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Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3 |
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whether paternal or maternal, living in isolation, could acquire either human culture or the means of preserving its mere existence[1]. Sir Henry Maine, who was the outstanding advocate of the theory of social origins from the paternal family, which he upheld with an incomparably greater logical acumen than any modern apologist of that theory, says: "From the moment when a tribal community settles down finally upon a definite space of land, the land begins to be the basis of society in place of kinship... For all groups larger than the family, the land on which they live tends to become the bond of union between them at the expense of kinship[2]." Any relation of juridic kinship to physiological kinship is constantly set aside by widespread adoption, by admission of strangers to the tribe, by exchange of children, and even by the transfer of individuals from a forbidden marriage-class to a licit one. Such opportunistic tampering with "kinship" is a daily commonplace in primitive organisation. What appears to be the most primitive form of kinship denotation which we know, that of the totemic system, has reference to sharers of food in common, a definition of the "family" which still obtained among the Celts, and not to any connection through generation. Totemic kinship can be, and constantly is, bestowed by ritual. Adoption, which appears as a breach of the kinship principle, is in reality its foundation. Relations within the social group formed by the fact of common dwelling-place and common food have been determined by respective status, sex and age; not by kinship, except in so far as the fact of birth could not be wholly ignored. To conceive that a group of primitive savages should amid the stress and strain of their rude and arduous lives, devote their leisure to the study of genealogy is as grotesque as to suppose that they should take up the study of numismatics. The notion is but one more importation from civilised societies founded upon paternal families into primitive societies not so constituted. The paternal family can maintain the record of its ideal identity within a larger miscellaneous group only by taking note of exact kinship. In such a society the question of the exact relationship of Mr. Jones to the uncle of Mrs. Smith is an interesting subject of discussion. In a savage group where are no paternal families, it has no meaning. It is true that the observance of the rules of exogamy requires that the distinction between marriage groups should be ascertainable.
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1933, Seite 363. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_Jahrgang_2_Heft_3.pdf/45&oldid=- (Version vom 31.5.2022)
