z land -owning er formed or) in official reg ady said in ret o say that of the two models made anc 1D a ased unirs not suitable to it.So nply a hal for the lineage as a whoic ded int d Z,which their masters' pressing public di ing witha local something like model A:the conflict between y became the and the o the
neal of its out the am not in this other Miss Pratt acing or cr the Chinese and small 6 g VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN ins of ete) of patrilineal descent. know of a high onc ble. VILLAGE LINEAGE,AND CEAN on the com
certain demographic properties that shape agnatic grouping. Poor men,if they marry at all,marry late:consequently,the so to say,create human beings and provide the personnel for manning the wider institutions,the lineage among them,have a gencral statement about the family in China.The'units which, stem;the ideal family is 'joint -and rare. and several This is not only a summary of the family in Nanching but also in each generation;among the rich it brings in several.The typical (usual)family is small and morphologically cither clementary or poor raise few children to maturity,the rich many.Among the poor,marriage brings into the domestic family merely one bride married sons'children'.?The pattern is very familiar to us.The two-generation conjugal households of their own, them would continue to live with the parents and the rest set up "thus creating a three-generation family sidered it fortunate if they were able to raise two children to maturity out of six or seven live births.But if in fact a poor family was lucky cnough to have several married sons,one of accumulation of wealth'. of the humbler villagers down to small numbers:the poor con- a common uit of living was in a minority. among the wealthy'.The 'size of the family increascd with the Poverty and discese.kept the families says about the family in the village of Nanching. There the family where parents and all married sons maintained questions,opening the discussion by an appeal to what Yang the modes of its linkage with other lineages.I turn now to these study of Chinese family organization,but in fact there are several aspects and problems of the family which are highly relevant to the lineage,especially in regard to its internal differentiation and ship,even though it embraces a great deal of it.No more is it the The study of the Chinese lineage is not the study of Chinese kin- Family families counting the .occurring mainly elementary. mental Cycle in Domcstic Groups,Cambridge,1958;others might well be. Anthropologists will not need to bc referred to Jack Goody,ed.,The Deveiop- Even though there might be two married brothers elementary family grew to stem and was reduced once more to generation family appeared again. The process was repeated: to see a fourth emerge.As soon as these parents died a two- generation,represented by the elderly parents,were very unlikely son begot a child three generations were present,but the senior marry and continue the family in the same house.As soon as this domestic unit.The chances were that at most one son would marriageable age and ensure that he stay at home to recreate the A poor family might in the extreme be unable to raise a son to cycles of development and to different phases of these cycles.s how various forms of the family may be relative to different pective on the differences involved by considering schematically same ground again,but it may be possible to get a clearer pers- Chinese family.There is certainly no need to go over exactly the differences betwcen.as it were,rich and poor versions of the In Lineage Organizatien2 I discussed factors underlying the happily placed agnates. them off in their social status and life-chances from their less prestige and material benefit on their members but also mark they set up ancestral halls and land'trusts'which not only confer segment at a faster rate than'their Jess fortunate counterparts; their membership and their economic resources,richer units enjoyed by the fortunate survivors.Again,by bcing greater in out altogether,Jeaving their rights in lineage property to be ·w Very poor units run the risk of dying lineage enjoys one of the means to dominate co-ordinate units lineage in a higher-order lineage or better-off segment in a local that of poor,so that on the basis of size alonc the better-off local prosperous units,but the membership of rich units is greater than on seniority in generation,naturally tend to fall to men in less parts in humbler lineages or segments.Ritual headships,based acters of formal personal names)earlier than do their co'mter- counting in a written or oral genealogy,and by the middle char- men of any given numbered gcneration (which is known both by slowed down.The members of a rich lineage or segment produce gencrations in a poor lineage or segment are chronologically 三A业112
by superseding him. only at the expense of his him (which was legally for paterfamilias,but of course a role which made his posi filial relation was in a sense so two men which would allo to the world without their d. and adjacent generations. was overtly one of severe dow property only if they agree somctimes occurred.The an:f for in the complex of relaticr? during their lifetime he coufe of a joint family died off.In lai himself from the family estai titive and final:they cannot bi It is important to ask why p are temporary stages in the dc trast,the clementary and stem follows that the elementary ar' clementary families resulting would in turn grow into join But if high social status wast form an independent family y head of a stem family.A third, be in a position to preside ovc two married sons living witho scnior generation had gone,thein men in the next generation.O long,a joint family of four g undivided family as long as And since these sons married adding to their number by ad A rich family produced sever at any stage in the evolution of a with the consequence that no j 05 wast fan er. 8 1 unwilling),or ng away from tus to the full as potentially son assumcd e of father to mmon front between the c:a son owed ther and son ad in the same of secession P25001am1y his parents; d to separate cle are repe- hics.In con possible.It joint family e stcm and a children ried,might ecome the wn,having cen already among the When the unghit hve n,perhaps dead. community':large numbers of the men arc absent,some for short terms,others a expression alnost traditional by now in modern studies of China,an 'emigran It happens that the New Territories village described by Miss Pratt is,tos she fought for herself,for her children,and for her husband. which acquired them as brides,when a married woman fought, which women were bodily and jurally transferred to the families interests in domestic life.As the result of a marriage system in their position as the unappointed representatives of their husbands reprobated but expected quarrelsomeness)was in part a reflex of bchalf.The quarrelsomeness of Chinese women (a socially brothers who,so to speak,competed actively on their husbands The competition was domestic;but here it was the wives of the position of the land and living quarters he was to take for his own. metical share was adequately represented in the quality and place each brother was more than careful to see that his arith- jealousy for their separate rights.(When partition finally took ticipated their individual shares of this property by showing ancestor cult)to equal shares in the family estate,and they an- entitied (except for the eldest son's special share in respect of the The competition betwecn brothers was economic;they were could not for any length of time survive;he was as though already superannuated father was no father,and the joint the hostility that would be relcased against him by his juniors. could not for long assume the headship of the family for fear of by senility or more youthful incompetence,the oldest brother father was dead,or living but displaced to a secondary position to preserve some solidarity among themselves.If,however,the check individually,but forced them by the exercise of his power the presence of an effective father.He not only held them in potentially of a fierce kind.Order was kept among brothers by in fact the fraternal relationship was one of competition,and over the younger sons if he assumed the role of family head.But one another,would allow an eldest son to exercise full authority kinship terms.and other behaviour they adopted in respect of they were differently treated by their parents and expressed in the seniority among brothers,well marked by the manner in which brothers.Now,it might seem at first sight that the hierarchy of the remainder of the family,a man needed to reckon with his But in order ro supersedc a living father and dominate him and FAMILY t5m号
333117 Famy in China,Past her husband and children. In poor Chinese Domestic Family:Models', and Present' fully in a later essay.SeeProblems in the Analysis of the Chinese This is a very bald statement of an analysis I have set out elsewhere and hope n fact.Miss Pratt's account (op.cit.,P.154)appears to confirm the theory.She s:The husband is the focus of strain and most quarrels seem tocentre aroud except for the eteral complaint of laziness.His removal to cash employment fofces co-operation in farming and domestic matters upon the women induced changes in the others.Of course,it is artificial to attempt And the question arises whether, on the theory that it is the men who This argument may be summarized by saying that three central relationships varied together:a change in one of them Her quarreisomeness was less in evi- weak.If in fact there was more than one son,the fraternal bond was fragile and often broken;husband and wife were closely identified with each other.Since there was little family property a: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 and grievances which Chinese moralists have held to be the death of domestic harmony.A joint family was on the point of breaking families the father was politically and economically placed from cffective headship of the family,fraternal solidarity was lessened and the individuating interests of the wives were encouraged;the sons began to pay that heed to women's grumbles and mother-in-law.But if for some reason the father was dis- and cconomically strong,he could dominate his sons and hold They paid relatively little attention to the affairs or interests of with them when they were in conflict with their sisters-in-law them in check;the competition betwcen the sons was muted. their wives and aimed at domestic peace by refraining from siding between father and son,berween brother and brother,and be- twen husband and wife.They formed different configurations dificrent forms of the family and at different points in their development.In a rich family,where the father was politically This analysis singles out three crucial domestic relationships: who are comnioniy and London, 1959:Merton Marion J.Levy, The terms 州 G.Wiiliam Skinner,'A Study in Miniature of Chinese Population and Whither?,N.Y.,1957.p.44:Hu Chang-tu ct al., 、标功 of some or all of these terms,sec:Derk Bodde,Chia' 金od sociological marriage,and of the 236 people who came into the village on marriage only 31 per cent went our in the the village he studied in Taiwan, child bride'is brought in as a prospeetive daughter N.Y.,1963.p.202;Lincage f.:Lang,op.cit. and anthropological examples of the usc 'little daughters-in-law'and the married-in sons-in-law play a very important same percentage fell into the category.No doubt this may be regarded as an ex- treme case,bur it should by no means be dismissed as one,for it is clear that the village on marriage only the of 843 for the period 1870-1960.In that population,of 196 people leaving the srandard'form of Chinese differen:from that of the bride who comes into the family already grown up.In Wolf collected genealogical data on a population the working out of the family cycle.Furthermore,when in patrilocal marriage a one of the matrilocal varieties,a variation which makes for a great diference in 1 The model assumes patrilocal marriage,but in fact many marriages were Kong,196=;and W.J.Goode, her role as an adult is 1963.Some idea of the value of the japanese ficld studies of the Chinese Symposhim on Econ Among Worid Revolution and Family Pattcms,Glcncoc,I. Chiese Family in the Communist Revoltion, The Family Revolion in Modem China,Cambridge,Muss.,1949 more recent works on the subject are: been several atrempts at a general treatment of the Chinese family.Of these vol.35,n0.3.July-September 1964.Since the Second World War there have duties entailed in the estates which all but the poorest families from questions of morphology to the nature of the rights and concern to us.The last term most certainly does, although ambiguous enough,raise no problem of immediate places in the writing on the Chinese family.?The first two terms, elementary stem things that the restricted model does not.1 in E.F for it leads on and 'joint'are common- married woman and her mother-in-law,in order to account for group.Naturally,in a fuller analysis the other relationships of the family would have to be dealt with,especially that between the to understanding the essential features of the Chinese domestic restricted framework of this sort does in fact carry us a long way husband and wife;but it is quite legitimate and,as I contend,a to the relations between father and son,brother and brother,and to explain the dynamics of the Chinese family by reference only What