38 VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN 39 substantially correct.(It certainly seems to be richly confirmed by the necessity for a central trunk in relation to which all other Potter's analysis of Pi ing Shan. A segment may emerge which marks outaspecial identity for its members in contrast to the lines are branches.There is no such trunk in the Chinese system. In fact,the imagery drawn from trees is not suitable to it.So fa other members of the larger segment which encompasses them all,even though these other members are not likewise organized from the lesser (that is,socially inferior)units ramifying from the in a formal segment.We are presented with an irregular seg trunk,the greater units draw away from the lesser.They create a mentary mentary acreuecly rcognized in thed' ty for themclves around a newly established picce The property of a unit is its focus,but lesser foci can Evans-Pritchard's classical work on the Nueri set anthropological minds working come into being for smaller units not arranged in a set order.The essential point about the Chinese case is that political and economic on systems of symmetrical segmentation and exercised a dom inating influence on ideas abou power,generated either within or outside the lineage itself,urges lineages.The Nuer was concerned with a society in which social homogencity and the absence of certain groups to differentiate themselves as segments and provid political centralism could be shown to be associated with a kind them with the material means to persist as separate entities through of political and legal ordcr made possible by the balancing of long periods of time-as long,that is to say,as their common property is held intact.How far this interprctation of the Chinese segments.The people who gave their name to the book were converted into a model to which the accounts of other peoples system is correct the results of future detailed research will be assimilated.But the newer work on lineages in centralized able to say.Except for my abbreviated observations in the New Territories I cannot yet add substantially to what I said on the political systems has led to an understanding of how,when power is exercised from a centre,a different conformation of segment matter in Lineage Organization.(Nanching might well have proved an interesting source of data,but Yang is in fact vague about appears. in a recent textbook of social anthropology the'lineage system the segmentary order of the lincages in the village,for he speaks based on the principle of segmental opposition'is sha of the main ancestral halls of the two chief lineages and then te中绳 merely refers en passant to the many small ancestral halls set up by the subdivisions'.1) centers around a There is,however,one modification to be made to my earlier sublincageetn forms a singe line with various treatment of the subject.As I have alrcady said in referring to land us points of the line.The organiza- tenure,the New Territories material shows that while the hier- tion usually centers around a kingship or around some other archy of ancestral halls is a hierarchy of segments,in fac be ow am used to the level f the lowest segment based on an ancestral hall there which other lines branch off,and from which in turn yet others may well land-owning segments.These,because theyare not anchored to ancestral halls branch off in an irregular fashion.In the lincage system of th tend to be unstable. If their spinal-cord type,built around an officer a piece of property,n common property is dispersed they are in effect erased from lineage is senior in wealth,status and rank,and the others hook into history,and we cannot know about them retrospectively except the main line of descent.'It is clear that while this characteriza- in so far as the land'trusts'are rec orded in official registers.The members of erstwhile segments of this kind appear in a written tion of a second major class of lineages catches some of the features of the Chinese system,it is not completely satisfactory.It assumes genealogy as collections of individuals with nothing to indicat that they are in any way different from other collections of individuals which have never formed property-based units. 1E.E.Evans-Pritchard.The 4 of the Modes of Livelihood and It will be convenient now to review an aspect of the two models dgamsaa4ho9NY,o6.p.7年 1Yng,0y., p.78f.Potter,P'ing Shan,has very full data on asymmetrica bi记，Pp.138
VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN A and Z,which I proposed in Lineage Organiztion In model A formerly the lineage,being then better off,had been launched the community is relatively undifferentiated in social status and on a areer of asymmetrical segmentation which was later arrested by a decline into poverty.(It might at first sight appear from what Miss Pratt writes that the lin age is have come closer if the model had provided (as I now think it should have done)for some degree of scg wider unit,for we are told that at the New Year all the men of the ntation on the basis of common estates not linked to ancestral halls.It is worth going village goto the lineage hall in a village across the valley,where back to Miss Pratt's material on the New Territories Hakka villag they claim their ancestors originally lived.'But Miss Pratt tells me she studied.The local lineage there,it will be remembered,is that the people in this other village are not agnates of the in divided into three units centred on ancestral halls.The interesting habitants of the first village,so that the latter is in fact a self- contained lineage with a main and three sub-lineage ancestral feature of these three sub-lineages,as we may call them for halls.2) is not agreed in the lineage as a whole.According to the largest There are many poor and small lineages in the New Terri- tories (and presumably throughout the region),and we must be numerical group.,there were originally two brothers settled in the valley,but after some time they quarrelled ·who prepared to fi .and nd that gencalogical vagueness is common among them.What light does this matter throw on Chincse agnation? set up their own lineage halls. Then some fifty years ago Miss Pratt herself,at the end of her paper,puts forward ond a smal grouphivedom that of the younger brother an set up their own lineage hall. po ssible point of view.Having laid great stress on the importance Acc rcally des ended from the clder brother,and the younger brother of adoption into the lineage from outside,she gocs on to say:'In left the village to settle in the local market town.(When asked to into trace their assuming that the Chinese descent groups were a pure genealogy they jump from the generation of the fathers of the m present living n the village straight back form of patrilineal lineage,other principles could and did come into operation.I am not trying to decry the patrilineal nature of to the founders.)A third version. the village,who claim that they these groups,but suggesting that they were centred on the idea of and the other peop cdepend common descent rather than in actual genealogy.But in rcality few unilineal systems are likely to be ba ally usurped their masters'position until they became the domin- ed on actual geneald Gencalogy is the tracing or creating of links between individuals open ct between and groups in such a way as to arrange them in a coherent frame- d only be told when no one work in accordance with acce principles of descent.Slaves of the other groups was present.'Since there is ncither and other outsiders get absorbed into a system and are allotted written genealogy nor any ral genealogy going back through all links to the founders,the three versions of descent can co-exist. genealogical positions.What is true of Miss Pratt's village is true Each version makes a claim to high status for onc sub-lineage at everywhere,at least where genealogies are not written down the expense of the other two.But it would appear that the rival But many Chinese genealogics are put into writing,and one naturally asks how they cope with'anomalies'.The first and most versions are never brought to a confrontation. We are in fact obvious dealing with a local lineage something like model A;the equality point to make is that co versions of the segmer tary order,such as those described by Miss Pratt,are impossible isreinforced by suppressing public discussion ofthe rclative genealogical status of the primary segments.The fact Ibid.p.149. that there are ancestral halls for each of the sub-lineages (and not the local lineage has been simply a hall for the lineage as a whole)may perhaps mean that valley,probably having begun as an ofshoot and bei 1Pp.131 a Pratt,op.cit.,pp.148 f. Pratt,叩.ct,p.I巧8
VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN when the genealogy is recorded,for one version of a public lineage genealogy must be generally acceptable.I am still under the same impression that I was formerly that the written gene- alogy of a local lineage (but not of a higher-order lineage or clan) 2 was more or less immune to fudging.If a man was adopted then his special status was likely to be noted.A written genealogy may commit many sins of omi ssion (consigning ignominious men to Family oblivion),but it is unlikely in the case of a loca e tbe e on the one hand a local lineage armed with a hey仙Chineael2 yofCi橇 written gencalogy looks more lineage-like in that it commands a ship,even though it embraces a great deal of it.No more is it the study of Chinese complete (or virtually complete)knowledge of the steps of family organization,but in fact there are several descent from a founder to the present gencration,on the other aspects and problems of the family which are highly relevant to hand it is also in asense less patrilineal than a local lineage lacking a written gencalogy,for it is deprived of the eans of rephrasing anomalics in the'true language'of patrilincal descent. questions,opening the discussion by an appeal to what Yang 器 says about the family in the village of Nanching. There the family where parents and all sons maintained clear occurring mainly ring in th they con 'size of the family increased with the accumulation of wealth'.Poverty and disease of the humbler villagers down to sn kept the families mall numbers:'the poor con- sidered it fortunate if they were able to raise two children to them would contir several married sons,one of mue tolive with the parents and the rest set up households of their own,'thus creating and several two-generation a three -generation family married sons'childre conjugal families counting the en'The pattern is very familiar to us The poor raise few children to maturity,the rich many.Among the poor,marriage brings into the dom stic family merely one bride in each generation;among the rich it brings in several The typical (usual) family is small and morphologically cither clementaryor stem;the ideal family is'joint' and rare This is not only a summary of the family in Nanching but also a general statement about the family in China. The units which, so to say,create human beings and provide the personnel for manning the wider institutions,the lineage among them,have certain demographic properties that shape agnatic grouping. Poor men,if they marry at all,marry late;consequently,the Yang,op.cit.Pp. a Ibid.pp.f
44 FAMILY FAMILY gencrations in a poor lineage or segment are chronologically 45 slowed down.The members of a rich lineage or segment produce atany stage in theevoutionoffamily,they rarely lived together. men of any given numbered generation (which is known both by with the consequcnce that no joint family appears in the typical cycle. counting in a written or oral genealogy,and by the middle char- acters of formal personal names')carlier than do their counter- A rich family produced sevcral sons and retained them,perhaps parts in humbler lineagesor segments.Ritual headships,based adding to their number by adoption.The sons remained in an on seniority in generation,naturally tend to fall to men in less undivided family as long as the parental generation survived. prosperoustsbut the membership of richits is greaterthan And since these sons married young and the seniors might live that of poor,so that on the basis of size alone the better-off oca long,a joint family of four generations could appear.When the lineage in a higher-order lincage or better-off segment in a local senior gencration had gone,the family was partitioned among the line age enjoys one of the means to dominate co-ordinate units men in the next generation.One of these men might then aready within the same group.Very poor units run the risk of dying be in a position to preside over a joint family of his own,having two married sons living with out altogether,leaving their rights in lineage property to be him.Another might become th cnjoyed by the fortunate survivors.Again,by being head ofa stem family.A third,being most recentl /married,might their membership and their cconomic resources,ic units form an independent family along with his wife and children. 瓷o But if high social status was to be maintained,then the stem and elementary families resulting from the division of the joint family prestige and material benefit on members but also mark would in tu grow into joint families as quickly as posible.it them off in their social status and life-chances from their less follows that the elementary and stem families in thisrich'cycle happily placed agnates. are temporary stages in the development of joint families.In con- Organization I discussed factors underlying trast,the clementary and stem fami the titive and final:they ies in the poor'cycle are repe- differences between,as it were,rich and poor versions of the cannot broaden out into more complex units Chinese family.There is certainly no need to go over exactly the It is important to ask why partition occurred as each generation same ground again,but it may be possible to get a clearer pers- of a joint family died off.In law a son was not supposcd to separate howo股may be te himself from the family estate against the wishes of his during their lifetime he could take out his shar parents of the family cycles of development and to different phases of these cycles. A poor family might in the extreme be unable to raise a son to marriageable age and ensure that he stay at home to recreate the for in the complex of relationships betwe en the men in the same domestic unit.The chances were that at most one son would and adjacent gencrations.The relation between father and son marry and continue the family in the same house.As soon as this was overtly one of severe dominance and submission;a son owec son begot a child three generations were present,but the senior obedience and deference;and a distance was called for between the generation,represented by the eldely parents,were very unlikey two men which would allow them to maintain a common front to sce a fourth emerge.As soon as these parents died a two- to the world without their entering into great intimacy.But the generation family appeared again.The process was repeated: filial relation was inasenseself-defeatingassoon nas the son assumed elementary family grew to stem and was reduced once more to a role which made his position ambiguous:the role of father to his own children. elementary.Even though there might be two married brothers Once married and pater,a man was potentially paterfamilias,but of course he could realize this statusto the full only at the expense of his father,eith referred to Jack Good him (which was le ner by breaking away from Ca well be. by superseding him. egally forbidden if the father was unwilling)or
6 FAMILY FAMILY But inorder to supersede aliving father and dominate him and the remainder of the family,a man needed to reckon with his This analysis singles out three crucial domestic relationships: between father and son,between brother and brother,and be- brothers.Now,it might seem at first sight that the hierarchy of seniority among brothers,well marked by the manner in which tween husband and wife.They formed diferent forms of the family and at different points in their they were differently treated by their parents and expressed in the development.In a rich family,where the father was politically kinship terms and other behaviour they adopted in respect of and economically strong,he could dominate his sons and hold one another,would allow an eldest son to full authority over the younger sons if he assumed the role of family head.But them in check;the competition between the sons was muted. They paid relatively little attention to the affairs or interests of in fact the fraternal relationship was one of competition,and potentially of a fierce kind.Ord er was kept among brothers by their wives and aimed at domestic peace by refraining from siding the prcsence of an effective father.He not only held them in with them when they wcre in conflict with their sisters-in-lav and mother-in-law.But if for some reason the father was dis- check individually,but forced them by the exercise of his power to preserve some solidarity among themselves.If,however,the placed from effective headship of the family,fraternal solidarity was lessened and the individuating interests of the wives father was dead,or living but displaced to a secondary position by senility or more youthful incompetence,the oldest encouraged;the sons began to pay that heed to women's grumbles brother and griev could notfor long assume the headship of the family for fear of nces which Chinese moralists have held to be the death the hostility that would be released against him by his juniors. of domestic harmony.Ajoint family was on the point of breaking In poor families the father was politically and economically weak If in fact there was more than one son,the fraternal bond was fragile and often broken;husband and wife were closely dead. The competition between brothers was economic;they identified with each other.Since there was little family property entitled (except for the cldest son's special share in respect of the at stake and few people in the family to share what there was,the wife was not in the position of one asserting her rights and those of ancestor cult)to equal shares in the family estate,and they an- her husband and children.Her quarrelsomeness was less in evi pared their individual shares of this property by jcalousy for their separate rights.(When partition sarumen may be summrized bysaying that three centra place each brother was more than careful to see that his arith- family relationships varied too ether:a change in one of them induced changes in the othersOf cous,itisatificial toattempt The competition was domestic;but here it was the wives of the more brothers s who,soto speak,competed actively on their husbands' men means an increase in domestic harm behalf.The quarrelsomeness of Chinese women (a socially reprobated but expected quarrelsomeness)was in part a refex of him,t for around ir position as the una ointed representatives of their husbands' borcsco-opea6iomnamingnddoaetcmaesp0iHewoe interests in domestic life.As the result of a marriage system in This is a very bald statement of a which women were bodily and jurally transferred to the familics which acquired them as brides,when a married woman fought, Society,vol.xrv,no.2. 061 'The she fought for herself,for her children,and for her husband. and The Chincse Do RtcrnratiowaldierSctieicerAaihropologigiecsctEiod Actes tome communicy':large numbers of the men are absent,some for short terms,others s famiy structuren Communist China;seThe Family n China