All societies attach rights and duties to kinship relationships outside the family or domestic group. At one extreme are those societies in which a very large part of social intercourse and a large number of technical, economic, and political activities are carried on within acknowledged kinship relations, and in which accordingly the rights and duties of kin to each other are various, numerous and in some matters highly specific and heavily sanctioned. At the other extreme are those societies like industrial Europe and America in which these rights and duties are relatively unimportant in many political and economic matters, seldom distinct or precise, and sanctioned mainly by reciprocity - that is, people are free to contract out of their duties to their kin, on pain only of losing their rights to claim reciprocal friendly support and help.
Within these Turkish villages, that is, excluding the political and economic dependence of the rural area on the wider society, kinship relations are the single most important set of relationships outside the domestic group, and a very high proportion of activity is kinship activity. Yet with some minor exceptions, and one major one, which I shall discuss below, different kinship roles do not carry specific and distinct rights and duties, but rather a general duty of affection, help and support.
Kin visit each others' houses, spend their leisure time together, co-operate in
work, help each other in small crises, such as temporary shortages or the arrival
of the unexpected guest, and in major crises such as sickness, food shortages, sickness
of animals, and the ceremonies of birth, circumcision, marriage and death. The degree
of intimacy of relationship of this kind
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must obviously vary greatly. It depends partly on the closeness of the kinship link,
with a noticeable tendency for agnatic lnks to be stronger than others. But it also
varies with other factors. Even the boundary between kin and non-kin is not clearly
marked. Obviously, as the social distance increases, the scale and frequency of the
exchange of mutual services and friendly intercourse diminishes, but no hard line
exists between kinship akrabalïk - and neighbourliness - komshuluk
. More than once, people said to me that they were kin, akraba ,
then when pressed for details corrected themselves; `Not exactly kin, neighbours.
But it's all the same really.'
Hüseyn (F) and Yahya (V) lived side by side in Sakaltutan, at one edge of the village. Though they recognised no kin tie, they were constantly together. Hüseyn's orphaned agnatic cousin was married to Yahya's daughter, and Hüseyn's guest room was used for the meal given by Yahya to the boy's side when they came to fetch the bride. This case was perhaps exceptional, but it illustrates a perfectly acceptable type of relationship.
The Nuer, a patrilineal people of the southern Sudan, cannot imagine a confusion of distinct kinship roles. In particular, the distinction between agnates and other consanguineal kin and affines is sharp. No one can give and receive cattle for the marriage of the same girl (Evans-Pritchard (1951) pp. I52 ff.). Most unilineal societies have such sharp distinctions. In these villages, on the contrary, again with one major exception, father's sister's daughter, different kinds of uncles and aunts are not theoretically sharply distinct. A man may through the practice of marriage, be mother's brother and classificatory father's brother to the same child. Some informants even denied, incorrectly, that the roles of mother's brother and father's brother differ at all.
The lack of specificity in kinship roles goes with an absence of formal or organised
sanctions. No public authority, for example, admonishes those who fail in their duties,
as the Lozi are lectured in their courts of law (Gluckman (1955) p 358 and passim).
Those who feel that they have been let down have no sanctions to apply except to
withdraw from social relations with the offenders - unless the matter is serious
enough to call for violence. Reciprocity is the main sanction. But the very lack
of specificity and formality weakens this sanction also, because
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the loss of support from one kinsman or set of kin can often be made good by close
ties with another. Indeed, where the network of recognised kin ties is of close mesh,
most people have far mor kinship relations than they keep up with, and are forced
to choose which of these relationships they will pursue, and which they will allow
to remain more or less inoperative. Their choice is governed not only by genealogical
closeness, but also by physical distance, temperament, convenience, relative rank
and wealth, current village hostilities and so on.
Kinship is not only a matter of relations between households. Each adult member of a household has his or her personal links and preferences. Between the men of a single household, who share their agnatic ties, the differences are not usually conspicuous, but adult women, who have been imported as adult strangers with ready-made fields of relationships, normally differ sharply from their husbands and from each other in their choice of intimacies. The more or less universal tendency for husband and wife to draw each other into their own fields of social intimacy is less marked here than in many societies because of the social segregation between the sexes. Of course, ,where a woman marries a close kinsman, the divergence is less; and also where she marries at a great distance from home, it may again be less, because she makes her new relationships with her husband's female kin.
To contract out of some of one's kinship duties does not normally disturb other people in the community, and leads at the very worst to criticism and gossip. The one major exception to this lack of specificity is the duty of agnates to defend each other in quarrels, and to avenge homicide. But even this duty, as I shall explain, is in practice optional - people can and do contract out of it.
The general lack of specificity and the optional and variable character of kinship
ties make the kinship system amorphous, without making it unimportant. The amorphousness
renders description difficult, and my statements about rights and duties of kin in
this chapter and the next may at times be misleadingly definite. I am well aware
that not only people's behaviour, but their statements about what behaviour ought
to be, will vary from situation to situation, from individual to individual and even
from hour to hour.
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The close connection the world over between the structure of kinship relations and the terminology has been amply demonstrated. Striking instances are found in almost every society that has been studied. Significantly different roles normally carry different names. But in spite of this demonstration, we still lack a study of negative instances; indeed we do not have a criterion of what is and what is not a negative instance.
Turkish kinship terminology does not correspond consistently to the structure of kinship roles. The situation is complicated by the use, in the villages, of the standard Turkish terms current in Istanbul, with only relatively minor variations of dialect and usage, although the two societies are very different.
I have listed in the accompanying chart (p. 52) the village terms, with the corresponding standard Turkish terms, translation and some comments. These lists are not strictly comparable, since the standard list is based on general, educated usage an on dictionaries, and not, like the village list, on observation.
Standard Turkish distinguishes parents and children by descriptive terms, (baba, anne, o§ul, kïz ); also parents' siblings by similar descriptive terms, father's brother (amca ), father's sister (hala ), mother's brother (dayï ), mother's sister (teyze ). Their children (cousins) are similarly distinguished. Siblings' children (nephews and nieces) are on the other hand all covered by a single term (vigen ). A single term each also covers grandfather, grandmother and grandchildren. Close affines are distinguished by a fairly full set of terms.
This system differs markedly from most Western European systems only in distinguishing
between parents' siblings (uncles and aunts), parents' siblings' children (cousins),
and different types of affines. It has no classificatory terms in the accepted sense,
though some terms are used loosely - parents' friends may be classed as parents'
siblings for the benefit of small children, for example. Kiz , the word
for daughter, is also the normal word for girl. Agnates are not stressed, nor does
the system in any way reflect a lineage structure. The distinction, for example,
between parents' siblings seems now to correspond to nothing structural.
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CHART OF KINSHIP TERMS
For the sake of completeness, I give a full list of the kinship terms in use in
the villages of the area. Except as indicated, these correspond to standard Turkish
(abbreviated below as S.T.). See Chapter Eight for discussion.
|
baba, peder emmem kïzï emm' usa§ï dayim o§lu dayim kïzï day' usha§ï halam o§lu halam kïzï hal' usa§ï ammem o§lu ammem kïzï |
father father, elder brother (not S.T.) mother parents son daughter child (S.T. boy) child (S.T. foetus) child or children brother sister eIder brother elder sister grandfather grandmother (not S.T.) grandmother father's brother (used in a classificatory sense) mother's brother father's sister (not S.T.) mother's sister (father's sister in S.T.) nephew or niece father's brother's son, used in a classificatory sense (the final m is a possessive suffix, meaning my) father's brother's daughter father's brother's child mother's brother's son mother's brother's daughter mother's brother's child mother's sister's son mother's sister's daughter mother's sister's child father's sister's son father's sister's daughter |
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| amm' usa§ï emmeti koca, herif aile avrat, horanta kayin kayinpeder, kayinata kayinanne, kayinvalide guvah damat gelin kayinbirader görümce baldiz yenge (see pp. 182 ff.) enishte bacanak elti dünür babalik annelik o§ulluk sü annesi süt kardesi |
father's sister's child distant agnate husband wife (S.T. family) wife spouse's kin, especially brother father-in-law mother-in-law bridegroom, son-in-law (S.T.güvey ) bridegroom, son-in-law bride, daughter-in-law spouse's brother husband's sister wife's sister uncle's wife (in S.T. brother's wife; I did not hear it so used in the village) sister's husband; aunt's husband wife's sister's husband husband's brother's wife own child's parents-in-law stepfather stepmother stepson (kïzlïk does not mean stepdaughter) foster mother (wet nurse) foster brother |
The system has some minor inconsistencies which seem to lack any obvious social explanation. Yigen , nephew, niece, is the reciprocal of the four distinct terms for parents' siblings. Wife's sister is distinct from husband's sister, yet wife's brother and husband's brother are the same. Terms for grandparents' siblings are not clear, especially terms for mother's father's siblings and for father's mother's siblings.
Even in standard Turkish synonyms for many of the main terms have been borrowed from Persian and Arabic. These terms mostly correspond in meaning to the Turkish terms, and I have no observations on differences of contextual usage. Sometimes they have slightly different meanings. Evlad , for example, is used for child or children without specifying sex.
The village system in the main reflects the standard Turkish system, but differs
not only in dialect but also significantly in usage. The number of synonyms in current
use struck me as
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high, and terms are very often loosely used. Because people normally used standard
Turkish when speaking to me my impression of dialect usage grew only slowly and may
still be at fault.
Although the formal terminology does not show any stress of agnation, village usage does. The terms for father's brother (paternal uncle) and father's brother's son (agnatic first cousin) are commonly used for all recognised agnates, as if they were classificatory terms, whereas the other terms for uncles and cousins are not so used, or at least to a much smaller degree.
This classificatory looseness is never applied to the words for father and brother; even in what I have called adoption (p. 41), the adopted child uses the term appropriate to the original kinship relation, and not the term for father. For exampl, Ahmet (K) always spoke of and addressed Mahmut (K) an agnatic second cousin (father's father's brother's son's son) as emme , because although equal in generation he was twenty years his senior. Mahmut responded by emmem o§lu thus treating Ahmet as an equal
One curious and interesting feature of the village system is its lack of a straightforward word for wife. The word avrat , commonly heard, is indecent; the word aile is the standard Turkish word for family, though I am not sure how far it carries any implication that children are included. A third word, a local dialect word, horanta, is more commonly used for the population of a household and does imply children. My general impression from many conversations is that villagers do not speak of a man's wife without including children as part of the same concept. On the other hand the word normally translated as daughter-in-law or bride, gelin , is used in a very large number of contexts, even by a husband to refer to his wife. The terms for affines are much the same as those in standard Turkish. Kayin , kin of spouse, is used by itself in a fairly general way, and also compounded with other kinship terms to indicate particular kin of spouse. Equally, eniste , strictly the sister's husband, is freely used of the husbands of close kin. Görümce and baldïz , though they are known, I seldom heard in the villages.
The villages also used three terms which do not have counterparts in standard
Turkish: bacanak , wife's sister's husband (i.e a man who shares one's
kayïn ); elti , husband's brother's wife, a
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woman who is likely to share a household with one at some point and remain a neighbour
throughout married life, anddünür , child's spouse's parents.
All three terms are in common use in the villages where they refer to relations important
in village society (p. 172).
Details apart, the kinship structure and the terminology are not a close fit. The
village is presented by a larger society with ready-made kinship terminology, the
main feature of which is that it is readily adaptable to a wide range of possible
social systems, and has only a general negative relation to the social structure.
Some details have clearly been adapted to fit particular aspects of village society;
others seem to have no explanation of this sort. To put the matter another way: if
we had nothing but a record of the kinship terminology of this society, how much
could we safely deduce about the kinship system? Very little.
Agnates have a duty which separates them sharply from all other kin. They must stand together in disputes. If a man quarrels, his agnates must support him. If he is attacked, they must defend him. If he is killed, they must avenge him. By defining loyalties in serious cases, this duty divides the villages into fairly clear cut and potentially hostile agnatic groups.
These groups are fundamental to the village political structure, and are the basis of the feuding system. Both of these topics will be treated more fully in chapter eleven.
Agnates of course share the general duties of kin to each other; indeed these are normally stronger between agnates than among others, and services rendered are less precisely evaluated and less meticulously reciprocated.
In the winter, almost all village men meet together to gossip in a number of guest rooms. In the summer more casual groups form out of doors during the evenings. I shall analyse these groups later (p. 240). Their core is usually agnatic, and the guet rooms are often identified with a particular lineage.
In a crisis, it is the duty first and foremost of agnates to help out. In Sakaltutan,
one old man lived in the lower quarter in
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his wife's house, among his affines, and in day to day converse maintained with them
far more visible friendly contact than with his agnates who lived on the patrimonial
site in the centre of the village. At the harvest both he and his only grown son
fell seriously ill. No one was left to reap and gather in the crops. In this emergency,
it was his agnates, not his neighbours, who saved him from destitution. Of the six
men who worked together to reap his fields, at a time when everybody is anxious to
be about his own business, only one was an affine and neighbour. Two were brothers,
one was second agnatic cousin, (father's father's brother's son's son), and two were
third agnatic cousins (father's father's father's brother's son's son's son). Two
other older cousins failed to help, but no closer agnate was absent.
Musa (K) had recently lost a wife through sickness. In the absence of any other adult woman, this loss caused disastrous disorganisation to his household during the harvest. In this crisis, the group which I found harvesting his fields consisted mainly of agnates. All the acknowledged members of his lineage in the village were present, his two brothers, his two agnatic first cousins (father's brother's sons), and his only agnatic second cousin. In addition, the group contained his son-in-law from the next village, who came in duty bound, and two close neighbours to whom he automatically acquired a strict, if not urgent, duty to repay a day's labour. Among agnates also, a reciprocal-duty was of course acknowledged, but within a much more constant and flexible flow of mutual services. They all stated firmly that they had formed the group to help Musa. But in fact the group went in turn round the fields of each member, spending one day on each, so that Musa's advantage was, it seemed to me, eventually eroded.
Agnates have special responsibilities to assist at marriages. If a boy's father
is no longer alive, his close agnates are likely to bear the main burden of seeing
him married. Zübeyr (F) who, when I reached the village, was away in town working,
returned to the village in December, and was married in March (p.
144). His senior agnatic first cousin (father's brother's son), Hüseyn (F),
acted as host, made most of the arrangements, and helped financially. He was an older
man, by village standards prsperous and honourable. It was to Hüseyn's
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neighbour and constant companion Yahya's daughter (p.
149) that Zübeyr was married. Another agnatic first cousin, somewhat younger,
also assisted materially with the arrangements
In normal weddings, the customs and rites express the opposition between groom's
kin and bride's kin. People line up according to neighbourhoods and the closeness
of the kin ties to each side, but the agnates are the core of committed people on
both. The two sides meet when the boy's side come to fetch the bride, and the tension
between them is plain. At this particular wedding, a young man who was the bride's
father's first agnatic cousin (father's father's brother's son) was also a friend
and migrant workmate of the groom. He came with his neighbours and other comrades
at the head of the procession to fetch her to her new home. This defection from lineage
loyalty was remarked upon, and he was picked for especially unpleasant treatment
in the horseplay to which the groom's party are by custom required to submit during
the ceremonIes.
On the day which marks the end of Ramazan, called in Turkey Sheker Bayrami, the villagers visit each other in peace, and all should shake hands and wish each other a blessed feast day. In Sakaltutan, where I witnessed this ceremony, numbers are small enough for this to be possible. All households who own guest rooms of any kind open them, and one senior man sits there to welcome visitors, while parties of younger men tour the village calling at each guest room. These parties consisted mainly of agnates; even those normally on rather cool terms were to be seen together on this day. Similarly, at the Feast of Sacrifice, the Kurban Bayrami , which follows twelve weeks later, people share animals for sacrifice. Once again, many of the groups had an agnatic core; but since seven householders share an ox or cow, and a sheep serves for one household only, strictly agnatic groups are arithmetically impossible.
All these co-operative activities then have an agnatic bias; but it is only a
bias. None of them are in theory or practice tied to particular roles, and they are
conspicuous among agnates solely because agnates are in general closer to each other
than to anyone else.
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The lineages are small groups of shallow depth, reckoning common agnatic descent from the grandfather or great-grandfather of the senior living generation. For example, the largest group in Sakaltutan, reckoning genealogically, contained twenty households (p. 62). Sakaltutan contained ten such groups, the others ranging from three or four to ten households, and Elbashï a correspondingly larger number. In some cases, distinct groups were vaguely said to have had common agnatic ancestry, but no one kne or cared very much. One or two lineages in each village had traditions about the arrival of their founding father in the village.
Shallow patrilineal groups of this kind are found in many peasant societies - in Arab countries and in Asia (Granquist (1931), Peters (1964), Embree (1946). Srinivas (1952) etc., etc.) Since the non-overlapping groups defined by descent from a common ancestor through one sex only, it seems pointless to refuse them the name `lineage'. But it is true that this is no complex large-scale segmentary system such as is found in Middle East tribal society, and in other parts of the world (Peters (1960), Evans-Pritchard (1940), Freedman (1958) etc.). These lineages are in many.ways strikingly unlike the lineages of these larger scale systems both in form and function.
They can hardly be called corporate. (cf. Fortes (1953) p. 25, Evans-Pritchard (1940) p. 203.) They are not legal or jural persons in custom or in law. They own nothing in common for one exception, see p. 242), they have no common ritual symbols, teir leaders are not often clearly and formally recognised, and they are neither exogamous nor endogamous. More importantly, though it is impossible to belong to two lineages, it is possible for some households tacitly to contract out of lineage activities, and a few households with no close agnates have no lineage affiliation at all.
Their existence and persistence does not rely on the part they play as units in
a larger system, but on the recognition and fulfilling of the special personal rights
and duties of agnates to each other. It is the fact that the men of a number of households
recognise both close relations of a general kind and the specific duty to defend
each other that constitutes the group.
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This group is much more obvious in a crisis when faced with an active quarrel and
the possibility of violence.
Yet their existence is clearly recognised in the villages. They are in this area called kabile , a word of Arabic origin, which in Istanbul means tribe. One man in Elbashï, urging me to write letters to the village, said I could write to each of the five kabile , and the letters could be read out in the guest rooms. Here kabile corresponded rather to the village quarters than to the actual lineage, which numbered more than five. But he thought in terms of agnatic groups.
Moreover, each lineage has its own name. These are almost always based on the name or nickname of a founding ancestor, for example, Köse Aliler (the Bald Alis), Hamuslilar (those from Damascus), Sarilar (the Blondes), Shehusha§ï (offspring of the Sheyh). Before I935, these names were apparently one recognised way of distinguishing people in the villages. In 1935, everyone was compelled by law to adopt a surname of the normal European type based on linguistically pure Turkish roots. The new names were in most cases quite independent and unlike existing village names, and most people seem to have been allocated names from an official list. Certainly the villages are now full of Truebloods, Trueturks, Whitesouls, Brights, Strongs, Sturdies, Lions and so forth (Özkan, Özturk, Akcan, Aydïn, Gürbüz, Aslan).
Neither the old lineage names nor the modern names are universally used. Sometimes women and children do not know even their own official surnames, and only those responsible for official village business will know all the village surnames. I used official surnames to keep my records for the same reason that officials do so - convenience of identification. In most cases the older names are known and still used, but in a few they were disputed, or simply not known. First names and current nicknames normally suffice for the villagers' own purposes.
I made several attempts to collect complete lists of the traditional lineage names
in both villages, but in spite of prompting, the lists never came out the same, because
people always disagreed about the details. Some names, they said, were not fully
fledged kabile , but only branches (shübe ), or arms
(kol ) of other lineages, and in a few cases they even differed on which
lineage certain village households belonged to. In all, I re
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-corded eleven such names in Sakaltutan and nineteen in Elbashï.
In Sakaltutan, the division of the village into agnatic groups was recognised in
another way. People talked of the great ones, büyükler . the
senior members of the village. Once or twice, a group of great ones met ad
hoc when some important village business came up - a self-selecting group.
But it was also customary after a full wedding ceremony for the groom's side to feast
the büyükler . I witnessed such a gathering three times, and
once was party to drawing up the list of guests. This was done casually at the last
moment, with the implicit assumption that everyone knew in any case what would happen
and who would be invited. On each occasion about forty of the hundred village household
heads were invited. Each time, a few people not entitled as `great ones' were invited,
either to help with serving and hospitality, or because of a special tie to the host.
The büyükler are not heads of lineages, nor are they simply village elders. They are the senior members of segments of lineages. Whether or not a man would receive an invitation independently of a senior and important father's brother's son would depend less on the solidarity of the lineage to which they both belonged, than on his own personal seniority and importance. The invitation goes to the senior man, but he may delegate it to an agnate if he wishes. Household heads who have no agnates were invited in person, with the exception of one or two very poor and junior men. Thus, practically speaking, the guests at the feast represented agnatically the whole village.
In Elbashï a similar informal self-selected body of elders for important deliberations certainly exists. But in a larger less homogeneous community they do not constitute a more or less stable group of wedding guests.
Village lineages often inhabit clusters of houses. A successful household normally
expands by building on rooms for married sons, and in due course the old house is
divided by partitions; in the next generation the new households will seek to expand
again. When the population is growing, this system leads to congestion, and people
move away from the centre, sometimes breaking away from their close agnates. Sometimes
the whole agnatic group will move to a new site, leaving more space between their
houses, and the whole process starts again. The village thinks of lineages as belonging
to certain parts of the
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village, and in Elbashï some of the village quarters were named after their
main lineages, in spite of the numerous anomalies which existed in fact.
The lineage is an affair of men. Women belong to at least two households. By the same token three-quarters of them, except, that is, for those who marry within the lineage (p. 202), belong to at least two lineages. As members of their husband's husehold they co-operate as he does with the households of his close agnates, but they also have a range of close kin ties of their own, the more so the closer to home they marry. When it comes to quarrels and fights women often side fiercely with their men, not out of lineage loyalty but out of direct personal loyalty. Where a woman's natal lineage clashes with her husband's lineage, behaviour is difficult to predict. Young women are in any case likely to avoid public participation out of shame; older women are perhaps more likely to side with husbands and sons against fathers and brothers.
In one sense, a lineage only exists at a time of hostility, and consists only of those agnates who support their group in quarrels. Alternatively, lineage membership may be assessed from the general degree of intimacy and co-operation. Thirdly, and simplest, one may reckon genealogically. In most cases these three criteria would produce different results.
In theory, mutual defence is a duty binding on close agnates. In practice, either through active quarrels or through indifference, people contract out of this duty as out of the more general neighbourly services, on the same penalty - loss of reciprocal rights. To forego this protection is clearly dangerous; but on occasion, it is also dangerous to retain it, and some men declare themselves peace lovers and uninterested in their kinsmen's quarrels. Some of the poorer and more lowly lineages in Elbashï have no visible unity at all. Even in the more prominent ones it is often difficult to know who would in fact fight if the need arose. Where agnates are in close daily contact, lineage solidarity may be assumed, but apparent indifference in day to day life by no means implies that people are not still lineage members in the important sense.
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.
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.)
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-
Three brothers, including Haci Omer, dominated this group, and were very influential in the village. The heads of another group of four households were sons and grandsons of a man brought to the village by his widowed mother, and brought up as the son of a close agnate of the father of the first three. Two other households claimed definitely to be of common descent with this group, but did not know how, and one other belonged, but its young head was on military service. The lineage claimed descent from one of four brothers said to have founded the village.
All were descended from the grandfather of the oldest living generation, but showed no conspicuous solidarity. They claimed descent from the village founders.
Five of these, including Ziya, were brothers or brother's son to each other, and one young man was attached through a brother of their common ancestor. A very self-conscious and slightly belligerent group, but with its own sharp internal rift. All were close neighbours. They claimed descent from the village founders.
Divided into two sharply distinct groups, in each of which were brothers and brothers' sons, apparently connected through a common great-grandfather. One segment (five households) was much poorer than the other. Neither was belligerent. Probably also descended from the vi1lage founders.
Haci Osman, a well-to-do man who had been to Mecca in 1949, was the head of one
of four agnatically related households (H). The head of one of these was his old,
sick, ineffectual father's
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brother's son, and the two other household heads were desended from his great-grandfather.
Some said these belonged to S Lineage, but Haci Osman said he thought he was agnatically
related to G. In his case, there was little emphasis on the lineage, which was weak
in manpower; but a less precisely defined group of people, mainly his sister's sons,
frequented his guest room and depended on his patronage. Through these followers
he was a man of great influence.
Two other effective lineages were explicitly descended from Immigrants.
All great-grandchildren of one man, divided into a group of three and a group of five. Close ties were recognised; they shared a common guest room, and were-close neighbours. One other household head, an orphaned son, brought up in his mother's father's household, was sister's son to one of the households, but kept himself apart. Though socially close to each other, this lineage did not, while I was in the village, have any enemies.
This, another immigrant lineage, was by contrast militant. All were descended from the grandfather of the senior living member, an old man. The lineage contained two large and prosperous households, and was at feud with V Lineage.
Two other groups in the village acknowledge some common agnatic ancestry, but showed no sign of mutual interest.
Three separate groups of households, whose heads in each case were close agnates, one of four, one of three and one of two households, all gave one particular name four or five generations back in their genealogies. They took no special interest in each other at all.
One group of three households and another of five claimed a common link, and two
other men, brothers, were said also to spring from the same agnatic origin. They
none of them showed interest in each other, beyond their own immediate agnates.
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The remaining fourteen households were isolated agnatically; they included three
brothers claiming agnatic connection to G Lineage, another agnatic set of three landless
households, Ismet (T) `s large and rich immigrant household plus a small offshoot
(p. 2). 127-8), one moderate household which was
the last of a once large lineage, and one or two poor households isolated or paired
with brothers.
The arrangement of lineages in Elbashï was even less tidy than in Sakaltutan. A high proportion of households seemed uninterested in agnatic connections. The village contained eighteen households which were fairly recent immigrants from the east of Turkey, who had failed to return to their homes after the Russian invasion of I877 and I915, and eight immigrant households of local origin. In a few cases agnatic connections were known on a wider range than any in Sakaltutan, but the effective lineages were no larger.
A Lineage was by far the largest agnatic stock I came across. One
man put its strength at one hundred households, another at sixty. In fact, about
fifty households claimed or were said to be agnates of this stock - most of them
on reliable grounds. In this lineage, unlike others, the main segments had not acquired
names of their own. But the leading households in the stock were split into two hostile
groups, one (Ax) containing ten and the other (Ay) eighteen households. This second
larger wing was itself genealogically segmented into two. In one of these, all eight
households, who were close agnates of the four brothers who lead it, were effective
members, but in the other segment only some of the households seemed to take much
interest. Another group of four households, brothers or brothers' sons to each other,
acknowledged agnatic connection to this main stock, but seemed uncommitted if not
unfriendly. A fourth group of six agnatically related households had a separate lineage
name, and one of its wealthy members denied any connection with A. But the evidence
including some of his own, was against him. The remaining households of the fifty
were divided into small groups of close agnates, ranging from two to five households,
not too sure of their agnatic connections, and not particularly interested.
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B Lineage numbered fifteen households, including one immigrant attached
through his mother and his wife, and one widow with three daughters, whose father
and late husband were both members of the lineage. In this case, all households,
even the poorest, seemed to acknowledge loyalty to the group.
Another genealogically large lineage - about twenty households in all - was also amorphous. One branch of six, C Lineage, had a separate name and a reputation for solidarity and aloofness. A man of this group was shot dead during our stay, (p. 26).In the ensuing quarrel, they received no support from members of the larger lineage. Among the twenty was another set of seven households descended from a common grandfather, but I do not know how much internal solidarity they possessed.
Z Lineage claimed a long and distinguished history, and gave its name to a village quarter. A central core of about eight households made regular and fairly exclusive use of one guest room. Two other senior acknowledged members kept apart because of a quarrel, and other households admitted agnatic connection but showed no interest. Two refugee households had married into the group and behaved as members.
Another genealogically large lineage, sixteen households in all, was divided into two groups, which barely acknowledged the link between them - one informant again denied it in the face of the evidence. Another lineage numbered nine related households, including some influential ones, but I cannot say how effective relationships were. Two smaller lineages consisted entirely of poorer households, one of five and one of six.
Together with the refugee households, these lineages cover about I50 households, just over two-thirds of the village. Besides these, I heard of another nine named lineage groups, most of which contained from one or two to five current households, and one of which was extinct. Of the rest of the households, I assume that they did not know or were not interested in anyone except the close circle of kin, among whom in most cases close agnates would have a special place. Most of them were grouped in sets of brothers or brothers' sons, very often with the same adopted official surname. In some of these cases my impression that people have little or no interest in their lineages may simply be due to my ignorance.
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In Elbashï then, there were in all some nine groups which qualify, some more,
some less definitely as what I have called effective lineages, all of which contained
some fairly influential and well-to-do households. In addition, there were other
named lineage groups either small in numbers, or poor, or both. Of the eighteen refugee
households, some were themselves developing small lineages of their own, and others
had merged in existing lineages. The remainder, about one-quarter of the village
households, seemed to have little interest in lineages beyond regarding their brothers
and agnatic first cousins as rather special kin.
If the primary duty of agnates is defence, why do so many people in the village take so little interest in lineage membership? And, if so many people can manage without, why do some find their lineage membership so important?
Soon after I settled in Sakaltutan, I was discussing land shortage in the village, and was told of villages not so very far away where there was land to be had for the ploughing. In more distant parts there were said to be empty lands. Why then, I asked, did the villagers not go to these well landed parts? Who, they replied, `would come to our side in quarrels?' At the time the implications of this reply surprised me. Later I realised that fear of aggression and violence within the village was genuine and well-founded.
Property rights, especially land rights, could not be taken for granted. Neighbours
might at any time encroach on one's boundaries, or seek to establish some kind of
claim. Security lay not in legality, but in strength. As I have argued, although
a functioning system for State protection of individual rights existed even in 1950,
the situation did not encourage villagers to call in outsiders or refer disputes
to officials or lawyers. Membership of a group strong enough to retaliate is a much
more effective insurance against trouble. But trouble is not something to be expected
by everyone every day, and the dependence of people on their lineages is related
largely to the current quarrels and fears. At the same time, insurance involves premiums
in the shape in this case of commitment to
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defend others, and those confident in their own ability to avoid trouble, or with
very little to lose, sometimes prefer to avoid lineage responsibilities. Others,
of course, had no choice because they did not possess sfficient agnates to form effective
lineages. In a few cases, such men might rely on political skill and wealth to prevent
any attack on their position or property.
In the larger lineages more was at stake than simple defence of rights. They had prestige and influence in the village to maintain. A large close-knit lineage with a goodly number of reliable knives and guns was clearly worth belonging to, and the restraints and demands of such a group on its members would not outweigh the advantages of membership.
Prestige was also dependent on honour, namus , and this was directly related to the women of lineage households. To show interest in a woman other than by formally seeking her hand in marriage was a deadly insult to her menfolk. Most killings, or attempted killings, while I was in touch with this area were directly or indirectly the result of the alleged `insulting' of a woman.
The toughness with which a man chose in practice to defend his honour would clearly be highly variable. Those at the bottom of the village hierarchy were less concerned anyway with the honour of their women, particularly if these had already lost it. The better-off, by leading quiet and virtuous lives, marrying virtuous women, and not attending too closely to gossip and suspicion, might avoid quarrels; but others seemed to seek trouble and be ready at the slightest hint of dishonourable intentions to resort to violence. Clearly, the more sensitive a man is to his honour the more he needs lineage support.
I have already stressed the absence of any clear criterion for effective lineage
membership, except at times of actual violence. I have also shown that only a proportion
of households in each village belonged to effective lineages, most of which contained
a core of better-off households, and a number of poorer ones. This arrangement is
in a sense only a special case of the normal structure of village social relations.
The richer and more influential men act as protectors and helpers for the poorer
and weaker ones, so that the village consists of pyramid-like groups centred on the
more powerful. The size of a man's following increases his importance, and his importance
in turn brings in
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followers (p. 257). Success depends partly on conformityo
accepted rules of conduct such as generosity and piety. But it will also depend on
the number of established relationships he already has - mainly agnatic relationships.
In other words, both for those in the village who wish to be leaders and equally
for those who wish to be followers, the cultural emphasis on agnation provides one
of the main grounds for recruitment ofgroups for mutual protection and the enhancement
of prestige. But the villages also contain some who have no wish to belong to lineages,
and some who have no lineage to belong to. Between them, these cover perhaps half
the population of Elbashï and rather less than half that of Sakaltutan.
No effective lineage numbered as much as twenty households most of them very much less - and none had a genealogical depth of more than three generations above the senior living generation; five in all. Both the reason for this effective limit, and the way in which fission actually takes place, are implicit in the description I have just given.
The lineage has no clear-cut membership except at times of active hostility. It lacks any formal criterion of membership and any symbol of unity except its name. Even when a lineage has a leader he holds no formal position. When there are no active quarrels the lineage persists because members seek each others' company, meet together in guest rooms, help each other in various ways and publicly acknowledge their agnatic ties. Readiness to side actively with each other can only be observed when the need actually arises. Ties may therefore loosen slowly, with the growth of households and changes in the relation between them, without any sharp break being obvious unless and until the threat of danger makes it clear who is loyal to whom.
The lack of formal membership leaves only the vaguer criterion of relative friendliness.
But the number of intimate ties one household can maintain, and the size of the group
which can meet regularly for social intercourse, is limited. Above, say, a dozen
households the maintenance of a loyalty which depends on personal intimacy becomes
difficult. Larger groups break up
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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.
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
All these examples show the importance that a mother's brother may play in the life of his nephew or niece. On the other hand, a great many men took very little day-to-day interest in their sisters' children. Apparent indifference is not inconsistent with the fulfilling of duties at a time of crisis. Yet the point remains that a large element of permissiveness and vagueness makes it impossible to describe even this role in precise terms.
Emme , father's brother, and dayi , mother's brother, may not be as sharply contrasted as they are in some societies. Yet they are distinct. The mother's brother represents the interest of the mother's kin in the child, and is usually more indulgent and more of a friend. The father's brother is perhaps felt to be closer, and to have more precise binding responsibilities, including that of defence. But no one sees any difficulty in combining the role of classificatory emme with dayi in those cases where a child's parents are agnatic cousins.
The terminology equally distinguishes between mother's sister and father's sister.
I heard no formal statement of the difference between these roles; the relationship
in both cases should be one of affection and helpfulness, but what actually happens
depends primarily on physical and social distance. Other things being equal, as a
woman is closer to her sister than her brother, sharing with her the paramount woman's
interest in children, so a mother's sister is perhaps likely to be closer and more
motherly than a father's sister.
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Affines comprise the kin of one's spouse, and the spouses of one's kin and their close kin. All consanguineal kinship relations begin inevitably at the birth of the younger partner. But most affines are added to one in later life, when one's primary loyalties are already formed. The greater social distance and the mutual suspicion which result call, as is commonly recognised, for special rules and more precisely defined rights and duties, at least in the beginning.
The relationship of a girl to her husband's household has already been described (p. 108). Beyond them, she will be referred to asgelin (bride, daughter-in-law), by all who identify with her husband's group. If she is strange to her husband's village then all his co-villagers may call her gelin : certainly his close kin, especially his agnates, will do so.
The corresponding male terms, guvah or damat , also
mean equally bridegroom or son-in-law. The ties of a man to his wife's parents are
more than friendliness. They have done him a great and never to be repaid favour
by granting him their daughter, and he owes them respect and services. When Musa
(K) needed help with his harvest (p. 156) his son-in-law
left his own harvest in another village in order to help, and this with no expectation
of return.
This subordinate relationship alters with time. As the wife's security, stake and
power in her marital household increase, her parents' hold over her, and thus, indirectly,
over her husband, decreases. His deference to them may change to personal warmth
or to formal coolness. In time, of course, they will die, and the head of his wife's
natal household will be her brother, a man of his own generation. At this stage,
formal duties matter less, and actual relations vary from great warmth to active
hostility.
Early in marriage, the groom's parents will normally be providing the young couple
with a part of their own home, and the parents of the bride will be watching anxiously
to see fair play for their daughter. Some marriages are deliberately arranged in
order to provide or cement an alliance, giving the two sides reasons for ostensible
friendliness. Very often they are already kin. The relationship between the two sets
of parents is
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vital, and hence the existence of a special kin term to cover it.
Men finding themselves as sons-in-law to the same father-in-law recognise also a
special link between themselves, with a special term. This link is even more permissive
than most. A man may ignore his bacanak as far as possible, or may court
him and use him. One man pompously remarked in public `Among us, a bacanak
is highly valued'.
At marriage the men stay put, and the women move. All ties involving one or more women, that is, all but agnatic ties between men, are variable, since the way kin treat each other depends on both the physical and the current social distance between them, which in turn depend on the marriage of the women involved.
Kin ties between women are affected by another factor. Women do not in the day-to-day life move easily round the village, let alone between villages. They are tied by household duties, by small children or grandchildren, and by modesty, to their home. At the same time, they are extremely gregarious. No woman ever remains alone if she can manage to avoid it, and loneliness is constantly spoken of as a great evil. House doors are never shut to other women and children, who come and go without ceremony or greeting. Expeditions to fetch water, or to the fields to work, are normally undertaken in company.
For a girl set down by her marriage in a strange village, her new daily circle may include no previous kin at all. New intimacies must be forged among neighbours and affines. In practice, in almost any village close to her own a woman will have some kin; she is often marrying into an already allied household. But even then her new circle is still bound to include many strangers. Even a girl who marries her father's brother's son in the next house in her own village will find in her circle some strangers who have moved into it by their own marriage.
Thus any set of women who meet daily and share their tasks, their child-minding,
and their gossip will include some who are neither kin nor childhood neighbours to
each other. Such a set will change its composition fairly steadily over time, by
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mrriages in and out, and divorces, as well as deaths and the growing up of daughters.
The women explicitly recognise this situation. One group told my wife that akrabalïk , kinship, did not count for women as it did for men. What mattered to women was neighbourliness, komshuluk . They did not mean that kinship does not count at all. Ties with kin are kept up by occasional visits, by gossip and news, by children going back and forth. Where close kin are within reach, the relationship may be very close. Bektesh's wife had a sister a few doors away, and these two were constantly exchanging visits, bread and children more freely than either did with the households around them. Two young married women of lineage in Sakaltutan were both married to the other end of the village, yet they were very frequent visitors of their mothers and sisters.
The importance of kin ties to a woman vary not only with the accident of marriage, but also with the stage it has reached. In her early years, she is an inferior in her household, and still looks to her natal kin for love and support. As she establishes a growing family of her own, and close ties with her affines through the children, she becomes more centred on her marital home, her neighbours, and her grandchildren than on her natal kin. An old widowed mother normally remains with her sons, among the neighbours of her adult lifetime. Of course, childlessness, serious quarrels, a husband's death, or a divorce may make normality impossible. The worst that can befall a woman is an old age kimsesiz, without anyone, dependent on the charity of neighbours who have no obligation to help.
In Sakaltutan, the women's terms of address matched this lack of emphasis on particular
kin ties. All women call their equals and juniors, whether kin or not, kiz
, girl, occasionally putting a personal name in front of it to avoid ambiguity.
Older women, if addressed at all, are addressed by kinship terms, often by a term
closer than the actual link. Non-kin equally are addressed as abla, elder sister;
as baci, a word also meaning sister, but commonly used as a respect title like a§a
or efendi for the men; or as amme (father's sister).
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The half-hour to two hours' walking between villages is a physical barrier to frequent contact. The village boundary is also a social barrier. A man knows the men of his own village from his own childhood, or from theirs. Friends and enemies, they all belong as no outsider can. Women often straddle two villages. Yet women's daily contacts are more restricted than men's. They occasionally go from one village to another in pairs or groups, but normally, for any distance, a man is expected to escort them.
Although people are always to be seen passing back and forth between villages, for most individuals a visit to another village is a comparative rarity. Women visit their natal homes at least once a year; children go to see uncles and aunts; animals, food and utensils are borrowed and returned, or bought and sold; craftsman are hired; cures and charms and advice sought; marriages discussed and arranged; weddings and funerals attended; the sick visited; loans asked, given, and repaid; crops shared, grain milled, border land disputed; refreshment and shelter offered and accepted. Even when kinship is not directly the occasion for contact, it almost always provides a channel.
On one occasion, Bektesh was escorting me from the town out to Sakaltutan on foot
in deep snow. We arrived at the village before Sakaltutan late in the day and near
exhaustion. We stopped to rest at the house of his nearest kinsman, the husband of
a second paternal cousin, (father's father's brother's son's daughter), whom he called
sister's husband, (enishte ), and were pressed to stay the night. Somewhat
reluctantly, Bektesh agreed. On two occasions, to my knowledge, he went secretly
to matrilateral kin in another village for a loan, once because his food supply was
exhausted, and once because he needed treatment from a religious expert for a malady
which he believed the doctor unable to cure. On another occasion, when two or three
of us were setting out to negotiate for a bride from a somewhat distant village,
we met a man of Sakaltutan, kin to our party, whose current wife - his second - was
from the village we were to visit. He at once offered to come with us, partly to
see his affines, partly to use his influence on our behalf- unsuccessfully as it
transpired.
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Over one-third of the marriages I recorded in Sakaltutan crossed village frontiers
(p. 205). Each of these would create or renew a
number of affinal and cognatic ties. Quite often ties between two lineages in different
villages were maintained over number of generations by cross-cousin marriage, full
or classificatory. Thus G Lineage had exchanged women for at least three generations
with a lineage in another village, with whom they had thus established a complex
set of personal kin ties.
Agnatic kin ties between villages are rare. Men seem to move normally between villages in only three types of situation. The first, of which traces survive, was probably common in the past. A poor boy or young man may become a servant, çirak, p. 56, and remain permanently in the village of his master. Secondly, if a widow marries to a new village or returns from her husband's to her own, she may take a small son with her, and he may then remain as a member of his mother's village of residence. Thirdly, an adult man may occasionally marry into and move to another village, if such a move offers better prospects than remaining in his father's house. In almost all cases of this type I came across, the man moved to his mother's village and married a close agnate of hers - very often a girl with no brothers. No adult man had moved into Sakaltutan for two or three generations, and only three had left as adults to settle permanently in other villages. Even Elbashï, an administrative centre with land in plenty until the end of the Second World War, had had to my knowledge only eight immigrant households in two generations, apart from the wartime refugees from eastern Turkey. Most of these had married in or come in as stepsons. One was a stranger, and another was a Kurd who was married to a woman of the area, whose sister was also married in Elbashï.
Even where agnatic ties do exist between villages, the primary duty of defence and revenge seems to lapse. No quarrel or feud between lineages ever crossed village frontiers, and while brothers might maintain very close ties, including an annual sharing of the produce of the patrimonial land, their rights and duties were not different in kind from inter-village ties of other kin.
A kinsman in another village is not, as in one's own village,
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a peak above a generally high level of intimacy, but an oasis in a desert of strangers.
The visitor, instead of being dependent on the formal hospitality of the village
headman, has peple of his own in the village. Inter-village kinship thus functions
very differently from kinship within the village, and this difference overrides distinctions
between kinds of kinship relationship. The day-to-day petty help between close neighbours
is replaced by a less intimate but equally important mutual dependence for protection
in a strange environment. The villagers love to hear news, to visit and entertain
their kin from other villages, and this constant coming and going provides the occasion
for innumerable exchanges of political and economic importance.
Updated Friday, October 23, 1998