Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:27:50.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Mother's Brother as Patron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Jean S. La Fontaine
Get access

Extract

In this paper I am concerned with the lack of consistency in the criteria embodied in the concepts used to identify social relations. There are two main elements: what we can call the indigenous ideology and the observer's characterisation. In the former case we are dealing with role definition, more or less formalised in different cases and with cultural norms which define the scope of a relationship; in the latter, regularities of observed behaviour and their politico-economic significance are the basis for classification. Examples of concepts based on the former are relations of kinship; of the latter, pairs of terms like leader and follower, patron and client. It is to the last of these that this paper is devoted, for it is precisely in those areas where the ideas of the actors are given least weight in our analysis that our ethnocentric perceptions cause analytical confusion.

Type
Observer's Analysis of Caste and Clientele
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , June 1975 , pp. 76 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bailey, F. G., Stratagems and Spoils; a social anthropology of politics (Oxford, Blackwell, 1969).Google Scholar
Barth, F., Models of Social Organisation (London, Royal Anthropological Institute, 1966) [occasional paper n° 23].Google Scholar
Boissevain, J., Friends of Friends. Networks, manipulations and coalitions (Oxford, Blackwell, 1974).Google Scholar
Gravel, P., The Transfer of Cows in Gisaka (Ruanda), American Anthropologist, LXIX (1968), 322.Google Scholar
Gravel, P., Remera: a community in Eastern Ruanda (The Hague/Paris, Mouton, 1968).Google Scholar
La Fontaine, J. S., City Politics (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1970).Google Scholar
Mayer, A. C., Patrons and Brokers: rural leadership in four overseas Indian communities, in Freedman, M. (ed.), Social Organisation: essays presented to Raymond Firth (London, Cass, 1967).Google Scholar
Maquet, J. J., The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (Oxford, International African Institute, 1961).Google Scholar
Sharman, A., ‘Joking’ in Padhola: categorical relationships, choice and social control, Man, IV (1969), 103–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., On Social Structure, Journal of the Royal African Institute, LXX (1940); reprinted in Id., Structure and Function (London, Cohen and West, 1952).Google Scholar