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New Guinea Models in the African Savannah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Ivan Karp
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Extract

Fourteen years have passed since J. A. Barnes published his short article on ‘African models in the New Guinea Highlands’ (1962). In it Barnes raised the question of whether the concepts used to analyse systems of descent in African societies were applicable to descent systems in New Guinea that appeared at first glance to be similar. This article signalled the beginning of a debate over the nature of descent and kinship in New Guinea and the advisability of using concepts and results derived from field research in another continent and in a different context. The very status of social anthropology as a comparative and generalizing science is called into question by the debate initiated by Barnes, for if African research has no relevance for New Guinea research, then neither cross-cultural typologies nor generalizations about social behavior are possible. Hence, the New Guinea literature has more than just an area specialist's significance.

Résumé

MODÈLES DE NOUVELLE GUINÉE DANS LA SAVANNE AFRICAINE

Depuis le début des années 1960, les études des systèmes de descendance parmi les sociétés des hautes terres de la Nouvelle Guinée ont fait surgir la question suivante: dans quelle mesure les modèles fournis par l'analyse de la descendance dans la société africaine sont-ils applicables? On se propose ici de voir si les progrès qui ont marqué les analyses de la descendance en Nouvelle Guinée pourront être appliques à l'étude du système de descendance des Iteso du Kenya. On pose ici la nécessité d'une distinction entre trois dimensions du systéme de descendance, à savoir l'idéologie, l'aspect juridique et le comportement. La qualité et le type des rapports qui lient ces trois aspects d'un système de descendance dépendent de domaines sociaux qui n'entrent pas dans le cadre de la descendance. Ainsi, toute analyse du système de descendance d'une société donnée devra tenir compte des domaines d'action politique, domestique et rituelle dans son explication de la structure de ce système. On distingue chez les Iteso trois niveaux de descendance que l'auteur appelle le clan nominal, le clan exogame et la lignée. L'examen des croyances Iteso relatives à l'hérédité, la gestation et la descendance démontre que la logique des conceptions des Iteso sur ces sujets mettent en jeu une croyance à la descendance patrilinéaire. Cependant ces mêmes croyances n'entrainent pas l'existence de divers niveaux d'organisation patrilinéaire: ces niveaux (on le montre ici), sont le résultat du prolongement des domaines politique, domestique et rituel dans le domaine de la descendance, si bien que ce dernier est déformé par ses rapports avec les autres domaines sociaux.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1978

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