agnatic groups exist, this seems to be inevitable since the mother's brother must be the closest male kinsman of ego who is always outside ego's own group, and thus lies off ego's direct road to wealth and power. But in a society where a man's mother's brother may have been anyone from his father's father's brother's son to a complete stranger from a village five hours away, a sharp distinction between maternal and paternal uncles is not to be expected.1 One or two informants insisted that there is no difference at all, but this is an overstatement

Distance permitting, a child has the free run of its mother's natal household. Both mother's parents and mother's brothers treat the child with affection and indulgence. One old man whose daughter's small son, also his own brother's son's son, lived next door to him, boasted that this child preferred his household to its own. A set of brothers in Elbashï told me that they had been brought up in their mother's brother's household. Bektesh (V) of Sakaltutan, helped the brothers of his sister's deceased husband with the arrangements for his sister's orphaned son's wedding, although he was himself poor. Later, he built himself a small guest room and whitewashed the inside walls. A younger son of the same sister by her second husband

  1. The Tswana of Southern Africa are permitted to marry their father's brother's daughter yet distinguish the rdles of father's brother and mother's brother in the usual way. But actual cases are reported as only 1i 1 per cent of the sample. (I. Schapea (1950) pp. 144, 156.)

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