Reciprocity and Kinship Rank

It is by now apparent—it is made apparent by the illustrative materials of Appendix A—that in any actual exchange several circumstances may simultaneously bear upon the material flow. Kinship distance, while perhaps significant, is not necessarily decisive. Some­thing may be said for rank, relative wealth and need, the type of goods whether food or durables, and still other "factors." As a tactic of presentation and interpretation, it is useful to isolate and separately consider these factors. Accordingly, we move on to the relation be­tween reciprocity and kinship rank. But with this proviso: proposi­tions about the covariation of kinship distance or of kinship rank and reciprocity can be argued separately, even validated separately to the extent to which it is possible to select instances in which only the factor at issue is in play—holding "other things constant"—but the propositions do not present themselves separately in fact. The obvious course of further research is to work out the power of the several "variables" during combined plays. At best only the beginnings of this course are suggested here.

Rank difference as much as kinship distance supposes an economic relation. The vertical, rank axis of exchange—or the implication of rank—may affect the form of the transaction, just as the horizontal kinship-distance axis affects it. Rank is to some extent privilege, droit du seigneur, and it has its responsibilities, noblesse oblige. The dues and duties fall to both sides, both high and low have their claims, and feudal terms indeed do not convey the economic equity of kinship ranking. In its true historic setting noblesse oblige hardly cancelled out the droits du seigneur. In primitive society social inequality is more the organization of economic equality. Often, in fact, high rank is only secured or sustained by o'ercrowing generosity: the material advan­tage is on the subordinate's side. Perhaps it is too much to see the relation of parent and child as the elemental form of kinship ranking and its economic ethic. It is true, nevertheless, that paternalism is a common metaphor of primitive chieftainship. Chieftainship is ordi­narily a relation of higher descent. So it is singularly appropriate that the chief is their "father," they his "children," and economic dealings between them cannot help but be affected.

The economic claims of rank and subordination are interdepen­dent. The exercise of chiefly demand opens the way to solicitation from below, and vice versa—not uncommonly a moderate exposure to the "larger world" is enough to evoke native reference to customary chiefly dues as local banking procedure (cf. Ivens,1927, p. 32). The word then for the economic relation between kinship ranks is "reci­procity." The reciprocity, moreover, is fairly classed as "generalized." While not as sociable as the run of assistance among close kinsmen, it does lean toward that side of the reciprocity continuum. Goods are in truth yielded to powers-that-be, perhaps on call and demand, and likewise goods may have to be humbly solicited from them. Still the rationale is often assistance and need, and the supposition of returns correspondingly indefinite. Reciprocation may be left until a need precipitates it, it bears no necessary equivalence to the initial gift, and the material flow can be unbalanced in favor of one side or the other for a long time.

Reciprocity is harnessed to various principles of kinship rank. Gen­eration-ranking, with the elders the privileged parties, may be of significance among hunters and gatherers not merely in the life of the family but in the life of the camp as a whole, and generalized reciproc­ity between juniors and seniors a correspondingly broad rule of social exchange (cf. Radcliffe-Brown,1948, pp. 42-43). The Trobrianders have a name for the economic ethic appropriate between parties of different rank within common descent groups—pokala. It is the rule that "Junior members of a sub-clan are expected to render gifts and services to their seniors, who in return are expected to confer assist­ance and material benefits on the juniors" (Powell,1960, p. 126). Even where rank is tied to genealogical seniority and consummated in officepower—chieftainship properly so called—the ethic is the same. Take Polynesian chiefs, officeholders in large, segmented polities: supported on the one hand by various chiefly dues, they are freighted, as many have observed, with perhaps even greater obligations to the underlying population. Probably always the "economic basis" of primitive politics is chiefly generosity—at one stroke an act of positive morality and a laying of indebtedness upon the commonalty. Or, to take a larger view, the entire political order is sustained by a pivotal flow of goods, up and down the social hierarchy, with each gift not merely connoting a status relation but, as a generalized gift not direct­ly requited, compelling a loyalty.

In communities with established rank orders, generalized reciproci­ty is enforced by the received structure, and once in operation the exchange has redundant effects on the rank system. There is a large range of societies, however, in which rank and leadership are in the main achieved; here reciprocity is more or less engaged in the forma-tionof rank itself, as a "starting mechanism." The connection between reciprocity and rank is brought to bear in the first case in the form, "to be noble is to be generous," in the second case, "to be generous is to be noble." The prevailing rank structure influences economic relations in the former instance; the reciprocity influences hierarchi­cal relations in the latter. (An analogous feedback occurs in the con­text of kinship distance. Hospitality is frequently employed to suggest sociability—this is discussed later. John Tanner, one of those "feral Whites" who grew to manhood among the Indians, relates an anec­dote even more to the point: recalling that his Ojibway family was once saved from starvation by a Muskogean family, he noted that if any of his own people ever afterwards met any of the latter,"he would call him 'brother,' and treat him as such" (Tanner, 1956, p. 24).)

The term "starting mechanism" is Gouldner's. He explains in this way how reciprocity may be considered a starting mechanism:

... it helps to initiate social interaction and is functional in the early phases of certain groups before they have developed a differentiated and custom­ary set of status duties.... Granted that the question of origins can readily bog down in a metaphysical morass, the fact is that many concrete social systems [perhaps "relations and groups" is more apt] do have determinate beginnings. Marriages are not made in heaven... . Similarly, corporations, political parties, and all manner of groups have their beginnings... . People are continually brought together in new juxtapositions and combinations, bringing with them the possibilities of new social systems. How are these possibilities realized? . . . Although this perspective may at first seem somewhat alien to the functionalist, once it is put to him, he may suspect that certain kinds of mechanisms, conducive to the crystallization of social systems out of ephemeral contacts, will in some measure be institutional­ized or otherwise patterned in any society. At this point he would be considering "starting mechanisms." In this way, I suggest, the norm of reciprocity provides one among many starting mechanisms (Gouldner, 1960, pp. 176-177).

Economic imbalance is the key to deployment of generosity, of generalized reciprocity, as a starting mechanism of rank and leader­ship. A gift that is not yet requited in the first place "creates a something between people": it engenders continuity in the relation, solidarity—at least until the obligation to reciprocate is discharged. Secondly, falling under "the shadow of indebtedness," the recipient is constrained in his relations to the giver of things. The one who has benefited is held in a peaceful, circumspect, and responsive position in relation to his benefactor. The "norm of reciprocity," Gouldner remarks, "makes two interrelated minimal demands: (1) people should help those who have helped them, and (2) people should not injure those who have helped them" (I960, p. 171). These demands are as compelling in the highlands of New Guinea as in the prairies of Peoria—"Gifts [among Gahuka-Gama] have to be repaid. They constitute a debt, and until discharged the relationship of the individ­uals involved is in a state of imbalance. The debtor has to act circum­spectly towards those who have this advantage over him or otherwise risk ridicule" (Read, 1959, p. 429). The esteem that accrues to the generous man all to one side, generosity is usefully enlisted as a starting mechanism of leadership because it creates followership. "Wealth in this finds him friends," Denig writes of the aspiring Assi-niboin, "as it does on other occasions everywhere" (Denig, 1928-29, p. 525).

Apart from highly organized chiefdoms and simple hunters and gatherers, there are many intermediate tribal peoples among whom pivotal local leaders come to prominence without yet becoming hold­ers of office and title, of ascribed privilege and of sway over corporate political groups. They are men who "build a name" as it is said, "big-men" they may be reckoned, or "men of importance," "bulls," who rise above the common herd, who gather followers and thus achieve authority. The Melanesian "big-man" is a case in point. So too the Plains Indian "chief." The process of gathering a personal following and that of ascent to the summits of renown is marked by calculated generosity—if not true compassion. Generalized reciproci­ty is more or less enlisted as a starting mechanism.

In diverse ways, then, generalized reciprocity is engaged with the rank order of the community. Yet we have already characterized the economics of chieftainship in other transactional terms, as redistribu­tion (or large-scale pooling). At this juncture the evolutionist question is posed: "When does one give way then to the other, reciprocity to redistribution?" This question, however, may mislead. Chiefly redis­tribution is not different in principle from kinship-rank reciprocity. It is, rather, based upon the reciprocity principle, a highly organized form of that principle. Chiefly redistribution is a centralized, formal organization of kinship-rank reciprocities, an extensive social integra­tion of the dues and obligations of leadership. The real ethnographic world does not present us with the abrupt "appearance" of redistribu­tion. It presents approximations and kinds of centricity. The apparent course of wisdom is to hinge our characterizations—of rank-reciproc­ities versus a system of redistribution—on formal differences in the centralization process, and in this way to resolve the evolutionist issue.

A big-man system of reciprocities may be quite centralized and a chiefly system quite decentralized. A thin line separates them, but it is perhaps significant. Between centricity in a Melanesian big-man economy such as Siuai (Oliver, 1955) and centricity in a Northwest Coast chiefdom such as the Nootka (Drucker, 1951), there is little to choose. A leader in each case integrates the economic activity of a (more or less) localized following: he acts as a shunting station for goods flowing reciprocally between his own and other like groups of society. The economic relation to followers is also the same: the leader is the central recipient and bestower of favors. The thin line of differ­ence is this: the Nootka leader is an officeholder in a lineage (house group), his following is this corporate group, and his central eco­nomic position is ascribed by right of chiefly due and chiefly obliga­tion. So centricity is built into the structure. In Siuai, it is a personal achievement. The following is an achievement—a result of generosity bestowed—the leadership an achievement, and the whole structure will as such dissolve with the demise of the pivotal big-man. Now I think that most of us concerned with "redistributive economies"have come to include Northwest Coast peoples under this head; whereas assigning Siuai that status would at least provoke disagreement. This suggests that the political organization of reciprocities is implicitly recognized as a decisive step. Where kinship-rank reciprocity is laid down by office and political grouping, and becomes sui generis by virtue of customary duty, it takes on a distinctive character. The distinctive character may be usefully named—chiefly redistribution.

A further difference in economies of chiefly redistribution is worth remarking. It is another difference in centricity. The flow of goods both into and out of the hands of powers-that-be is for the most part unintegrated in certain ethnographic instances. Subordinates in sever­alty and on various occasions render stuff to the chief, and often in severalty receive benefits from him. While there is always some mas­sive accumulation and large-scale handout—say during rites of chief­tainship—the prevailing flow between chief and people is fragmented into independent and small transactions: a gift to the chief from here, some help given out there. So aside from the special occasion, the chief is continuously turning over petty stocks. This is the ordinary situ­ation in the smaller Pacific island chiefdoms—e.g. Moala (Sahlins, 1962), apparently Tikopia—and it may be generally true of pastoralist chiefdoms. On the other hand, chiefs may glory in massive accumula­tions and more or less massive dispensations, and at times too in large stores on hand congealed by pressure on the commonalty. Here the independent act of homage or noblesse oblige is of less significance. And if, in addition, the social scale of chiefly redistribution is exten­sive—the polity large, dispersed, and segmented—one confronts a measure of centricity approximating the classical magazine economies of antiquity.

Appendix B presents illustrative ethnographic materials on the relation between rank and reciprocity. (See the citation from Malo under B.4.2 and from Bartram under B.5.2 on magazine economies of various scale.)

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1072