Avunculate

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Avunculat (from Latin avunculus "mother brother") denotes in ethnosociology a form of family and communal organization in which the maternal uncle (the uncle : brother of the mother) takes over the social paternity for the children of his sister ; often their children also move to him ( avunculocality ) and eventually inherit his status and property, while his own children remain with their mother or her brother. The avunculate was first observed among the North American Indian tribes of the Hurons .

Social function

The avunculate as a form of parenthood can be found around the world in many of the around 160  ethnic groups and indigenous peoples who organize themselves according to maternal ancestry ( matrilinear ). With them, the biological father plays no or only a subordinate role in the upbringing and development of the children and thus has no authority over his biological children. In matrilineal kinship systems , children are always considered to be related to their mother, but not necessarily also to their father ( their mother's partner or husband ). Particularly in societies with a permissive sex life and multiple marriages ( polygamy ), the genetic relationship between a father and his children cannot be guaranteed. In order to promote one's own family association ( clan , lineage ), it is therefore advantageous to support the blood-related children of one's own sisters.

Interpretation by Lévi-Strauss

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss , on the other hand, argued strongly against a genetically or psychologically reducing interpretation in his analyzes of other ethnic groups in 1945. Instead, he advocates seeing cultural phenomena as signs of spiritual life. In his opinion, the human mind organizes the world into an understandable system by means of dichotomies and categories (“ wild thinking ”). Levi-Strauss also wants to see the avunculate interpreted in the context of the family system. In his examples, he points out that the special position of the maternal uncle towards his nephew , as is (or was) to be found in many Indian tribes, is in inversely symmetrical relation to the relationship between wife and husband or sister and brother. On the other hand, in societies where sister and brother are taboo in interaction, the relationship between spouses is very confidential. Conversely, in societies in which sister and brother are very closely connected, marriages are often characterized by great mistrust. According to Levi-Strauss, the role of the mother brother can only be understood in this larger context. Levi-Strauss' theses on elementary kinship relationships with regard to their separation between biological blood kinship and social kinship are criticized, since the biological kinships themselves represent a social construct from the perspective of the respective analyzing society.

See also

literature

  • Claude Lévi-Strauss : The structural analysis in linguistics and in anthropology. In: The same: Structural Anthropology I. Frankfurt / M. 1967, pp. 43-67 (French; first published 1945).
  • Alfred Adler : Avunculat et mariage matrilatéral en Afrique noire. In: L'homme: revue française d'anthropologie. No. 16, 1976, pp. 7-27 (French).

Web links

Wiktionary: Avunculate  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Avunculate. In: Duden.de . Retrieved July 11, 2020; Quotation: "Avunculate, the [...] privilege of the brother of the mother of a child over his father in cultures with maternal rights (eg in planter peoples) [...] Origin: Latin-Neo-Latin [...] plural: the Avunculate".
  2. ^ J. Patrick Gray: Ethnographic Atlas Codebook. In: World Cultures. Volume 10, No. 1, 1998, pp. 86–136, here p. 104: Table 43 Descent: Major Type (English; PDF file; 2.4 MB; without page numbers ; one of the few evaluations of all those recorded worldwide at the time 1267 ethnic groups): "584 patrilineal [...] 160 matrilineal" (= 46.1% patrilineal; 12.6% matrilineal). At the end of 2012, the Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock recorded exactly 1,300 ethnic groups worldwide .
  3. ↑ Jürgen Kiefer, Tim Klauck, Hakan Gündüz: The sociobiological culture theory (Avunculate of the Hurons). ( Memento from February 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Saarland University, 2003, accessed on July 11, 2020 (seminar documents).
  4. ↑ Lukas, Schindler, Stockinger: Avunculokale Residenz. In: Online Interactive Glossary: ​​Marriage, Marriage, and Family. Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on July 11, 2020 (detailed notes, with references).
  5. ↑ Hans-Rudolf Wicker: The alliance theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss (Avunkulat). (PDF: 387 kB, 47 pages) In: Guidelines for the introductory lecture in social anthropology, 1995–2012. Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern, July 31, 2012, pp. 18/19 and 30/31 (revised version).