marriage as their basic building blocks, this etic notation passes over the
issue of classifications by reducing the description to elementary pieces.
If we ask instead why it is that such diverse types are actually all lumped
together under a single term, aunt, then wefind ourselves thrown into the
recurrent conundrum of what do kinship terms really mean? In this
instance the term tells us (1) that no lateral distinction is made between
kin on mother’s versus father’s side and (2) the distinction between affinal
and consanguineal ties is also overridden. Thefirst point is in line with the
bilateral character of kinship terms in general in this particular system. The
second point shows, further, that although there is in practice a strong
distinction between affines and consanguineal kin–an idea that is itself
founded on the implication that affines are not also consanguines, for
example, not cousins, in the terminology this distinction is at least partly
blurred. This is done by making affinal terms hybrids of consanguineal
ones, so that husband’s or wife’s parents become parents-in-law. This
distinction is further blurred in folk usages by the conventional aphorism
that the in-marrying affine is now like a consanguine, son-in-law for exam-
ple becoming a‘son’, and daughter-in-law a‘daughter’. These are rheto-
rical claims that attempt to overcome what is in practice also a powerful
difference found in other domains of folk attitudes, values, and actions, for
example, from a male viewpoint between mother and mother-in-law (and
the same for female speakers). The basic aim of the rhetoric is to assimilate
affinity into the realm of consanguinity, at least in behavioral terms. The
exercise is partial and incomplete because there are in fact fundamental
differences that impede such an assimilation. The terminology can thus be
seen as a kind of ideological construction, built up out of the notion that
David Schneider pointed to: the opposition between‘law’and‘nature’,
where law stands in for culture in general. Schneider was identifying a
nature versus culture motif or trope that informs the much so-called
Western thinking. He was also arguing that what in such thinking is
identified as natural–and by implication also universal–is in fact culturally
particular and by no means universal.
Several further points are easy enough to make here. Thefirst is that
ideas of procreation itself can vary considerably across cultures. In other
words,‘nature’,or‘biology’in this case, is itself a construct, not an
immutable fact. Second, contrary to thisfirst point, there is nevertheless
across cultures a widespread recognition that sexual intercourse has a vital
role to play in reproduction. Even in cases where the connection is denied
at some ideological level, as putatively among the Trobrianders of Papua
50 BREAKING THE FRAMES