After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures)

T HE L EW I S H E N R Y M O R G A N L E C T U R E S ] 9 8 9 presented at The Universitv of Rochester Rochesler,New York

Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series Fred Eggan: The American Indian: Perspectives for the Study of Social Change Ward, H. Goodenough: Description and Comparison in Cultttral Anthropology Robert J. Smith: Japanese Societlt: Tradition, Self, and the Social Order Sally Falk Moore: Social Facts and Fabricqtions: "Custornary Lau," on Kilimanjaro, I 880- I 980 Nancy Munn: The Fame qf Gawa: A Symbolic Stud.v of Value Transformation in a Mussim ( Papua New Guinea) Society Lawrence Rosen: The Anthropology of Justice: Law as culture in Islamic Sok:np -''t l

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wouldstress the lu, *h.r"u, hisaccount '9..1', or of proclivitiesthat are curiously ""rti;;;;;it;;r"il;;;J:")a: .preserved', ^"'a ' 't"/ ''/ ir is it i afso-an lY"l

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iJ*, o"iy.nau,o 1 linsofar hr no,^- ,r as tneyare'r;;;;;; in new forms: tradition is thereby reinvented ,--, converselywe arriveat theffin other view, that new ideas can :S!gy{ha!se. onlyemerge fiom thei ir antecedents.It i s tradii tion that chanses: : indeed, it th

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of course,a view implicated in the very claim (which is my claim) to ,',Lhl,-tt, 'rlndsight.There is a similar view implicated in the craim ro perceive

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Englishkinshipin the late twentiethcentury

12

appear connections.It is an anthropological axiom that howeverdiscretethey some in to be, entities are the product of relations; nothing is not embedded axtom the contexr or worldview that givesit its specialshape.I propose to take to individull literally, as though what applies to discreteconceptsalso app.lies 'relations lonc s p.rron, and that by relations we may also understand the relatives) of English kinshiP' emotion for dwelling on tradition. or for _ The English iave. u ,p"iiul Their . ii dwellins on-what is jusiout of reach of enterprise:sentimentality. rhomas's with is taken for pets is a casein point. Macfarlane *-.*/:^ -;;il;?;i;ty .*

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tint uetwe"nkeepinspetsand 'a modern,atomistic,kinship

satisfaction- pets act as system' (19S7:-t5).The link is that of emotional back into medieval traces j&: substitutes for children - and is one Macfarlane exists beyond or that a need as '\ ir-"r.'fl" tri-self puts emotional attachment out s idet he re l a ti o n s h i p s a n d ,i n d e e d ,s u ggestsi ti sacause.ratherl han' a coming into being. such a needfor surrogatesis to be f .oau", of relationships English kinship that set it interpreted *itt ,.rp."ito ail tle characteristicsof ""

offfromitsEuropeancongeners'suchaslatemarriage,lowbirthrate,isolated children' which in living units. Pets were regardedas luxuries, a1 altgllative t ur nm eant t h a tth e E n g l i s h c a m e to re g a r dchi l dren.asl uxuri esal so,as kind of uniquenesstherebS superior pets, and sentimlntally accordedthem a depictions of children He cites (u86: 5afl sixteenth-and seventeenth-century in< lulgedu " o p " .* a a s p l a y th i n g s .2 An d l ikepets,hei ntri gui ngl yadds,i nti me .they would leave theii.,owners": pets died, children left home and withdrew emotionallY'(1986:55)' I t is t hus a s o c i a l re l a ti o n s h i p p fa p a rti cul arki nd.name| ybetw eenparents he callsindividualism.For much of and children *t,i.n..n,rulty "uirii6i'*hat early modern times, Macfarlane into the medievai period, and exiending

doc um ent s th e c o n c o mi ta n ti n d e p e n d e nceofchi l drenfromparents,the nature ofinheritance, prevalenceoi*ug" labour and service,the contractual were strong and emotions private , in short an individualistic system where .fo-rm-altlnsrrin' wsak (lggi: 139). The individualism that these (social) . of uniqueness often arrangements nourished was exemplified in a sense ex pr es s ed a s i s o l a ti o n i s m.Ita l s o h a d a nel ecti venature,thati s,w asamatter of choice. countryside back to a His own reach is generous:he traces the love of the of Anglo/Saxon, waves three the Germanic preference that came through about the something as and iountry, the Viking und No.-un settlementsof quotes He century' nineteenth the in English that was still to surprise visitors visitor a as gardens parks and on the Frenchman Taine and his comments to England in the 1860s: lnmyopinionthesegardensreveal,betterthananyotherwork,thepoeticdreamin has gone the Englishsoul. . . All their imagination,all their nativeinventiveness into their Parks." t of t het h e n i n d u s tri a l to w n o fMa n c h e sterTai new rotethat]

Individualityand diversiry

13

Hereandin Liverpool,asin-London,theEngrishcharactercanbe seenin theirway of building.Thetownsmandoeseverythingin hispowerto..ur. ulinfu townsman, and triesto fit a country-house and a bit of countryinto a corneroithe town. He feelstheneedto bein hisown home,to bearone,king of hisfamityanJ seruants, arro to haveabout him a bit ofpark or gardenin whichhe can relai after his artificial business life. (Macfarlanel9g7: 7g, relerences deleted) The individualism associatedwith a low birth rate, with a high value on each unique child and with keeping pets for surrogate emotional satisfaction was also to be seenin a.cherishingof particular patches of the countryside both the wild moors and mountains of the romantic aestheteand those pieces, of private property which meant that 'the Englishman, could retire behind walls. Individualism becamevisible in professedsolitude, and solitude was a condition in which wildernesswas also to be appreciated.So where Thomas arguesthat a perceivedseparation ofman from nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the precondition for a new and individualistic attitude towards specific animals (quoted in Macfarlane l9g7: g0), Macfarlane himself insists that such cultural traits were in evidence long before. Along with a market mentality and high mobility. they were p* or.a very ancientsystem' (1987: r37), exemprifiedin the most intimate of rerationships when children could physically remove themserves from their parents and pT,r"lt who wanted to be cared for by chirdren had to enter into conrracts wtln them. It is lessthe claims to the historicalcontinuity of individualismthat I find inlerestingin Macfarlane's account than the contemporary rendering he gives of one of its forms. An individual in his view is u p".ron who can ,"t t i- o. herselfofffrom proximity to and relationships with others, and is thus created 1pDern! separated from the constraints of relationship itself. Societyis the Frenchman'smeat and drink; to be lelt alone,the Englishman,s. Henceit is that governmentof any kind irks him wrote one Macneile Dixon (r93g: 70) in the interwar years,a sentimenrto I shall have causeto return. what Macfarlane's observationsadd is that Illtl tndividualism was also to be found in the literal capacity of a person to move the society of others. Isolation was a physical (geographicat) fact. 7 XY?,T:. householdsfacilitated the individual's removir from the' ;:: ".sep^arare prror relarionships,then separationappears as a quantifiablefact! ;;::::it "t possibteto.assessits degreeor incidenceby eitaUtistringhow i;::::,:" :e, ,y^.hrldren were able to set up on their own. This indeed is similar to ;;"'l.Ti ol questionsoften askedof historicar materiar.yet whetheror nor ir is i;;:':f by enumeration, such a relationship betweenindividualism ann"",ll,uTtnutecl -- rourit'o' -uBtification. rs arso one of analogy, and the anal0gy is an apparatus for

couldsrandfor anexercise of independence. rn rheimage "rs uuue Delngsent away from home or breaking free "rllJ:i.|lt:T:]rl from its parents was

English kinship in the late twentieth century

Individualityand diversity

being set against the givens oI an invitation to imagine the inclividual person relationships' pre-existing his or her social situation, and against individualism as a to regard It is somewhat paradoxical, therefore, as we have The evidence, themselves. characteristic oJ certain relationships arranged past have the in might seen,is the way that parents and children be the may pets children like how or contractual ug...m.nt, with one another, is 'special' as someone To treat objects of their parents' special affection. c onc eiv ablya s m u c h a re l a ti o n a l d e v i c e aS toenteri ntoanapparentl y make one kind of impersonal contract with them: both reconstructions What these particular kind. another ..i'utlonrrrip out of a relationship of character of pre-existing the that possibilities have in common is the notion 'relationships status of the implicit The granted. for need not after all be taken reexplicitly relationship the and parent-chiid tie can be circumvented, individual the of satisfaction private constructed to the greater or lesser

is not its parents provides an image for thinking about the contrast between traditionversusnovelty,relationshipsversusindividuals;that the child comes from its parents prompts a counterinterpretation. Tradition innovates; relationshipsproduce individuals. Supposethese conceptualisationsdid indeed once constitute a reproductive, or procreative(after Yeatman 1983),model. The model would be both grounds for and an outcome of kinship thinking. Its implicit developmentalism rnakes generation appear irreversible: children seem further on in time from their parents; tradition comes 'before' change. we could thus say that relationshipscome'before'persons.Parentsalreadyunited in a relationship produce individual children. we might further say that their unity as one person presupposesthe individuality of the child. yet, in their children, parents (rersons in a relationship) also produce other than themselves (individualpersons).Individuality would thus be borh a fact of and .after. ki nshi p.

l4

parties. ' the individuality of English ideas about the value of individualism and they describe' what of terms in simply p..ro"n, are not to be understood taken-for-granted to resistance or solituae namely by documenting people's exist on their own! They relationshtps - uny *o." than ideas or concepts look at the management .consequently must coexist witir others. The observer of r elat ions h i p s a n d a tth e re l a ti o n s b e tw e eni deas' W emi ghtconsi der' then' child generatesthe image how the partiiular social relationship of parent and individual. Indeed, we a unique as but of the child not just as son or daughier oJ'English kinship. the as prrtont is ./act frst I might considerlfte indivielualitv Let m es p e l l o u tth e i mp l i c a ti o n s .L i k e conti nui tyandchangeortradi ti on in antithesis'Any one of and novelty, societyand individual may be construed force or principle that has a theseconceptsmay be thought of as an elementor as it competeswith its insofar lives people's on governing or reguiative effe:ct Each pair of concepts thus seems to ofler a iair in {uantitative effect. At the same time there are many such life. iotalisini perspective on culture' 'Tradip".rp."tiu.i, for many such antithesesrun through English overlapswith the idea of tion, is similar to but not quite the sameas and hence . c ont inuit y ,;i ti s c o n ti n u i ty S e e n fro m th e poi ntofvi ew ofw hati sregardedas overlapsin turn characteristicor typical about something.The'conventional' point of view of what is with the idea of 'tradition'; it is tradition seenfrom the may form a similar regarded as regulative in social life' Pairs of concepts .enterprise'working againstthe inert influence of series.For instance,the idea of . c ult ur e' (tra d i ti o n /c o n ti n u i ty /c o n v e n ti on)addsanotherperspecti veto not of isolatedconceptsbut of analogies'Finally what then appears ^well as a string be comp-osedof elements (enterprise/inertia) internally a pair may in a prior (inertia) or connected as though each were, so to speak, the other transformed (enterprise)state. reproductive Think of thesepartic;lar antithesesas though they modelled a the child That parents. its not parents is its from comes that process.The chili

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Conventionand choice Individualism has its own quantification effect - persons are thought to exercisemore or less individuality, by analogy with the amount of freedom one has to act in this or that manner. It is even measurablebetweenparents and children, at least to the extent that the English regard children as more individualistic than parents. In the relationship between them, it seemsthdf , the parent can stand for the idea of relationship itself, cast in terms of given ties,obligation and responsibility,while the child demonstratesthe capacity to grow away from relationships,as an independentpersonconstructing hii qJher own referencepoints. Thus, as Janet Finch describes(19g9: 53). the parent's duty to care for the helplesschild is more of a certainty than the child'sduty to care in later years for a helplessparent. However, it is quit6' possibleto reversethe case,and stressthe greater individuation ofthe parents (eachrepresentinga unigue-ti-dg-p-lrhe family; by conrrast with the child who oelongsto both. The Sarenr chil]\ relationship in fact offers a two-way ' appa-ratusfor imagi ning-degreesof i nd i vid uality. It is a characteristicof the organisation of ideas that I describethat almost any perspectivecan be countermanded by another. Hence the view ,from the cnlld'finds, so to speak, another version in the view ,from the parent'. The vtew from the child seems a specifically English echo of Macfarlane's seventeenth-and eighteenth-cenluryobiervation'that obligations, like ernotion, flowed down [from pur"nt to child]' in that, after the jurist Drackstone. 'natural afrectiondescendsmore strongly than it ascends' (19g6: "4,. lhe vrew from the parent has nineteenth-centuryantecedentsin the uniqueness claimed for the parent-child relationshipby virtue of its basisin the individual identities of each parent. This uniqueness became, for an index for those kinship systems to which English was li_ll$:,"ty, 'tttmat€ly perceivedto belone.

16

Englishkinshipin the late twentiethcentury

It was the American Morgan who, in classifying systems by their designationsof kin persons,showed that the conventionsof descriptivekin terminology were not universal but constituted a distinct type. The type was common to ancestral Aryan, Semitic and Uralian language groups. as he called them, the last a category that included Europeans and Muslim peoples of the biblical lands of the Near East, and thus in his view the ancestorsof what we would call Westerncivilisation(Trautmann 1987:133).Anthropologists who by and large reject the evolutionary model that lay behind Morgan's eventual sequencingof types nonethelessby and large accept the distinctivenessof descriptive terminologies. A descriptive terminology acknowledges the uniqueness of a child's parents, being based upon the 'correct appreciation' (so he said) of the distinction betweena lineal and a collateralconnection.A child's individual parents are differentiated from other senior kin, as in the English designation of these as aunts and uncles. Descriptive systems contrast with those classificatorysystemsof kin terminologies from elsewherein the world which confound theserelations with others, and where parents and parents' siblings mav be known bv a singleterm. Now originally, Morgan conceivedthe contrast as betweenthose closer to and more distant from nature. The descriptivesystemwas closer to the facts'---. Thus he characterisedit as one that 'follows the actual streams of blood' (quoted by Trautmann 1987: 137). Indeed the draft opening chapter of Sl,stemsof Consanguinityreferred to family relationships existing in nature independently of human creation. If genealogy was, in his view, a natural arrangement, then the genius of the descriptive terminology was that it implied true knowledge of the (universal) processesof parenthood and reproduction (cf. Schneider1984:98). The individuality of a child's particular mother and particular father was preservedin the distinctive kin terms. Morgan was writing in the 1860s,about the time of Taine'sobservationson the English countryside. Adam Kuper (1988: 64-5) reminds us that Morgan in 1871. was also a visitor to England, when he deliveredcopiesof his S.ysle,fls Darwin Huxley, and'took the He called on Maine, Mclennan, Lubbock, and Lubbock Tylor model [of social evolution] back to America'. British social anthropology was to become in turn heir to this American intervention (cf. Fortes 1969).However, parts of Morgan's theory were too much for some at the time. John Mclennan's subsequentquarrel with Morgan included an attack on his explanation for classificatoryterminologies,pointing to the absurdity of imagining that anyone might not recognise'his' own individual mother. Ever since,anthropological debate has largely concernedthe validity of Morgan's classificatorymodels;but we might turn that around and reclaim Morgan from a Western perspective.In the courseof making his classificatory discoveryevident,he had also made the uniquenessof parental identity the founding assumption of his analysis of that class of advanced, descriptive kinship terminologieswhich includedthosebasedon Englishlanguageusage.

Individualityand diversity

17

Whatever one might say about the formal properties of the terminology, perh.rpsthe popularity of Morgan's schemeamong anthropologistsrestsin i he d.montt r at ion t hat t he individualit yof t he par ent svisiblycont r ibut est o the uniquenels.of the parent-child relationshifis a whole. The contrast is with systemsthat do not afford such a senseof uniqueiress.For the twentiethcentury English, that contrast reappears as an internal feature of the relationshipitself, in the same way, as I have suggested,that one party to the relationshipcan Lpp-ggl:.Tglel ggique or individuated than the other. The generalpoint is indicated in"ttre frequent interdigiration of kinship termsand personal names.It is as though the very use of kin terms in English hasa classificatorycast to it, while personal namesare held to be descriptiveof the unique individual.3 A kin term denotes a relationship and thus a perspectiveon the person from another's viewpoint. of course,a contrast lies betweenkin terms themselves.Terms of referencefor absent relativesappear more formal than the often familiar diminution of terms of address.But when a nameis regardedas more informal or personal than a kin term, then all kin termscome to have generic connotations. Betweennames, there is a further contrastin the differentiationof surnameand Christianname.Thesedaysone talks of first rather than christian name and, for most people, the connotationsof the baptisedname as admitting the personto a community of souls is displacedby its personalisingfeatures(Firth, Hubert and Forge (1969:304) equatethe Christiannamewith'personalname').In that aspect,the first name is more personal, we might say, than the surname or family name. Here lies a history within a history. Harold Nicolson, writing in 1955, commentsthus on the twentieth-century revival of a fashion for first names which had prevailed briefly in certain circles at the turn of the eiehteenthand nineteenthcenturies:a In my own life-time... the feelingaboutChristiannameshas [again]changed completely. My fatherwould neverhaveusedthe Christiannameof any man or womanwho wasnot a relationor whomhe had not knownfor at leastthirty years. My auntcalledherhusbandby hissurname until thedayof hisdeath.It wasin the reignof EdwardVII that the useof christian namesfirst becamefashionable, and eventhenit wassurroundedby all mannerofprecautions andrestrictions. Todayto address a manby hissurnamemight appeardistant,snobbish,old-fashionable and ratherrude. . . I am oftenamazedby thedexteritywith which actors,band-leaders, merchants, clubrrenand wireless-producers will rememberto say 'Veronica'or 'Shirley'to women to whom theyiave not evenbeenintroducea. tnis engagrng naottderives,I suppose,from the united states:from the beliefcherishea uy tni crtlzens of that Republicthat all men,asall women,arecreatedequalandthat these gambitsof intimacyform part of the pursuitof happiness. (Nic'holson1955:273) N-otethe consensus about the signification of such shifts, that among any ctrcle of people the move from surnames to first names is a move from tormality to informality; it parallelsthe decisionspeoplemake as to whether rrreyusekin termsor namesfor their relatives.The latter is also interpretedas

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English kinship in the late twentieth century

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Individuality and diversity

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\ z'cnrar.cnrNoeA Great-cnndra i /UNCLE

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Terms of Address to ConsanguineKin levels.For cousinsand other kin of Note.The figureis rranged in generation and belowpersonalnamesare used. own generation

2 Terms of address lo consanguite kin c.1960 Reproduced by kind permission of Routledge, from Fomilies and Their Relatives, Kinship in a Middle-Class Sector of Londor. by Raymond Firth. Jane Hubert and Anthony Forge, 1969.

a gesture towards inforn-rality, as down-playing the given role element in a relationship and up-playing the uniquenessof the interpersonal dimension. What happensin everydayaddressis illuminating in this regard.Plate 2 is reproducedfrom a study of families in London begun by Raymond Firth and his colleaguessome five years after Nicolson's observations (Firth, Hubert and Forge 1969:302).(An accompanyingdiagram not reproducedhere shows the rather different spread of terms used when people refer to kin in the presenceof third parties.)The authors of the study remark that English terms of address were regularly replaced or supplemented by personal names provided,that is, the addressees wereofa generationequalto orjunior to ego. Only a tiny percentaCe(6%) of their respondentsin the early 1960srecorded using personal names to addressparents (1969:.304-6).

l9

4n interesting aspect of the interplay between personal names and kin family life, then, lies in the asymmetry of reciprocal usage. terrnsin intimate called by their personal names,parents and grand-parentsby kin are Children aunts and uncles are often known by a combination of kin term while terrns, name. Members of a junior generationare also assumedto be personal and ('children' age means both offspring and young persons).In some in younger affectation is an to address someoneas son or daughter face to face, it circles, and brother as terns of address often carriesjoking overtones.In sister while generic contrast between (for parents) and individual kin terms principal the (for names children), individuality seemingly belongs 'more' to the personal the than Parent. child It is parents who normally bestow these individual names. Although anyonecan call themselvesby what name they please,convention has it that your namesare bestowedby the parents.So this individuationis establishedat birth. Parentsproduce a unique offspring; it is the parents'duty to name their child,anticipatingthe child'sindividualityin exercisingtheir own. While there is no choiceabout giving the child a name,they can choosewhich name it is to be, and may even think they have invented a name - my own Marilyn being a casein point. The child may, of course,determine usage;I do not usemy initial name. Friends, like kin, also reserve to themselvesthe right to vary the person'sname as they please. Such practices can be taken as a particular exampleof a more generaldistinction betweenconvention and choice.Within theparent child relationship,I have asserted,that distinctionis played out in terms of expectationsthat parents will implement convention - 'socialising' their children - while children will implement choice - making 'their own' lives;or betweenthe roles in which personsfind themselvesand their freedom to act as individuals, to which a generation difference adds weight (cf. Strathern1982:80, 84). $* leat u ry o,[ c-o-nlempo.uary.]inship- pr"actice inrhe. I 980s"is-a.further shift i n

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ctoseseniorkin to a choice betweenthat and the personal name. Again, where

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lnlormality. Using the first name to personalisethe person named seemsof a ptecewith the idea that to treat people as persons one must treat them as unique individuals. For the current trend towards apparent terminological reciprocity is frequently held to be an act of mutual individuation: in having the liberty to treat the parent as an individual person, the child is 'more' of an tndividual him/herself thereby.Yet calling a pirent by a first name is not quite the same as calling the child by a first name. The child claims the greater rloerty.Rather than establishingnew conventionsfor relationships,then, the move is colloquially regarded as treating the parties to a relationship as tndividual personsrather than.asrelatives.That ii, it is regardedas a negation of convention. Now there is no inherent reason why calling a person Ann is more or less

Englishkinshipin the late twentiethcentury

Individuality and diversity

individuating than calling that person Mother (cf' Firth, Hubert and Forge of 1969:310).s-Thenumber of Anns in the world no doubt run in hundreds thousands, while each person has only one mother. Indeed, Mary, a nriddleclassrespondentin Firth's London study (Firth, Hubert and Forge 1969 311) explained her small daughter's use of a kin term towards her thus: 'To her there is only one Mother, but there are two or three Mary's in our circle.' Another said that to use first names among kin was actually to introduce a distance, to make them feel less close. With respect to a circle of named individuals, then, the (generic)kin term can also work to a personalisingeffect. It singlesout a specifictie. But much more than kin terms, namesseemto add to the personalisingmove the significant factor of choice, itself an ingredient

like tradition, seemsto be antecedent,to'come from' the past, while choice, like invention,seemsto lie in the future. In kinship idiom, children are future to the parents' past. Increased variation and differentiation invariably lie ahead.afragmented future as compared with the communal past. To be new is to be different. Time increasescomplexity; complexity in turn implies a myltiplicity or plurality of viewpoints. Ilmodern peoplein the 1950sand 1960sdid indeedseethe future as full of more and more highly individualised persons, more heterogeneity, many analogiesfor the processwere available to them. Change could be identified: l. when convention was challenged, as in the shift from formality to informality in kin address;2. when personswere able to exercisegreaterchoice than before,as in what they wishedto call another; 3. in increasingattention to individuality, so that when personal relationships overrode kinship obligations.individual agencywas seento override stultifying givens of existence, 4. in the manifestedin the equation of physicalwith relationalseparateness; consequentassociationbetweengreaterindividuation and greatervariation ordifferentiation,asin the notion that, asindividuals,personsweresingularin the sense of being unique and therefore innately variable; 5. in simple magnitude,in that with more thingsin the world more individuals- increase itselfindicatedchange;and so forth. In sum, the future was knowableby the infinite possibilitiesit held. Although any of these conditions might be imaginedin reverse- more red tape, more constraints - such a reverseflow also appearedto go against what was apprehendedas natural development. For the conditionscould all be referredto the further suppositionthat over time things naturally evolve from simple to complex states.6Complexity displayeda variety and plurality of individual forms whose interconnections challengedany simple systematisation.Thus we arrive at the English view of the individualist who knew his/her own mind and made a life for him/herself, with thepast thought of as relativelycommunaland homogeneousby contrast with a varied. heterogeneous future. This proliferation of concepts,forming a string of associationsbetween .. roeas that are not quite the same (continuity/tradition/convention: change/novelty/choice)supports the modern connection between the twin processes ofdifferentiation and complexification. There were'many' concepts in the sameway that the world was full of 'many' things- so that evenwhat appearsthe same(suchas continuity/tradition)on closerinspectioncould be differentiated(continuity is a question of time, tradition one of form). This anticipatedproliferation modelled the very comprehensionof change.It also suggestedthat one's perspectivewas a matter of choice. . Ideasabout increasingsocialcomplexitywereconcordantwith ideasabout tncreasing natural complexity (cf. Cohen 1985: 22). Time and variation oecameinextricably linked in this scheme,and the mid-twentieth-century habit of referring io contemporary society as 'complex' had just such a resonance. All I wish to bring into this well-known picture is the fact that the

20

of informalitY. That a move away from kin terms in address, or away from titles and surnamesin other spheres,is imagined to be a move away from formality or conventionperhapsderivespart of its power from former habitsof address.It was once the casethat a superior was at liberty to addressan inferior by the first name but not the other way round. ln Morgan's time. servantsas well as children will have beenaddressedpersonally,although the servantwould have had to take regard of the rank order among the children. Employers might invent names for their servants.What lent this liberty importance, however, has long ceased to signify. Rank has been reconceptualisedin terms of personal interaction, for the present choice appears simply betweenmore or less formality. Formality still carries connotations of respect, but it has become a matter of individual style whether or not one implements that formality in intimate circles. A practiceoncedefinitiveof rank - calling solrleoneby their firsl name- is no*i".n as a negationofrank. That is, one conventionis challengednot by what is perceivedas another convention, but by what the English perceiveto be anti-convention. Underneath the convention, one discovers the 'real' person. Thus. to call a parent by a first name today is not necessarilya sign of insubordinationor lack of respect.On the contrary, it may be encouragedby the parent as a positive indication that within the family everyone has the choice of being treated 'in their own right', as a person rather than simply as some role-player. They are all special, all as it were one another's pets. To borrow the words of a Canadian sociologist,the solidarity of the modern family dependson'personalattachments'betweenindividualmembers(Cheal 1988: 144). Convention is concealed in the anti-conventional effect of 'personal' expression.This bears on views of change and diversity. Like certain kin obligations, time is seento flow downward. It thereby contributes to the asymmetry in relations between parents and children, and to the contextsin which parentsare regardedas actingmore from convention, children more from their capacity for individual choice. Out of the fact and direction of generation, the antitheses between convention and choice or relationshipsand individuality acquire a temporal dimension.Convention,

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22

English kinship in the late twentieth century

same sequence was reproduced in the context of family relationships, encapsulatedin the widely held notion that as personal choice and autonomy became more important, kin conventions became less so. The diminishing importance of kinship over the generations appeared a reflex not just of increasingindividuality but of increasingcomplexityin life at large.That the developmentwas anticipated meant that suchdiminution was also intrinsic to the conceptualisation of kinship relations themselves. Modernist complexity was perceived not so much as the complexity of involute and self-repeatingpatterns, oflayer upon layer oftextual exegesisor of the juxtaposing of mystical and mundane experience,as above all an effect or outcome of quantity. The more people there were, the more points of view, the more potential differences of perspective. This intimate connection betweencomplexity and plurality restedon one presupposition.Proliferation. led to complexity provided what increased was not homogeneity but heterogeneity.Complexity was thus held in place through a commitment to preservingdiversity, underpinned by the notion that if what were reproduced were unique individuals.diversity would be the natural result.But insofar as diversity appearedto be in the nature of things, its naturalnessalso made it a precondition. This gave a fresh twist to the reproductive model. As part of the supposedmodelling of the reproductive processto which I referred earlier, I take diversity as a secondfact of modern kinship. Whrle individuals strive to exercisetheir ingenuity and individuality rn the way they createtheir unique lives, they also remain faithful to a conceptualisationof a natural world as diverse and manifold. Individual partners come together to make (unified) relationships; yet as parents they ought at the same time to stand in an initial condition ofnatural differentiation from each other. In the relationshipsthey build and elaborateupon, it is important that the prior diversity and individuality of the partners remain. Such relationships are 'after' individuality, even as human enterprise is modelled upon and in that sense'after'nature with its own impetusto variation.If in order to reproduce personsmust preservenatural diversity, then diversity would be both a fact of and have a priority 'before' kinship.

Diversitt, and the individuql case Such a reproductive model would have no purchaseif the facts of kinship did not resonatewith how people seeand know the world. Let me exemplify the workings of the model in connection with one way in which the modern English reproduce and createknowledge afreshfor themselves.Conceptualising a world full of individuality and diversitygave rise to certain'questions'. My'answer' offers an explanation or context for one particular question,from hindsight. The question sounds obvious: to whom are my present remarks meant to apply?

Individuality and diversity

ZJ

canons of generalisr Isingmyself as I have occasionallydone offends the qua individual, that is, by virtue of my uniqueness,I have no ^rif,ns: l,..esentative status. One would only draw so narrowly on one case by aggregate:generalisations .i'"*ing some connection with individuals in the plurality sharein common. Hence individuals from what a of fashioned "re features form the referencepoint for replicable specify what really lne should general making observations about purport be all, I to After ln.'r .*u.ple. - and to what areaor regiondo the observations I fit in where do but tcinsirip. cannot be collapsed into a refer?If the vast diversity of Western culture There is true of Britain. are class,geographical, the same also homogeneity, between the British, none of days ethnic differences and these occupational English'. In fact, the sameis with'the in any simple way aligned be can which life Whenever I her experiences. with his or own each individual, of alsotrue person, if it is myself,it and even including the individual unit, social a at look putting that unit by sense of the isolated case only make I can though as seems for both thus and accounting their cultural context, into social or person or the specificityand replicability of its or his/her position. Obviously, this qualification puts innumerable problems in the way of characterising 'English'kinship. Theproblems evidently faced Schneiderapropos'America', and his exercise hasbeencriticised on this account. Sylvia Yanagisako (l 978: I 985) showsthat a JapaneseAmerican understanding of the relationship between Japanese and American culture distinctively qualifies the way in which JapaneseAmericansinterpret'relatives'and 'persons',the apparentlybasic elementsof American kinship.T Anyone embarking on a study of English kinshippracticeswould certainly feel bound to specify the classbackground of their study, and would expectto be dealing with classdistinctivefeatures. Taine'sEnglishman is all very well in his country home, but we know that the numberofcountry homesper head ofpopulation has never been very great at any time in England's history. We cannot conceive of not qualifying generalisationby attention to the specificsocial and cultural background of the individdals to whom it is meant to apply. To what context, then, do I addressmyself? Habits, practices,norms, nomenclature- anything the English might wish to say about 'English rtnship' (cf. Schneider'slist, 1968:l4-18) seemssubjectto diversity.And to what range of practicesdo I addressmyself? Individualism and diversity do not seemon the face of it to have any specificplace in the domain of kinship at Mo..ou.r, I have not only invoked a high level of generalitybut have gone lll. .o.yondeven 'the English' in implying that these or similar conceptsalso belongto a field of Western ideas,while social scientistsknow that when they took al specificinstitutions they find there is never any single Western type. This has beenMichael Anderson's(1980:l4) argumentas far as the family rsconcerned.MichdleBarrett and Mary Mclntosh (1982)cite him to this effect tn their own characterisation of 'the anti-social family'.

English kinship in the late twentieth century is an essentially Do we suggestthat the family, recognizablein its different forms, is anti-social?In one of family type particular this that or institution, anti-social to a particular, sensethere ls a'correct'answer to this questioni v'e must refer or essential,category general no since offamily specifc,form historicalty and socially commonly lumped can be derived analytically from the many varied arrangements . . ' that 'the one writes instance, for togrtnq as thefamity. . . Michael Anderson, there can be no years is that last twenty the in has emerged wirich un'ambiguousfact there is not, ,i*pte nlrto.y of the Western family sincethe sixteenthcentury because been has always West The system. family nor ever hai there been, a single and by functions family of diversity by forms, family of diversity by characterized pointl diversity in attitudes to family relationshipsnot only over time but at any-one type' family Western no level, [Anderson trivial most the in time. There is, exceptat 1980: l4]. (Barrett and Mclntosh 1982:81; my emphasis,origina| emphasis removed) A related position is encapsulated in the opposite argument which they also (and see David cite, not that there are potentially many forms but only one

Morgan 1985:16ff1. Anderson's position . . . is entirely denied by Peter Laslett. Far from endorsing the view that nosingle lamily form is characteristicof the West, Laslett maintains that, pending evidenCeto the contrary, we should assumethat the nuclear form of the iamily prevails. He argues . . . that tleparturesfrom this J'amily form are merely the 'fortuitousoutcomes'of localtzeddemographic,economic or personalfactors' In his insistencethat the extendedfamily is no more than a sociologicalmyth, Laslett puts forward the proposition that'the present state of evidenceforces us to assumethat the family's organization was always and invariably nuclear, unless the contrary can be proved' [Laslett 1972 x,73]. (1982:83,my emphasis)

Barrett and Mclntosh's own conclusion, and one to which I shall return, is that the family is a contested concept. lt is the place of diversity that is of immediate interest. Diversity appears as an interference to generalisation; either there are .many' typ-esoielse only 'one'. Once diversity is admitted, we can conceiveit as starting with individual experienceand proliferating through heteroge-

neouspotulations and organiiationsin a way that defiesasmuch as it aids

reduction. Social scientistsare generallyhappy to settle for a middle range just diversity, such as class and ethnic background. Firth's study was not addressedto familiesin London, but to middle-classfamilies in two residential kinship areas. Indeed, to reveal that in talking mainly about middle-class as a values I am drawing on a privileged educational background, as well feel suburban upbringing in souihe.n England, will perhaps make the reader of on securerground and might even allow me to use myself as an informant sorts. My representativestatus would be evident' defend But as far as the account as a whole is concernedI do not propose to They are intended to my remarks on the grounds of their representativeness' lives' be exemplary. To repeat an earlier point: none of us leads generalised instances' only speiific ones. One therefore always works through concrete

Individuality and diversity

25

generalideas' values' norms' habits of conduct in particular ond encounters. I take 'English kinship' as a particular form of - rr ic in thls sensethat f@t--l'u'""hio. But my concernis not with a subcultureof Westernculture

*.-orincati onisatonce ,, , xrfi':"",.ffi ,]i""h*l [H:i;ilff ff ;; :Ji t?l'""".in.tess to.specify what might be particular to the appearsnecessary. to a specific I .^:: i" which render English kinship itself. I should be true will becomeapparent (seeChapter Four), there are severalreasons l"rr*;.As class .'-.-,.--, f.,"u, on middle-classusage,largely to do with the way the middle general social values. Yet communicate what they regard as J",i".ir,, and not stop there. There are many middle-classways of doing does iuriiJuri,y suburbs are not the same as northern ones, and not all itrrr, and southern question raisesits head. What then is .,r#rrionulr are yuppies. The original is to be exemplified in its middle-class Iie middleclasstype?If English kinship middle class is to be exemplified in some the that seem would it ttt"n iorr, particular education, regional and cultural style, a choice that invites us to ionsider further occupational and local variants; and so on' WhenDavid Schneiderand Raymond Smith (19'73)attempted to grasp the diversity of American kinship, they did so by making middle-class kinship exemplaryin a strongsense.Schneider's(1968)earlierstudy in Chicagoin the 1960shad focusedon a middle income population. Although this population evincedthe cultural apparatus of 'American kinship', there were also marked divergencesfrom what Schneider and Smith call 'lower-class' kinship practices,and the comparison is the subject of the joint monograph. They concluded that the middle-class values they had analysed - including emphasisput on the growing autonomy of the child and intra-familial individualism(cf. Firth, Hubert and Forge 1969 460)- in fact encompassed lower-classvalues. Lower-class kinship did not comprise a separatesubculture, but promoted values and attitud-esspecifically in referenceto middleclassones,which thus held a hegemonicstatus.Moreover, middle-classvalues weresymbolicallydeferred to as ideal and generalisable(conventional),while tower-classvalues were taken to represent a particular and specific kind of struggle('real life' choices) with the 'real world' of limited resources. One contrast between middle- and lower-classkinship practiceslay in the extentto which middle-classfamilies emphasised.o-p"i*". in the managementofsocial relations and applied rationality principles to decision-making tDchneiderand Smith lg73: 114). They endorsed innovation, and were on enterprises, including the .making' of relationships, that is, ll"t:-|* relationships through explicit affective and pracrical dimen:;:::tru.cting tn love-making,cf. varenne rgjj: lggff). Similar featureshavebeen f'.*'tas retelant to middle-classEnglish kinship; more than that, the middle ;;"s1iy beena vehiclefor widespreadand radical social change.However, I il"::.",* the material to hand to contrast middle- and (what the English n*"1"_'luu. Prcfer to call) working-classkinship practices as far as the English are

26

Englishkinshipin the latetwentiethcentury

concerned.I cannot make the middle classexemplary in the hegemonic and encompassingsensethat Schneiderand Smith intended. If thereis a classdimensionto my account,it addresses the opportunitiesfor communication the middle class have made for themselvesin tenns of educationand the disseminationof ideasthrough writing and reflection.This is the classthat doesnot just advertisebut analysesits own conventions.This is the class that makes its implicit practicesexplicit to itself. Here is the common backgroundto the intimate connectionbetweenindigenousmodels of kinship and the way in which scholars over the century between the 1860s-1960shave describedsociety and the nature of social relationships, especiallythe way in which anthropologists have approachedand reflectedon kinship systemsthemselves. one could think, for instance.of the connection that George Stocking (1987:20u2) makesaproposcertain changingcircumstancesof middle-class family life in Englandfrom the I 8 50sonwards.The attentionbeingpaid to the possibility of divorce going through the courts rather than throueh parliament can be related to the then current debate among anthrJpological scholars on matriarchal institutions. Thus he suggeststhat the argument of Mclennan's Primitive Marriage, published in 1g65,two years before the first Matrimonial causes Act was passed,'was conditioned by the contemporary concern with problems of human sexuality and by the processesof social changeaffectingthe institution of human marriage' (Stocking 19g7:201). That particular legislativepracticesin England raised in people'sminds universal issuesto do with human sexuality returns us to the relationship betweenthe particularand the generalas a cultural fact. The questionofhow one moves from individual casesto generalisationsabout systemsis, so to speak,an indigenousone. Indeed the ielationshipis a problematicthat has both informed the aims of descriptivepractice and has seemedto prevent the elucidation of the perfect system. If overcoming imperfect desciiption has driven scholarly practice for a century, it in turn has at once been iuelled by and sought resolution in a pluralist specification of quantity. The specificationhas had two dimensions.Generalisationimplies that collectivitiesare made up of units which can be enumerated.Societycan thus be imagined as a plurality of particulars,as'a collection of individuals'(cf. Schneiderand Smith 1973:21). However, there have always been competing modelsto this vision of society.Michael carrithers (19g5:236)observesthat 'a view of how individual human beings should interact face to face is not necessarilythe same as a view of how they should interact in respect of a significant collectivity'. The latter, alternative, rendering evokes another quantification:the extentor degreeto which a collectivitytranscends its parts. Under this second specification, individuals can only be defined in reflerencesto the whole. The question then becomes 'how much' of the transcendentwhole is to be found in each. For if the former specificationgives rise to enumeration and thus to quantity in the senseof trre plurality or

Individuality and diversity

27

t he lat t ergivesr iset o ,nul ti pl i cit yol lsingular )unit st hat can be count ed.t hen traced back to Edward Tylor's or weight. be What can by volume ",,unii,V (1986: 441,cf. notes as Tim Ingold lrltrt.-rtug.' or'degree of culture', greater or lesser of was in Morgan's notion already there stocking 1968), whether about J.*r.m of civilisation.It is also there in the historicaldispute I have well in what as ,oJr. or lesschange/continuitycan be observed,as positions people being in deducedto be kinship assumptionsabout some wherethey show more uniquenessor more individuality than othersand who arein that sense'more' of a person.Sociaiscientistsmight no longer speakof eradesof socialdevelopmentin an evolutionary idiom, but were still in the 1960ru"ry concernedwith the amount of choice or volume of freedom that individuals could exercise. Whetheror not this investmentin specifyingquantity is part of the middleendeavour,s classpursuit of rationality as a utilitarian, competence-enhancing the specificationsalso make individuality and diversity into generalisable phenomena.They in turn resolve the phenomenon of individual difference into anotherphenomenon.the capacityto analyse.What becomesmeasurable isthedegreeof applicability of either the individual caseor diverseexamplesto account of them. I give a brief illustration. a generalised (1987: 200 1) suggeststhat it is from the 1860sthat one finds the Stocking first hint of a number decline in the English middle-classfamily. The idea prevalentin the 1960sthat 'the [middle class]family is small in size' (Fletcher 1962 125) seems eminently quantifiable. If the reference point were the nuclear family based on the household, then one could look at changing householddemography(by contrastwith the past)or at comparativestatistics (by contrastwith the working class);eitherprocedureassumesthat what is to be enumeratedare the numbers of individuals. What relatives live together? On the other hand. one could look at the degreeto which family members cooperateor assistone another,a volume of behaviourmeasurableperhapsin terms of frequencyof visits and amount of help (e.g.Young and Willmott 1957).How strong is the link betweenthis or that kinsperson?Now both types of magnitudehave a significantnon-quantifiabledimension.The very idea that families evince one or other kind of 'size'is taken to be a generalstate of affairs.That is, the analyticalpropositioncan be appliedto all families,so that regardlessof the particular measurementsall are measurable. In short, quantity (volume and enumeration)solvesthe problem of how to think of both individuality and diversity with respectto the general.One can measurethe degreeto which values are prevalent or how a society allows this or that through the behaviour of individual persons as in showing the percentageof personal name usage for parents. Description based on such analysis encompassesboth the representative and the unrepresentative. Conversely, any analytical type can be shown to have its counterpart in a particular (segment of) population. Only where the population cannot be specified does generality or representativenessmake no sense. Hence

28

Englishkinshipin the late twentiethcentury

Anderson's sarcasm:there is no western family type because,of course,there is no generalwestern population as such. There are only a massofdifferences between people who imagine themselvesas Westerners. This self-evidentproposition becomesin turn my own starting point. we are dealing with people who themselvesmake generalisationr,*ho imagine they are part of larger collectivities, who act with reference to what they assume to be widespread norms and such like, and who are consequently preoccupied with what they take to be a relationship between the pariiculai and the general. The English thus distinguish between phenomena whose own character includes the fact of their generality and those that seem characteristically atypical or individual. A version of this familiar to anthropologists is the question of how far 'symbols' are shared. lt rs not confined to the English. As Anthony cohen (19g6; l9g7) has shown in his study of whalsay in the Shetland Islands, the truth of the matter is that when people draw on certain symbolic usagesthey are drawing on constructs whose property includes the assumption that they are shared - it is they who generalise,and also thus (in the whalsay case)evoke a community of sharing. social scientists(including anthropologists) replicate people's accounts, and what we might call indigenousanalysis,in attemptingto measurethe extent of the sharing: how many people hold this view; how strongly they hold it, and so on. Quantification presumesdiversity as a given. Now' as Yanagisako shows in Japanese-American attitudes towards tradition, kinship offers a field for the display of diversity. when thought of against other facetsof life, kinship relationshipsare redoGnt of tradition and community; yet by the sametoken tracing genealogicalconnectionsback into the past, thinking about one's roots, can also diversify the past into innumerable'different'and specifictraditions. Esther Goody and christine Groothues (r9g2: 2r7) cite the judgement of the President of the High court Family Division in 1972 ton"rrn,ng u Ghanaian girl being fostered by a professional English couple. whereas her Ghanaian parents had intended to have her grow up with an educational advantage before returning to Ghana, the Englisir couple pressed for adoption. one of the grounds was the length of time the giil hai been with them. Thejudge felt obliged to offer some generalremarks.-Hisanalysisof the situation was that a problem had beencreatedby the west African practice of coming to Britain to study or work and then fostering out children, problem a insofar as the children were 'brought up in and learn our British ways of life. [For thenj when a strong bond of attachment and love has been forged betweenthe children and foster parents, the natural parents take them away., In other words, in providing a home, the foster parents had accustomecrthe child to a specific way of life. sngclficfamily arrangementsof the English couple are being contrasted .lh1 with the failure of the Ghanaian parents(he iaid) to'provide u hI-"'for the

\ Individuality and diversity

29

this perspective, the specific belongs to a general ('British') child. From iradition and is held to representsharedvalues.But if home is whereways of a further source of diversity becomesapparent. The life are transmitted. particular and non-representative. become also specificcan private lives, the home is an intimate place, and every family are Kin lives Whether or not they are sharedwith others of like conventions. has its own can be the nation, lives are lived according to or claimed for classor region, past styles. If is style,styleis presenttradition; and tradition soecificdomestic famtlies like many individuals. Hence the judge's are so in ttrelr styles, particular attachments. While each family has the opportunity to referenceto general generic ('class') style or tradition in the way children are rearearea in becoming the focus of deliberate, decision-making up, transmisbrought style may equally well claimed The be as unique innovative. and sion, such point to the changes they have seen since the early twentieth century in English rates of divorce, meaning patterns structure, the of adoption, of household care,stateintervention,and so forth. In any case,couplesdo their particular thing. Certainly in relation to their own children, parents move on from what their parentsdid; each family quite appropriately createsits own modes,even aseachparentalcoupleproducein eachchild a new individual.In short, every 'home' (to use the judge's term) exemplifiesthe same,unique combination of possibilities. The relationship betweenthe particular and the general,the unique and the representative,belongsto an elementarymathematics that both differentiates onenessand plurality and seeseach as a product of operations done on the other.Thus, like'society'itself,kinship may carry the resonanceof a tradition or a community made up of a collectivity of valuesor of individuals;their attributescontribute to its aggregatecharacter(enumeration).At the same time, kinship may also appear as a transcendent order which allows fbr degreesof relatednessor solidarity or liberty and for relative strength in the 'expression'of values;it is like an organismwhich functionsas a whole entity to determinethe character of its parts (volume). This is true both of relatives (the number one knows, the extent of attachment) and of families (how large they are and how cohesive).'The English' similarly appear as now aggregate, now organism. Quantity is compelling. It offers a way of imagining the generalisations through which the English have analysed their own culture. But unless we completelytake the actors'view,suchindigenousanalysismust be a subjectof and not merelythe meansto study.It is particularlyinterestingfor the natural limits it sets to comprehension. Recall the framing of the questions that if I wrsh to generaliseabout English culture then complexity the pluralism of socialforms inevitably appearsto interfere with my task. Diversity seemsan inevitable fact of nature, self-evident when one thinks of human beings as themselves so many individuals.On its head, however,the problem is rather

Englishkinship in the late twentiethcentury

Individualityand diversity

how the English make it self-evidentthat the world is plural, complex and full of individuals. Of what, then, and how is this pressingsenseof heterogeneity composed?

In the framing chapter on The English people, he quantifies the phenomenon.

30

Facts of nature Who are the English? Over the century betweenthe 1860sand 1960s,'theEnglish'acquiredcertain definitive features, although they are ones that have, since the counteremergenceof ethnicpoliticsin the 1970sand 1980s,beenthrown into disarray. In that period of innocent ethnicity, the English were regarded both as a productive amalgam of diverse peoplesand as a highly individualistic nation holding on to individualism as a transcendent characteristic of themselves. The aggregating concept stressedthe 'melting pot' symbolism of heterogeneity, the organic concept that of a redoubtable character that was only to be exemplified idiosyncratically in eachindividual English(man).The English were thus self-definedin an overlapping way as at once a people and a set of cultural characteristics.I exploit the ambiguity in my own account. and refer to the English as though they were identifiably both. The following rendition sets out some definitions of a sort. In 1929, the Professor Dixon to whom I alluded gave a seriesof public lectures on the Englishman at University College London. He took the occasion as an invitation to expatiate on the distinctivenessof the English. We are treated to The English Character, The English Genius, The English People,the English Soul, The English Bible, and to cap it indubitably (cf. Brooker and the Englishman'.It is in his lectureon Widdowson 1986:I l9), 'Shakespeare genius the English that Dixon claims the Englishman is typically an (1938: 65).As a population of individualists,the Englishare also individualist 'a many headedpeople' (1938: 71). What is an individualist? our sageasks.'He is a man more guided by his own opinions than by those he hears about him, not content to blindly follow the crowd, who desires to see things for himself, one in short who 'shoulders responsibility for his acts and judgements', with all the latter-day qualities of reliance and initiative (1938: 68-9). Indeed, rather than following the suggestionsof others, he would by choice work 'in his own garden on his pr iv at e pla n ' (1 9 3 8 :6 7 ). By th e s a meto k en, he i s' tol erant' of the habi ts of others. Dixon slides into a paean on diversity. Becauseof its respect for individuality, he argues, England has nurtured a multiplicity of spirits and opinions,and '[W]here in any societywill you meetsucha curiouslyvaried,so parti-coloured mental tapestry' (1938:72).This in turn leadsto the celebration of the English as a hybrid people in terms of their origins; 'an astonishingly mixed blend', this 'glorious amalgam' (1938:90) is the natural generatorof manifold talent.

3l

Kent. whichstandswith Norfolk and Suffolkhigheston [the] roll of fameamong Englishcounties,although extremelyprolific in the sixteenthand seventeenth decayedin theeighteenth, centuries, andwhollylost hergenius-producing powerin the nineteenth.. . Thusa countryor a countymay lose,thoughwe know not why, its mysteriousvitality. The predominantlySaxondistricts.Middlesex,Surrey,Sussex,Berkshireand Hampshire,standlow on the list of talent,comparingvery unfavourablyin this with Dorsetand Somerset respect in thewest. Buckinghamshire to theNorth, and Kent, Norfolk and Suffolkto the East.we observe,thenthat in the regionswhere thecomponentelements aremostnumerous,wherethereis mostmixedblood,the greatest ethniccomplexity,geniusor ability most frequentlyappears.The hybrids haveit. Norfolk, SuffolkandKent arethecountiesin whichtheminglingof racesis greatest, andprecisely thesecounties,andnot thepurelySaxonor purelyNorse,are richestin talent.(1938:108) His book is about the genericEnglishman,and 'his' geniusin that sense;what the analysisthen uncovers are the hybrid individuals (literally, the geniuses) whosequalificationfor being consideredtruly English lies in their talent and thus in their evident exerciseof it. And if he can count up the number of countieswho haveproducedgeniusesby comparisonwith thosethat havenot, he can also talk about Englishness itself as a matter of degree.In realisingthat the term is not susceptibleto exact definition, he writes: 'Some of us in these islandsare more, somelessEnglish,someof us, of course,in no senseEnslish at al l ' (193 8;5) . The lecturescelebratethe achievementof a period - particularly between 1880and 1920- when 'English' was being legitirnated is a national culture (colls and Dodd l987). Nations did not just havecharacteristics or traits,they had cultures. In the later years of the nineteenth century, the new system of education was held in part responsible for the state of this freshly acknowledgednationhood (Dodd ilaZ' :;. The salientquestion becamewhat attributes were to be taken as representativeenough to be taught in schools, how a senseof being English might be conveyed. Among th. trudition, promoted in art, letters,music and architecturewith which pupils became tamiliar was the ruralism of southern England (cf. Howkin, DSZ, O:;. Institutions such as 'English' u, un .du.utionar curriculum or as an academicdisciplinetaught at universitieshad to be invented:rural cortages and the countryside were there to be discovered.But they had to be discovered oeyond the distress of the then agricultural depression, and were evoked above all in a particular form of past rurality, namely the Tudorism of rttzabeth'sEngland (Howkins 1987:70).As a style,Tudorism was eminently recoverable.Under the Henrys and Elizabeth, domestic dwellings had for the rrrsttime become significantboth in number and in substance.Manor houses

JL

English kinship in the late twentieth century

Individuality and diversity

aDd were built in the newly durable combiacquired a novel spaciousness cottages nations of brickwork and half-timbering that meant even modest by Bard claimed later. Like the years rtiff be occupied three hundred once at was Tudorism the name, of -ignt Diion, and despite the Welsh origins visible in the landscapeand indubitably English' In ,",.orp.ct, Engiishnessthus takes an architectural form, humorously which first conveyed Uy OsUe.i Lancaster's drawings of domestic interiors of number one of a hand any uppear"d in tSfS. But under Lancaster's which through diversity the evoke evocative forms serves: his sketchings Englishnesscould c/so appear. Stockbrokers Tudor is flanked by Aldwych Faicical. Modernistic, Cultured Cottage and Vogue Regency' olde electroliers. All overEuropethe lightsare goingout, oilJamps,gas-mantles, go on again not they or whether and anJwall-brackets, staniards lanthorns, Tudor the in our time,thepresentmomentseemsasgoodasany in whichto contemplate the provides home of the the history For past. in the roomstheyhavi illuminated growth and most intimate,and in someways ihe most reliable,picture of the whetherit be a Tudor developmentof Europeanculture.. . [F]or self-revelation, there'sno placelike Berchtesgaden, at chalet a bomb-proof oi villa on the by-pass 1939) 1953:Prefaceto lst edn, home.(Lancaster IS But although he Europeanises the context. it is clear that Lancaster 'home' he word the on culture. European of version presentingan English comments:

- 'homeloving'; a it serves,among other duties, to distinguish a psychologicaltype values 'there's moral of high d.gr.. of Jiscomfort -'home comforts'; a standard 'homely'; and a radio physical charm ol lack noticeable no ptaci like it'; a pro g.u t, o. of out s t andingbor edom B' B' C 'H o m e s e r v i c e B u t d e s p i t e t h i s of the i.e.i"ndou, adjectival expinsion it still retains. beneath layer after layer one lives' in which house the of meaning substantive its original treacliestsentiment, the word on closer investigation-oneis able to isolate the proper application of .home' still further, and properly confine it to the inside ol one's house. . . [T]he hence tts word implies a sphere over which the individual has complete control; appearance the whereas And .norrnou, pop ulirity in a land oJ'rugged individualists. prejudices of the interioi of one's house is ihe outcome ol'one's own personal tastes, and bank balance,the outsidein ninety-ninecasesout ofa hundredis the expression or ev€n of the views on architectureof a speculativebuilder, a luxury flat magnate' (1953: 9' my emphasis' gentleman' country eighteenth-century an occasionally punctuation emended)

widely of all the styles he brought to light, stockbrokers Tudor became gently so thus were pretensions whose those adopted as a self-descriptionby parodied. lies in the My own disaffectiontiom/affection for Stockbrokers Tudor houses, semi-detached of Its avenue up. grew southern English road in which I the late in built was gables, Tudorbethan at black and white fiontages hinting interior Lancaster Osbert the grand as as .n"un, 1920s;the houses*"."-by no round the suggests.though such houses and no doubt such people were

5TOCKBROKERS

TUDOI{

..Four

Fnc! round my bed, Oakc bcam.s overhead. Oldc ruggro on yc floor, No stek6rolcr;utd asic for mo.c.,, Sur.x hou.-dqab,one. (Tloditional, .otlt tu ntieth .att/).)

OT even rhe first uorld rvar and its afrcrmath could scnsibly diminish f thc antiquarian cnrhusiesm which hrd first gripped the Errglislr I \ ! public early in Vicroria's reign ^ ; and tl,e .rcrmou. advance in mass-production mcthods that took place during the iDter_war period only served to increase the enormous output of handicrafts. The experience gained in aircraft and munition factorics tvas soon bcinq utilizeJ itr the manufa.ture ofold oak beams, bottle-glassrrind6y-panq. Jnd wrouglrt_iron Tudor )ighting lixturcs. In intcrior dccc'ration thc chcrishcd idcal, relentlcssly and all too succesfulJy pursud,.uas a glorificd vcrsion of i\nne Hatharvay,s cortagc, \!1tI 5u( n modlh(altuns as were r)e(es\trv lo cuDfi,rm to trrl)\illrlrtic standards ofplumbing. In construction the Tudor note was truly sounded : in thc furnishing considerablc deviations from s(rict period accuracv w.,. pcrmissible. Thus cightcenth-ccn(ury four-p,,srers, Rcgcncy sampleis, and Victorian chintzcs all soon came to be regardcd u, TrJo, by adoption_at least in estate agcncy circles. Soon certain classes of the community were in a position to pass thcir whole livcs in long Elizabethan day-drcam; spencling tlr;ir nigirrs -one undcr high-pitched roofs and ancient eaves, thcir days in lrekking from Tudor golf clubs to half-timbercd cocktail b.rs, anj their evcnires rn contemplating I\{r. Laughton,s robusr intcrprcration of Henrv Vlll ;mid the Jacobcen plesterwork of the Glorirnr prh, e. \

nl:{lr .t Tudor, ear l.t.rtrt n i.*il ' rum the 1953editionof Hontes rieIh centur1. Sv,eer Hones by OsbertLancaster,originally u u D t i s h ei nd 1 9 i 9 . by kind permissionof osbert Lancaster,A CortrxtnHisroryof irTt"^ltq Architecture, -'ru JohnMurray(publishers) Ltd.

J-t

J+

English kinship in the late twentieth century

corner. The estatewas thus under construction at the time when Dixon was deliveringhis lectures.Aspiring to a gardensuburb,it had beencarvedout of an ancientwoodland that once suppliedElizabeth I's successorwith timber for his fleet,and someof whoseremainingoaks carry individual preservation orders. Like nrany statelyhomes in England, the treesare no longer private property but part of everyone'spast. The Garden Suburbhad sprungup in the wake of the gardencity movement of the 1900s.one visionarymodel of the gardencity, in the words of Ebenezer Howard, restedon making the distinction betweentown and country quite exphcit.'Town and country must be married and out of thisjoyous union will springa new hope,a new life and a new civilization';it was to be a marriage'of rustic health and sanity and activity [and] of urban knowledge and urban technical facility, urban political co-operation' (quoted by Thorns 1973: 17). The very phenomenon to be avoided was the formlesshomogeneity of the old urban suburbs.The gardencity promiseda completelynew urban form. But it was the gardensuburb that spreadwith suchpopularity in the interwar years; and, neither urban nor rural, it was to collapse rather than sustain the distinction. Let me return to one aspectof Dixon's rendition. This is the notion that diversity is a natural outcomeof the mingling of difl'erentpeoples,an amalgam which preserves its original vigour. Inter-minglingcontainsa geneticimageof cross-fertilisation, though the difference between plant and animal imagery might give one pause.I suspectthe hybrid that Dixon celebratesis to be thought of as roseratherthan mule. Unlike the sterilemule, the cultivatedrose with its Tudorbethan resonancesgrows healthily on a wild rootstock. Indeed, the vigorous programme of hybridisationdevelopedby plant-breedersover the hundred years since the 1860sliterally turned a modest victorian shrub into the most prolific and diversefloweringbush in the Englishgarden.Above all, in the rangeof rosescalledHybrid rea, accordingto my 1976gardeners' manual, one finds both 'old favourites' and 'new exciting varieties'. New varietiesappear each year. As Dixon intimated, infinite diversitv is oossible for the future. 1989,sixty years on, lies in Dixon's future. How fares the hybrid? In the late twentiethcentury, the English are more consciousthan ever of ethnic diversity. Yet the result does not seem to be an ever more heady amalgam. or at least people do not readily assimilatelatter day ethnic differentiation to that of the celts and the saxons and the Danes whose diversity, children were once taught at school, made up 'our isrand race'. value was put on the mixing of ancestrywherewe now only seemabreto see the proliferation and diversification itself. In the late twentieth century it has becomedoubtful who or what 'the English' aree- or indeed whether the term is usableat all. As a consequence. we might remark, former perceptionsof quantity do indeed seem to have lost some of their power. Has something 'happened'then?

Individuality and diversity

35

Whot is EthnicRecord keeping? Ihe collecting of informotion obouto person's ethnicgroup.

NIIOR.IN MonchesterCity Councilbelievesin equolrightsond opportunitiesfor oll In itsrole os the lorgest itscitizens. ond on im Por iont l ocolemP l o Yer the Councilknows services, of provider towords equol work it must Putting thot policyinto opportunities. time ond we needto tokes oroctice progress we ore much how see moki ng.

Why theseProposols for EthnicRecordkeeping ond Monitoring? Ethnicrecordkeepingond monitoringmokeit possibleto tellif Monchester's equol opportunity policyisworking

Whot is on ErhnicGroup? An ethnicgroupisone in whichthe members hoveo shoredcullurolbockoroundond identity.ThisdoesNOT meo"ncountryof birih or notionolity.

How would ErhnicRecord keepingbe done? Fochpersonwouldbe oskedio sovwhich groupheor shefeelstheybelongio by ticking

l.?ll;-,,",

eaxrsranr ! trlroorrrlsr! arntcalt! vrrrult:sr f] rrnocanrraean ! OTHERBLACKT-.l elxouorsxr ! ?LEA5l3taCtfY U aucxanrrrsx ! rnrsx! cxtrrs:f] ! EASTAFR!5^N wxrreanrrrsx n OTHERWHITEfI ftl^ltttacrfY U rNotet!

WouldI hoveto give my EthnicOrigin? Not if you don't wont to. Butthe CityCouncil hopesyouwillco-operotesowe concheckthot policyisbeins put inio *::r?.r":'.oo.rtunities

TI'rtCHESTER

Whor is the Purposeof RecordKeeping?

DefendingJois - tmproring Servkes

Io mokesurethotoll oppliconts for lobsond everyonewho usesCouncilservicesore treotedfoirly ond equolly.

-CitY

Council-

EDUCATIONCOMMITTEE

4 EthniLnonitorins. 1987 Mant'hesterCiry Council's categoriesfor a proposed ethnic monitoring scheme (1987). E ngl tsh'does not appear.

If I suggestsomethinghas happened,it is only to point to somethingthat , lut b..n 'happening'all the time, namely the way peopleput value on what they value.When this takes the form of making the implicit explicit, then what *1t on." taken for granted becomes an object of promotion, and less the cultural certainty it was. A cultural certainty to which I refer here is the associationbetween the twin concepts of individuality and diversity. It was once a fact of nature that these went tosether.

Englishkinshipin the latetwentiethcentury

Individualityand diversity

Somepart of the story as it was told in the period betweenthe establishment ofEnglish as a national culture at the turn ofthe centuryand (say) 1960went along lines like this. The English made variation, evinced in complexity and multiplicity, one of the vehiclesfor their senseof civilisationand enterprise. Variety was also reproductive variety. The greater the genetic diversity, the more rugged the offspring, and that was as true of culture as of peoples.If England formed the basisof a hybrid nation, it was a vigorous hybrid, created centuries ago by waves of conquerors each of whom added their genesand skills to the stock. Over England's history, the displacement of royal dynasties,the rise and fall of classesof merchantsand industrialists,the absorptionof smallgroupssuchas Flemingsand Huguenots-'additions to an alreadyinfinite complexity' (Dixon 1938:100) all sustainedthe imagery of constant infusions of 'new blood'.lo The country's institutions were invigoratedby cross-fertilisation.Each individual therebycontributed his/her uniqueportion without losingthe transcendentcharacteristicof individuality; that was preservedin the singularity of 'the English' themselves. That is a story that now belongsto the past. Uniquenessand variety have become an aim of cultural practice. Ethnic groups must be recognisably 'ethnic'. The constantproduction of new goods includesthe reproductionof old ones, as the media promote freshjuxtapositions of familiar and exotic waysof living. Thoselate twentieth-centurypeoplewho can afford it live in an infinitude of other people's variations, with the rider that many can be sampled,consumed,partaken of bread done in the styleof Vienna, of Poland, ofTurkey. A consequence ofthis production ofdiversity is that'real' (natural) diversitybecomeselusive.Distinctionsseemto collapse.The cognoscentinow know that Chinese food served in Manchester take-aways is Chinese food intended for English (?British) tastes; that novelty is specially created by specialistsin creations;that giving your pet cat rabbit from a pink tin instead of lamb from a greenone panders to a consumer demand for colour coding variety is 'colourful'. Everywhere we seepromotions and creations that seem to referenceat whim this or that tradition. It is as though unique cultural forms must take after other unique cultural forms (Jameson1985). In the words of one 1980sjournalist, Britain has become a wholesale imitation, of itself and of others imitating itself.

ambiguous. This would be the view from the late twentieth thoroughly centurY -the time, everything feels as A senseof epoch has to be retrospective.At poignantly present experiencedin the The is in crisis. crisis is though it 'less'nature in the world today than there once is there much that ..nrojion was.Confidenceabout turning the world's natural resourcesto human benefit fear about their consumption. Teenagerstalk about what it is hasgivenway to courseof endlessdiscussionsabout becomingvegetarian,I the In right to eat. that appear on the surfacesimilar to the sixteenth-and reasons haveheard hesitationsover barbarous slaughterfor the table that seventeenth-century 2934) records, although they are hardly based on the same (1984: Thomas composition.It is not that animalsshould not eat temperamental of theories I think, that human beings are too easily systematicabout but other anirnals, the domestic slaughteris 'unnatural'. purposefulness of it. The plants kind of proximatenaturewhich may rather than comprise a Animals (cf. Haraway 1985:68). Whether with interests of their own endowed be also pets house filming wild creaturesin their own in the or keeping through habitats, the English can coopt them to preserve an essentialsenseof the diversityand plurality of natural life. a late twentieth-centurysensitivitythat belongsto a moment consciousof the numerical reduction of the world's destruction of England's own wildlife seems to have species.Systen-ratic reachedits peak at the end of the eighteenthcentury.By I 800 many speciesof bird that had been common centuries earlier were gone for ever and the countrysidewas already denuded of the small mammal life that had been hunted out or vermined out; fish that once swam in the Elizabethan Thames were polluted long before the corning of pesticidesand chemical fertilisers (Thomas1984:274-6).The presentcrisis,however.is focusedon the denuding of the planet. I suspectthere is too closea parallel betweenwhat is taken to affect natural life and what is taken to affect human life. Among other things, cultural diversityas such seemsnewly at risk. Societiesare content to cocacolarise themselves; anyone'slogo will do when costumesand customs are glossily preservedas the exotic face of adventurousmulti-nationals. A paradox becomesa commonplace:changeis bringing about homogenisation. When it was a caseof exporting constitutionalreform or development schemesfor health,educationand standardof living, homogenisationhad its justifiers. Uniform laws and universal rights were to be made available everywhere.But culture itself as a common export? The anthropologist at leasthas resistedthe idea with his or her insistenceon the individual integrity and plurality of cultures;the very idea of culture implied a distinctiveness of tradition and style. As long as the colonial encounter meant the clash of culturesor culture contact, there was the possibility that new forms would naturally yield unique and vigorous hybrids.Today, and to thosethat reflect on it, what seemsto be tradedeverywhereis the'same'heterogeneity: cultures borrow bits and piecesfrom one another, reassemblingthe old stock of styles.

36

Thereis apparentlyno Briton too incongruousor mis-shapen to sport a T-shirt proclaiming allegiance to Harvard,Yaleor theMiamiDolphins.I evenoncesawa down-and-outunderCharingCrossarchesin baseballcap bearingthe elegantly intertwinedinitialsof theNew York YachtClub. (Wholesale imitationof a culture loundedon wholesaleimitation naturallyproducessomeparadox.The'yuppie' style favoured by young bankers and brokers in Mrs. Thatcher,seconomlc Wonderlandis believedthe epitomeof hard-nosed, thrusting,fingerpopping New York. It is actuallyNew York's rather confusedparody of English'classic (PhilipNorman, Weekend elegance'.) Guardian.l0 lI December1988) Culture in turn somehowseemsat once lessthan real and larger than life, in the same way as the relationshipbetweenEnglish and British has become

37

38

English kinship in the late twentieth century

Individuality and diversity

39

.rt ercis'nothingnew'; or ratherthereis'too much'traffic.At least,suchviews j-,i,f.,. nostalgiathey evincefor other timeswerestandardin the middle-class 1""'",in 1989and into 1990.They have a powerful counterpartin the future f^r-linrtrip' the possibility that new forms of procreation will produce not to enhancebut at the expenseof diversity. iiaiu;auott

I9BB VOI,IINIT, 2 ISSUE9 SF]PTT,NTBF]R EditorMarvRatcliffeArl Direclor Graeme Murdoch Publisher Marina ThaineProduclion Caroline EmertonAdverlisement Manager Direclor BarryHadden lSrgnature is djstributed exclusively to Members of Diners Clubin theUK.lt is published of Diners onbehalt by ReedPublishing Services Ltd,7-11StJohn'sHill,London SW'l11TE,Tel:(01)228-3344 REt Telex: 923115 publishers Fax.(01)350-1586 Partof Reed International PLC,Europe's largest of travel, leisure andbusiness IThe opinions In Signature expressed those0f theDrners arenotnecessarily Club.ForInformation 0n andqueries please (0252) membership, telephone: 516261 Services Ltd1988 @ ReedPubiishing Valley lPrinled:Severn PressOriginated: Phoenix Scanner Graphics

Oystcr House is a pearl among restaurants. The popularity of this, the second Restaurantto be openedin the last two years, has been quite phenomenal. with his undoubted knowledgeof the fish trade, is the third generationof fishmongersand knows that top quality, fresh produce is oi paramount importance. Oysters are flown into Heathrow twice a weekfrom lreland,crabsare despatched from Cornwall, live lobstersfrom Scotlandand the wild salmonarrivesdirect from the Scottish rivers. There's quail, guinea fowl, wild duck,saddleof hare,fillet of venison, duckling from Norfolk and chicken from Surrey. Looking after the "drinks", has compiledan imaginativeand extensivewine list. Bookingis advisable.

5 Oyster House, 1988 Reproduced by kind permission of Reed Publishing Services

more technologY Lessnuture' I call postplural.I do so to suggestthat, self-evidentas the nostalgia the Thisis seem, they also stem from a prior and very specific may anxieties (modern/pluralist)modelling of the world. If English ideas about reproductjust for the making of personsbut for ive processformed a model, it was not future. Kinship delineated a developmental process that of the making the guaranteeddiversity, the individuality ofpersons and the generationoffuture possibilities. Hybrids were one element of the model. Out of a plurality of stocks was to comethe singular characteristicsof the English(man) who preserveddiversity in a tolerance for all forms of life. In the language of the time, one could identifyan Englishcharacter.In the languageof the gardeners'manual,'one hundredand fifty years ofhybridisation has given us the perfect [rose] plant'. If individuality were swamped,on the other hand, then hybrid could turn into mongrel,and The Societyof Pure English,founded in l9l3 (Dodd 1987:15), saw only contamination in the blundering corruptions that contact with 'other-speakingraces' produced. Here the purity of the individual form (in this casethe English language)wasjeopardised.Individual forms must also be kept separate. The English sense of plurality was much indulged in the making of distinctions. Thus most thinkers on the subject have urged the readers of books and articles to keep separatethe diverse meanings of 'nature'. With hindsight,however, it is intriguing to seehow environment has been literally imaginedas countryside, the life cycle of organismsas the habits of plants and animals, the taken-for-granted background to human enterprise as the socalledlawsof the physicalworld, and so forth. In the sameway, diversityhas oeenliterally imaginedas a matter of geneticvariation. Sincethe late 1970s, this last connection has acquired a new and pressing salience,and one that directly affects the cultural keepers of natural diversity, human beings themselves. For a decade now, considerable publicity has been given to artificial 7 parenthood, and particularly to the figure of the surrogate mother. In the \ )t^mageof the surrogate mother appears the possibility of splitting apart . I tunctions that in nature are contained in the one body. ovulation and r.{' Sestation. The English reaction to the new reproductive technologies in /r "'ii generalhas predictably ranged from wonder to fear. For they appear to make within human reach other dreams/nightmares, such as cloning - the

40

English kinship in the late twentieth century

possibility of individuals reproducing themselvesmany times over and geneticdetermination that parents may be able to screenout or preselect certain attributesof the child for whom they wish. The divergence of views can be summarised in the two positions stated during the Parliamentary debate on Enoch Powell's The Unborn Children (Protection) Bill in 1985.The debate raised general questions about medical researchinto human fertilisation; I quote from Naomi Pfeffer's 1987 essay. One Member of Parliament stated the case as follows: 'The object of our interestin medical researchinto embryology and human fertilisation is to help humanity. It is to help those who are infertile and to help control infertility. . . The researchersare not monsters, but scientists.They are medical scientists working in responseto a great human need.We should be proud of them. The infertile parents who have been helped are grateful to them' (House of CommonsDebates,198+5, 73,column 654).Opposingthis view,Pfefferadds (1987:8l), 'are thosewho seethesemeansof treatinginfertility as misguided and unethical becausethey seethem as meddling with the secretsof life itself. This technology,they argue,"promisesbenefitsperhaps,but [it]could end by destroying the essentialhumanity of man . . . The technology that promised a paradise now shows signs of delivering a hell" (ibid., column 649)'. "._. \ ) Technology can also be understood as 'too much' culture; nonethelessas a source of anxiety in this field it seemsa relatively new target. Anxieties over artificial insemination, for instance, have taken interestingly different forms over the last fifty years. I continue Pfeffer's account. Artificial insernination (using donor semen)has been clinical practice as an a infertility treatmentin England sincethe late 1930s.11 I However,not until case \, details were later published in the British Medical Journal was it widely ', kno*n. It then became a matter of public outcry. likened to 'human stud 1 n lfarming'. a referenceto the introduction of agricultural centresfor cattle linsemination in the early 1940s. L- An articlepublishedin theSundayDesparcft in November lg45articulated manyo[ the contemporaryconcernsabout artificialinseminationusingdonor semen.It ' of test-tubebabieswill becomethe euardiansof atomi f warnedthat 'a super-race -# ' ' 4 \i bombsecrets . . . Fatherswill bechosenby eugenic expertsof tie UnitedNations'. ( 1987 :9 3 ) Different concernssurfacedduring the 1950s.A divorce court had been asked whether artificial insemination by donor constituted adultery if a wife went aheadwithout her husband'sconsent.A committeeof enquiry was set up in 1959. The social issue. . . was the question of legitimacy.As Lord Brabazon of Tara put it, 'When we come down to brass tacks, the whole thing revolveson whether the child should be a bastard or not'. Bastardy was perceivedas a growing threat; since the SecondWorld War the number of illegitimate births had been rising steadily. . . To many it appeared that the institution of the family, which they believed underpinned Western civilisation, was under threat. Children conceived through

Individuality and diversity

4t

{r

t a consciouseffort to bring forth an illegitimatechild ti represented tli donor semen greedy and be used by the . insemination would . . artificial marriage Lltnin lit ,,"..ruputorsto defeatclaimsto titlesand estatesnot rightly theirs.And not only itselfwasinjeopardy. . . 'knowledgethat there .l-. oairimonythreatened;paternity is a potentialthreatto the securityof the fatherhood ofsome about ,.lrn..r,ointy rz 94, r ef er ences om it t ed) 119 87: ut| . less about the animality of the In the 1980s,however, the debates are into biologicalprocess,less the intrusion oftechnology about than nrocedures t he kind of cont r act t he par t ies union t han about of a l awf ulness rh. l bort property claims to bastards shouldmake with each other, and lessabout the products Finally, they are lessabout the ofone's body. to the rights about than persons whole than about the ownership and disposal of and ownership cells. reProductive of disposal Long establishedas procedures for artificial insemination might be, they find a new context in the 1982 committee chaired by Mary Warnock.

tii

\i

f, Handlinghumangametes[eggsandsperm]andembryosoutsideof thebodyraised and legalownership.lt is not surprising -.\ I the problemof moral responsibility of the WarnockReport ' thereforeto find that very many of the recommendations ';,.. *3r-eebouttheirownership,supplyanddisposal.In manywaystheWarnockReport ,- a' the anxietiesabotit'iidoptionof childrencurrentin the 1920s.Then recapitulates . i,. ,, adoptionwasnot regulatedby thelaw; it couldbe and wasexploitedasa sourceof -1 ...-.'' cheapchild labour. . . Insteadof a traffic in children.we have [today] a tradein humangametesand embryos,and in placeof white-slavetraders,in the public doctorsand imaginationaredesperate infertilemenand womenandunscrupulous scientists. ln this context,the reasonsfor the inclusionof artificialinsemination usingdonor semenand surrogacyfor consideratiop"j,y_-llp-"Qgmmittee chairedby Mary Warnockbecomeclear;in both gametesareipgghasedleither by doctorsor throughcommercialagencies. (Pfeffer1987;'916,emphasisremoved) The public mind, as reflectedthrough the Warnock Committee, links artificial l insemination to commercialism, to market manipulation and consumerl choice.r3And where those earlier anxieties touched on the implications for people'slegal and social standing, the present anxiety concerns interference with natural relations. Civilisation is not so much under threaJlNglugggll much is. Natural processis also about future potential. Hence clinically established proceduressuch as artificial insemination, and newer ones such as in vitro fertilisation, come to be put aside 'technologies' such as ectogenesisand parthenogenesis which are little more than imaginative extrapolations into the Iuture. The Warnock Report (1985:4) claims they all have in common'the pgb-li-c--mind'; the question is the kind of -auxrety they-lhey.e].e9n9i1teg iL 1_h-9 Iuture one can expect.Hilaiy Rose expandsthe point. CertainlybeyondIVF andtheactualor potentialgenetherapies liesa scientificand technological horizonalongwhicharerangedotherpossiblereproductive interventtons:wouldit be possibleto reara foetusfrom fertilizationto independent 'birth' entirelyin vitro (ectogenesis)? To cloneidentikitcopiesof individualsfrom single

A) T-

English kinship in the late twentiethcentury

cellsor 'genelibraries'?To rear a humanembryoin the uterusof a non-human hybrids?Or to providea techniquethat creatureor evenmakehuman-non-human wouldenablewomento givebirth withouttheneedfor spermto fertilizetheireggs and (parthenogenesis, Theseprospects a form ofcloning)?Couldmenhavebabies? dreams.(Rose1987:158) othersform the stuff of science-fantasy Here the hybrid is no metaphordrawn from anotherdomain (plant breeding), and does not describe cultivated characteristics. It refers to the literal possibility of producing human beings by graft. Crossinghuman gameteswith thoseof other speciesis at presenttechnically impossible (Ferguson 1990:24), and in any caseunlikely to be developedfor therapeutic purposes when transpecies genetic implants hold instead a realisticpromise of development.Much of this thinking must remain in its science-fictionform, but it still remains thinking about the future. And the future has always been imagined as a matter of infinite possibilities. Thus Fergusonnotes it is a possibility that the embryo may be manipulated 'so as to engineerinto it additional geneswhich, for example,may not naturally occur )sin the human species'(1990:la). Perhapssome of the apparentlyirrational fears such writers seek to allay are fears for the future of possibility itself. If technological mastery were indeed gained over genetic makeup, the expressedfear is that the way would be open for eugenic programmes that would inevitably lead to preferencesfor particular types of persons. As the , English are used to telling themselves,it is lessthe technology that is in doubt how it will be used. Perhaps the prominence of the clone image in $tran tv people's vision of the future encapsulatesthe anticipation that the exercise of choice in this regard would take away choice. The very idea of selecting for clones obviates the idea of selectionitself. Choice would thus be shown up for something other than it seemed.More technology does not seem to compenesatefor less nature. , - Technology, for those who are afraid of it, is a kind of culture without I people. Meanwhile one is at the mercy of people. The reduction of naturally \ produced genetic material, like reduction in the diversity of the world's f species,is symbolised in the fantasy that if those with the power in fact get ,\' \ / their hands on the appropriate technology, they would produce versions of 1l , i': ,i. 1 , i i themselvesover and again and/or counter versionssuch as drones and slaves. \ '{ A particular individual would be reproduced- but its multiplication would be the very opposite of individuation. Diversity without individuality; individuality without diversity. I have referred to the modern English opinion that kinship diminishes in importance over the generations.Perhapsthis has fed the present-dayfeelings of being at a point at which there is actually 'less'nature in the world than there usedto be. And here we come to a conflusion.In one senseit would seem ? **-.---that 'more' technology means 'more' culture. But if more culture creates o choice that is no choice, then with the reduction of diversity there is also 'less' culture. The mathematics does not work. The perception that there is less

In d i vi d u a l i ty a n d d i ve r si ty

43

"\i\

joined to the feeling that there is lessculture, nature in the world is thus n/so less community, less tradition, less and less society for that matter convention. Tradition was traditionally perceivedas under assault from the individual who exercisedchoice, from innovation, from changethat made the world a more variedplaceto be in. It is now individuality that is under assault from the over-exerciseof individual choice, from innovations that reduce variation.ra'More'choiceseemsless'choice':with the engineeringof genetic I **f .1rather than reduced variation may be long:term future potential for the stock, * tJ enhanced. When diversity appears to depend literally on the vagaries of human individuals, it suddenly seemsat risk; variation may not ensue. In the modern epoch, kinship and family could play either nature to the I ildividual's cultural creativity,or societyto the individual'snatural spirit of i enrerprise.But if that former symbolic order pitted natural givens against.f

culturalchoice,pggl ,ql"qltig!-q-gg,ilg!*qatiua!. 919-]onger! -vsrip-!iglr.-t!9n Thd;;;rspa-Aivil;itffi ;l piay off ag*nJi' oirenffihei. Thei persuas\

References

/80, 'No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case.' In C. MacCormack and M. ' strathern (eds.),Nature, culture and Gentler,cambridge: cambridge University press. 1981, Kinship at the Core; An Anthropology of Elmdon, A village in North-west Essex,in tlte 1960s,Cambridge: Cambridge University press. , ; 1982, 'The Place of Kinship: Kin, class and village Status in Elmdon, Essex'. In A. P. cohen (ed.), Belonging; Identitl' and social organisatiott fu British Rural Cultures, Manchester: Manchester University press. :{ '! 1984,'LocalismDisplaced:A "vanishing Village" in Rural England', Ethnos,49: 4T 60. 1988. The Gender o.f the Gift. Problems n,ith women and problems with sot'iety in Melanesia, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California press. 1991, Partial Connections. ASAO Special publication 3. Savage. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Thomas, Keith, 1984, Man and the Naturol world. Changing Attitudes in England I50U 1800, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Thompson, E.P., 1978(1965),'The peculiaritiesof the Engtish.' ln The poverty of Theory and Other Essa1,s,London: Merlin press. Thorne, Barrie and Marilyn Yalom, 1982. Rethinking the Family: some Feminist Questions,London: Longman. Thorns, David, 1973.Suburbia,St. Albans: paladin. Thornton, Robert, 1988, 'The Rhetoric of Ethnographic Holism', Cultural Anthropology,3: 285 303. Trautmann, Thomas R., 1987, Lewis Henr.y Morgan and the Invention of Kinship, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California press. ulmer, Gregory, 1985,'The object of Post-criticism.'In H. Foster (ed.),postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press. Ungerson, Clare, 1983, 'Women and Caring: Skills, Tasks and Taboos.' In E. Gamarnikov et ol. (eds.), The puhlic and the privare. London: Heinemann. 1987,'The Life Course and Infbrmal Caring: Towards a Typology.'In G. Cohen (ed.), Soclal Change and the Life Course, London: Tavistock. Urry, John, 1987.'Nature and Society:The organisation of Space.'In R. Anderson, J. A. Hughes and W. W. Sharrock (eds.),C/assicDisputesin Socittlogl,,London: Allen and Unwin. varenne, Hervl, 1977, Americans Together: structuretl Diversit.v in a Midwestern Zown, New York: Teachers College press. Verdon, Michel, 1980.'Descent:An Operational View', Man (n.s.), l5: 129 50. Wagner, Roy, 1975, The Inventiort o/ Culture, Englewood Cliffs: prentice-Hall. 1977a,'Analogic Kinship: A Daribi Example', American Ethnologist,4: 62TA. 1977b, 'Scientific nnd Indigenous Papuan Conceptualizationsof the Innate: A semiotic critique of the Ecological perspective.'In T. Bayriss-Smithand R. Feachem (eds.), SrzDsislence and Survit,al,London: Academic press. 1986, symbols that Stand/br Themselves,chicago: University of Chicago press. warnock, Mary. I 985, A Question of LiJe. The vlarnock Report on lruman Fertilisation and Embryologl, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Weiner, Annette 8., 1976, Women ol'Value, Men oJ Renov'n; New perspectivesin Trohriand Exchange, Austin: University of Texas press. 1983,"'A World of Made is not a World of Born": Doingkulain Kiriwina.'ln J. W. Leach and E. R. Leach (eds.), The Kula. New perspectives on Massirrr Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

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Weiner. James F., 1988, The Heart of the Pearlshell; The Mvthological Dimension oJ' Foi Socialll', Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press. werbner, Richard P., 1989. Rituul Passage, Sacred Journey. The Process and Organisationof ReligiousMovement, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1990,'on Cultural Bias and the cosmos: Home Universes in Southern Africa.' In M. Jackson and I. Karp (eds.),Personhoodand Agencv: the Experienceof selJ'and orher in African Cultures, washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. williams, Raymond. l96l (1958),Cultureand society, 1780-1950,London: Penguin Books. 1985 U9731, The Country and the Cil-v, London: The Hogarth Press' \Willmoti, Peter and M. Young, 1960,Famity and Classin a London Suburb, London:;{ Routledge and Kegan Paui. . t ' ' Wilson, Patricia and Ray Pahl, 1988,'The Changing SociologicalConstruct of the Family', Sociological Review, 36:23t 66. Woli Eric. 1988, 'Inventing Society', American Ethnologist' 15:752-61' wolfram, sybil. 1987, In-Laws and out-Laws. Knship and Marriage in England, London: Croom Helm. Yanagisako, Sylvia J., 1978.'Variance in American Kinship: Implications for Cultural Analysis', American Ethnologist, 5: 15-29. 1985, Transforning the Past. Tradition and Kinship among Japanese Americans, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Yeatman. Anne, 1983, 'The Procreative Model: The Social Ontological Basesof the Gender-Kinship System', SociolAnull'sis.l4: 3-30' young, Edward O.k., 1SSO,'Where the Daffodils Blow: Elements of Communal Iiragery in a Northern Suburb.' In A. P. Cohen (ed.). Synbolising Boundaries, Manchester: Manchester University Press. London, Young, Michael and Peter willmott, 1957, Famity and Kinship in East London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1973.The S),mmetricalFamill', London: Routledge and Kegan luyl' -, Notions of Zipper, Julietie and Selma Sevenhuijsen, 1987, 'surrogacy: Ferninist Technologies: (ed.)' Reproductive Motherhood Reconsidered.'In M. Stanworth Genrler,Motherhootl and Medicine, Cambridge: Polity Press'

Index

Index

abortion, 49-50 aestheticpractice canons of for sale, 162 E n glish , 8 7 , 1 0 2 . I t9 , 1 2 5 M e l a n e sia n ,5 7 8 , 6 0 ,7 6 modernist, 163 R u skin o n , I 1 3 1 5 -teevlslon adolescentdevelopment, 67 adoption, 4l a n d fo ste r in g ,2 8 9 a d u l t e r y,4 0 1 advertisement,90. 94 plate 10. 126 plate 14, 1 2 7 - 8 , 1 3 0 , t6 2 5 ,1 6 4 p ta te 1 8 , 1 8 7 . 2 11 n l0 ' a f t e r ' f a cts a n d e ve n ts,7 9 ,7 8 ,1 8 9 , 1 9 0 i n d i v id u a ls,5 3 k i n s h ip . 1 5 . 3 2 n a t u r e , 8 9 , 1 1 0 , 1 5 0 , l' 7 7 ,1 9 0 l, l9 i s t y l e, 1 5 0 a g e . e x p er ie n ceo f, 6 7 ,2 0 3 n 1 6 a l l i a n c e ,7 9 Americanisation, 16 o f E ng lish cu lr u r e ,4 ,6 , 1 7 , 3 6 , lg 6 g o l e d u ca tio n . l8 l 2 p la te 2 0 American enterprise, 36, 45, l4l, 186, 2l I n9 E n g lish vie w o f. 2 ll n 9 see Anthropology American kinship s t u d y o f, 4 , 4 3 ,8 2 , 1 3 9 , t4 7 , tS2 a n d cr itiq u e o f .2 3 4 ,2 8 - 9 ' a m o u n t ' o f ch a n g e ,2 , 1 0 , 1 3 ,2 7 o f c i vilisa tio n , 3 , 2 7 of Englishness,3l of enterprise, 7 ))R

of facts, 7, 22, 86 of family, 146 of life and personhood, 67, 72 ofnature,37. 39 43, 150 of relationships, 134, 135 of tradition, 90 of uni queness,13. 15, 17, 19, 27, 73 see quantification anal ogy, 13,14,52.55 cancelled, 145, 152, 172, 183 constitutive of reproductive model, 72 Mel anesi anconsti tuti on of, 210 n 3 'partial', 72-81 pussim,84. 130 2, 142, t72,1834 ancestors and sociocentric kin systems,76 E ngl i sh,62,65.72,80 Merina, 68 Trobriands, 59 A ndaman Isl anders,l 2l A nthropol ogy, B ri ti sh, 8, 45 6,63,67 9,69, 86, 120 1, t39, ts7 American, 86, 120 and experti se,l 13, l 15, 120ff at home, xvi i object of, 189 anticipation of decomposition, 72 of relationships, 49 see future A rnol d, Matthew , 106 8, 111 1-1,l 15, l 9l artificial parenthood human enterpri seas, 53, 169, 173ff insemination, debate, 40 1 relationships as, 53 ree new reproductive technologies

assi sti ngnature, 48 51, 55, 17G8, 179,196 assumptions, making explicit of; .see explicitness A usten. J ane, 66, 85 pl ate 9,92,93 8,99, 10 0 1, 102, t27, 133, 140, 191 Baruya (interior Papua New Guinea), 6G-2, 63 ,68,69, 73,87 'bed and breakfast', 128 31 passim,145 B eeton,Mrs , l 12 B el l , C l i v e. l l 5 l 6 belonging, between parents and children,49, 52 bilateral kin reckoning, 78 .seeCognatic bi ol ogi cal proc es s ,41,76, l 19 and kinship, 53 and personhood, 67 and s oc i al parenthood,60 ?,8G7,178 as genetics, 178 as drive, 47ff i di om of, 52 3, l 5l ,1734 biological time, 62, 66, 81 birth and descent theory, 67-8 bl ood, mi x ed, 31. 34, 36, 80, 9l in Melanesian imagery, 56 63,65 transmitted, 78-80, 178 see hybrid B l ue-stoc k i ngw omen, I l l body, as canoe, 56 8 as composite of relations (Melanesia), 7l as digestive truct, 174, l7"l as individual entity, 50 1 as register of life, 66 constructed, 173 4 gender of, 48 in Melanesian imagery, 55 72 passim management of, 176 organs, transplant and implant of, 180, 183 4 part s of, 41, 66, 80, 179 rights in, 179 B radford Tow n H al l , l 14, l 15 British Social Anthropology \ see Anthropology burial significanceof in Merina, 68 cancel l ati on,136 of analogy between nature and society, r5 0, 152 of difference between convention and

229

choice, 152; interior and exterior, 167 8, l'75: nature and culture, 174; between personal and social, 173; right and left. 143, 147-8 of environment, 169ff of idea of society, 144-5 of merographic connections, 136 ofrel ati onal fac i l i ry , 145, 150, 152, 182 c hange, l 0 l l , 44 5,51,137, l 4l , 17' 7-8, l 8l -2 pl ate 20 and c onti nui ry , I 3, 5,7, l l ,14.21 2 see social change character of English; see English C hav as s e,D r, 109 11, 126 pl ate 14, 133, 158 Chicago. 25 children and parents; ^re?parents as new persons, 53 5 as persons, 148 as pets . 12 neglected, 147 choice, 9, 90 and independence,100 and natural selection,90 2 and new reproductive technologies,40,42 and no c hoi c e,42,43,142,166, 193 and personhood. 124, 142 and reas on,96 and right to choose, 147-52 as definitive of personhood, 124, 1424, 148 52, t61, t77 concealed, 143 evinced in style,147, 162 7 Gawan ideas of.124-5 in kin recognition, 81,97-8, l3,f-5 i n matc hmak i ng.93-8 pas s i m i n rel ati ons hi ps ,12, 14, 20, 103, 140 morality of, 153-42, 192-3 .reeconvention; desire Christian name; .r€ename C hurc h bui l di ngs , 106, 114, 138 pl ate l 5 citizen. active, 130, 144,152, 151-62, 160 pl ate 17 second class, l4l citizenship, 45 class, l, 3. 23 30 passim, ll2, 187 and democratisation, 91, 106-9 and marriage choice, 89-90 'dialogue' and construction of knowledge, 13945 passim, 165 6 emergenceof, 98 mi ddl e and w ork i ng, 8l ; i n A meri c a' 25,82-3, l 4r

230

Index

prejudice, l0l. l4l seemiddleclass;plasti-class; rank classificatcry kin terminologies. 16ff 6 3 ,8 6 cloning,fearsof, 3940, 41 2 Cognatickin reckoning critique of concepr of, 68-72, 75, 84 in English kinship, 63, i2. 134 i n M e la n e sia( M o lim a ) , 6 9 7 0 in Merina, 68 9 c o l l a g e , 14 4 , 1 5 0 , 1 5 9 , 1 6 8 , l7 l p e r so n a s, 1 8 0 , l8 - l collapse; .reecancellation collective concept of culture and society, 120, 154, 1 59 .1 6 7 i m a g e o fth e , 1 0 7 , 1 0 9 , 1 ll, l9 l p o l i t ics, 1 4 7 8 s e n t i m e n t,l1 7 , l1 8 1 9 , 1 5 7 tyranny of the. 45, 144 commercial interest and architectural form, 106 of lifestyles. 163 8 passim laken for granted, 129-30. l4l 2 .lze market community v a n i s h in g ,4 3 ,8 9 .1 4 6 ,1 7 4 , 1 8 8 9 complexity and analysis, 29 and quantification, 59, 75, 134 5 perception of in social life, 7, 8, 2l-2, 36, 81, 200 n 6 connectlons between families, 97 choice of, 92,9G.8 i n e x pla n a tio n , l5 l in kin relations, 88, 91 2 miniaturisation ol 100 I see merographic connection conscrousness,122 3, l'11, 192, 194 a n d i nte n tio n . ll8 of individual, 124-5, 159, l'74 c o n s e r v a t i o n ,ll7 , 1 3 8 p la te 1 5 . 1 7 7 versus Conservative Party, 142-3, 16g C o n s e r v a tivePa r ty p o licie s. lJ9 4 5 p a ssim . l99nl construction of fatherhood, 52-3 see social constructionist theory consumer active, 165 6 as foetus, 175 choice, 4l, 142, 166, t75

Index

i ndi vi dual i sed,163, 165*6 person as. 175, 180 reproduction of, 180 consumpti on as reproducti on, l 7l of exotic food, 10, 38 plate 5 of natural resources,37 of nature by culture, S, 37_g, l7lff prescri bed,l 6l -2,193 context. 7,-8, 12,22 3, 150, l B 4

I 12' ""inll",lit*^'isationof concepts' consumed, l 7l el i ci ti ng i ndi vi dual i ty, t7l rn merographic connection, 73, l7l_2 maki ng expl i ci t. 132, 174, l g9 val ue and. 174..5,196 vani shi ngof. 195 continuity and change; see changel as self-evident, 144,203 n l0 in idea of individualism, ll l3 in Melanesian thought, 60 social and biological, 75 conventlon and choi ce, 14, 15tr, 43, I2i .133,152, 161 2 'doi ng', 158, 174,190,216 n l 0 making visible, in Melanesia, 59-60 moulding the individual, 119-26passim naturalised, 15G7 negati on ol 18 19, 20,90 personified in person, 153ff cottage,103 in the mind, 207 n 7 the white(washed), 99 100, rc3-5, ll7 Tudor, 104 plate 12, Il7 see Endpiece countryside denuded, 37, 38 plate 5, 90 encl osed,187 percepti onsof, 10, 12-13,38, l 17 C ow per, Wi l l i am, 99-100, l 0l , 105 cultivation, I I I of domesti ci ty, l l l ofgardens, 105 6 of i ndi vi dual , 95 8, 101-3 of nature, 100, 105, 109 of talents, l0l sae improvement cul tural , account, xvi i ,4, 189 critique, 5; and oppositional culture' 99' 186 epoch; see epoch

revolution, 142 cul ture.4. 187 common, l 0G8 diminution of, 43 hypostas i s ed,l l l , l l 5 institutionalised. l9l national. of English; see national culture opposi ti o nal ,99, 186 promoted, 99, 141 and regulati on. 107 9 technol og yas ,42,169ff too much of/too little of. 4O 5 culture-nature dichotomy, 5, 43, 72-3, 86 customer,ofserv i c es , 161, 170 pl ate 19, 181 plate 20, 180. 193 i ndi vi dual as ,2l 6 n 8

D arw i n, C harl e s , 16.90-2.98, 106, tl 2, l l 7 18, 133 D arw i n. E rasmus , I l 8 death and identity, in English rhought,64 5, 66,72 in Melanesia, Sabarl, 60; Trobriands, 59, 63-4, 66; Molima, 69 70 of the collective, 168 of the new, 150 of the subject, 144, 149 52 decomposition of Melanesian kin relations, 64_6,7l democrati sati o n,gl 2,98, 141 2 of concept of society, I t5-16 of culture. lOGg of fbrm, I t 6 ofnature,1 06, l 12 ofrank,98, 106, 107 pl ate 13 of taste, 162 to be rejected, I 14 , oescent,in English kinship democratised,98, I l2 of affection, 15 of emotions, 49_51 of family name, 9g of i denti ty. 52,63,68 of life, 62. 3 of obl i gati o n, 15 n 16, 203 of rime, 2O_1,62,72. 138 . descent(group) in anthropological theory, 56. 63tr, 68 72,76ff .reeMatrilineal, patrilineal , oescriptivekin terminologies, 16ff. 63, g6

231

desire and technology, 177 as constitutive of parenthood, t78-9 as greed, l 12 15 for consciousness,183 for explicitness,5l for parenthood, 179 for society, 122 map of, 175, 177 to be inculcated, I l6 to hav e c hi l dren, 47, 52, 78, 176 7. 179 D I; s eedonor i ns emi nati on dialogue as prejudice, 141 between mistress and servant, l36-7 between social classes,139, 140-2, t65 6,174 5 political, in Jane Austen,93 8 possinr diversity, 6 plare 1, 7, 20, 30, 34, 59, i4 pl ate 7, l 8l 2 pl ate 20 and time, 2l-2 as second fact of modern kinship. 22, 72, 169 diminution of, 3G-9, 42, 150-l i n anal y s i s ,22 30,135 in family forms, 24 in genetic makeup, 53, 55; see hybrid in Melanesian thought, 57-9 ofc ul ture, 37 8 without individuality, 42, 192 3 divorce, 26, 129. 146, 177 and donor i ns emi nati on,40 1 D i x on, Mac nei l e, 13, 30 1, 34 domes ti c ,99-105, 106 and public; see public arc hi tec ture,103, 187 interior, 32, 33 plate 3, 99 106, 163ff style, 29, 145-6, 163, 165 7 see home donor i ns emi nati on(D I), 40 n Il , 60 1, 177-8, 179,200 donati on ofgametes . 175-8, 188 oforgans , 180, 182 3 downward flow; see descent duty , 105 6, 108, 109-10, 125,145 in relationships, 122 3 ofac ti v e c i ti z en, 130, 152,154tr ofc ons umer,166 of English gentleman, 153 ec togenes i s ,4l educ ati on,6 pl ate l , 24,26,28,98tr, 105-6. I 10. I 19, 147, l 8l -2 pl ate 20. l 9l , 193

232

lndex

In d ex

and Matthew Arnold, 106 9 Passinr a n d n a tio n a lism ,3 l' 1 2 0 - l as socialisation, 123 4 see literacy E l i z a b e t h I, 3 1 ,3 4 embryo, 4l embryologY, 40. 63 see Foetus emotlon as flow between kin, 15, 134 e l i c i t atio n o f, 4 8 5 t, I 1 6 , I t7 ' t l8 - 1 9 121ff, 125, 192,202 nn 5, 6 regulated, 156 Jee sentlment E n g l i s h , t he ,6 7 ,2 3 Association, 120 character, 6 plate I, 13, 30-4, 39 'culture', 23tr, ll7 dyspepsia, I t0 g e n i u s,3 0 1 , 1 9 3 society of pure, 39 ' E n g l i s h m a n ' ,th e , 1 3 , 2 3 , 3 G4 , 1 5 3 and diversity, 22-30 passim,39 a s g e ntle m a n ,1 0 1 . 1 5 3 , 1 5 9 Englishness d e f i n e d ,1 3 9 quantified, 29 e n t e r p r i s e ,6 p la te l, 7 , 1 0 , 1 4 , 2 2 ,3 6 , 4 3 , 9 3 , 1 2 8 ,2 1 3 n 2 1 , 1 5 9 . l7 l, 1 9 5 as middle class value, 25 6, 106 as natural, 55 c u l t u re , 1 0 , 1 9 9 - 2 0 0n l, 2 1 3 n 2 1 see tmprovement envlronment as context for life, 169, 172-3, 194 helping the, 172 s e PC O n te xt:n a tu r e l p o llu tio n epoch, modern and medieval cycles of. l. 3 4 ,9 3 , 1 9 0 l, 2 1 6 n l0 a s c r isis, 3 7 ,4 4 ,1 3 7 .1 9 0 1 , 1 9 5 bourgeois, l8l m o d er n , p lu r a list, 7, 1 l, 4 3 , 4 5 . 1 4 0 , 1 8 8,1 9 1 - 2 p o s t plu r a l,8 . 1 8 4 E s s e x ,8 8 , 9 2 ,9 8 - 9 , 1 0 3 , 1 4 6 ethnicity and racism, 39, 200 n 9 and lifestyles. 162 and the English, 30 1, 34_45 Plate 4' 3 6 a s v i sio n o f cu ltu r e , 1 2 0 ,cf. 2 l I n l0 eugenics,fears of , 4O.42 exemplification, 22, 2+ 5

experi ence,l l l ,116 experti se,125 ofnature, l l 0 see professionalisation explicitness and keeping hidden in Melanesian practice, 55-6, 58 in English cultural understanding, 1, 5, 7 8, 26, 35, 44, s1, 111, 130, 132_5, t37 9,149,169,174, 194 in devolution of middle class, l0G-9 passim, 106 in relationshiPs, 14 .reeliteralisation expression of emoti on, I16, 156 of society, l l5 exterior interior relations collapse of difference in, 161, 167-8, 174-5 in development of middle class,88-109 Pas.sim in English family cycle, 97 8 in improvement of person, 93-7 passim in making knowledge, 130-3, 158-9, 194 in Melanesian body imagerY, 60-2 fact, l l ; and facl i ci ty, 151 merographically connected, 73ff see natural fact, social fact of kinshio: reproductive model family, absent, 137 al ternati ve,162 and primordial ties, I I and rank, 89 and self-love, 78 as both natural and social, 156 as contested concept, 24' l4l, l4G7 as distinct from relatives, 9G8 as lifestYle, 144, 145tr, 162-3, 167-8 as unique, 8l di mi ni shi ng of ,22,27 farm, 128-31 in Europe, 23-4 internal differentiation of' 9'7, 102-t ki nshi P , 136,177 miniaturised, 103 nucl ear,24,27, 146 one-P arent,79 pri vacy,103-5 'si ze'of,27, 103, 146 under threat, 4{.r..l,146-7

147 8 i anri l yal l ow ance . 8l i "rherhood.4G 1 .49 52' 82' as i nterferen c e'179 biological versus social, 60-l' 177-8 invisibilitY of, 51 2' 149 on B aruY a,62; Gaw a' 57 9; S abarl ,60l Trobriands, 59 60 sae donor insemination practice' 48, 50' I l0' ferninist theory and 143, 146 foetus as detached' 49-50 as intruder, 48 developmental dimension ol 63ff, 132 i magerYof, E ngl i s h,43 50' 73' 175; Melanesian, 55 9 person as, 183 protection of' 179 see ultrasonograPhY formalitY;'ree informalitY fortune, fami l Y , 89,97' 98' 106 lorm as self-regulated,I l9 i n art. l 1l 15 organic, I l4 purity of, 39, 1 16 structural, 120-2 fostering:see adoption l l ncti onal rel ati ons hi p,I l + -15. I l 8- 19 future and causation, 67 cul ture,169 fears for, 3 9,41 2 ideas of, 20-2,39, 47 8, 124-5 past and, 22 potenti al ,8l gardens and cottage, 100, 104 5 children as, 105 in Melanesian inagery (Gawa), 58 landscape,38 9, 100, 104 l ove of, l , 2. 12 i 3.30 gardenci ti es, l , 10, l l 7 garden sulurb, 34, 186 Gawa (Massim, Papua New Guinea), 55 9, 60, 61, 67, 69, "/0,' l t,73.76, 124 5 gender as rel ati ve,6l , 87 tn Melanesian imagery, 55 63 in Merina, 68 in new reproductive technologies,48 of the home, 207 n 8

257

geneal ogy ,92,96, 106 as a record of facts, 63' 65' 86 as natural arrangement, l6' 90-2' 133 evidence of PluralitY, 84 generalisation as cultural attribute, 28, 140 i n anal y s i s ,22 30,59 generatlon and kin terms, 18 20 and time: see time in descentgrouP theorY, 68 in perception of, in Melanesia' 64-5 irreversible, 138 recursive;.seeBaruYa. 87 gene theraPY,41 2,54 Plare 6 genetlc and non-genetic theories of procreatton' 60"2 determination, 40, 202 n 8 i mages ,34.36, 38, 169 maniPulation, 47 parents , l ' 16,118 randomness, 71484 Pussim ti es . 52 3. 78 82' 83 trans mi s s i on,176 7 .seehybrid getting-on, Goddess of, I l4 Ghanaian Parenthood' 28 Glover, Committee and Report' 176' 178 grandparents/children, I 8-20 greenhouseeffect, 168 9' 171, 173 as metaP hor, 173,214 n 34 grounds, cancelled' 144, 152, 177 8' 195'-6' 198 of knowledge, l9l-2. 194 see context home,90, 103 and domestic interiors, 32, 33 plate 3' 99 106, 163ff and P ri v ac Y ' 13, 32, 128 36. 187 as way of life, 28- 9, 145 7 cows coming, 197 for tourists, 128ff homes within, 129ff. 1'74 ownershiP, 142, 165-6 person as. 129ff,167 s tatel y , 129 household and l ami l Y ,97 8, 103 4' 137 managementof, 110' l 12 houses, J2 4. 99 105 Pa.r'tirt as bodies (BaruYa), 62

Index

234

of gentry, 88 9 Tudorbethan style; .reeStockbrokers Tudor: 33 Plate 3 .reecottage H o w a r d , Eb e n e e ze r ,3 4 hybrid ancestry, 34 a s a m a lg a m , 1 8 0 , 1 8 3 as conglomerate' 82 3 E n g lish . 3 0 4 , 3 6 , 3 9 , 1 6 9 human/non-human, 42, 180 of cultures, 37 8 rose, 34 t r a n sg e n ic,2 0 i n l5 illegitimacy, 40 1, 52, 178 lmprovement a s e co n o m isin g ,1 9 8 , 2 1 7 n 1 5 m o r al, 1 0 6 of nature, 89,92,93 8 Passim, 103. 1 3 G7 , l9 l o f t a le n ts, l0 l 2 , 1 0 3 see perfection independence develoPment of, 100-l f r o m r e la tio n sh ip s,6 7 , 1 0 3 , 1 7 9 from superiors, 100, 103 within relationships, l2 14, 15ff, l9-20 individual and self-regulation, I 53ff a n d so cie ty,5 , 1 3 - 1 4 , 4 3 , 6 5 6 ,7 5 ,7 6 , 84, l2l 7, 150 Passim, 154, 182 a s c o n su m e r , 1 6 9 a s r e a l. 5 3 , 8 6 ' 7 ,2 1 2 n 1 2 as site of choice and convention, 93 8 passim, 104 as site of nature and culture, 95, 109ff, 1 2 5 7 . 1 5 0 , 1 7 2 ,1 8 4 as site of regulalion. ll0,122, 125 b o d ily d e ve lo p m e n to i 6 3 , 6 7 ,2 0 3 n 1 6 casesin analysis, 22 30 c o n str u ctio no f, 1 3 , ll9 , 1 2 7 d e a th o f, 1 4 4 ,1 4 9 5 2 delined by right to choose, 147 8 experience,145-7 like a private comPanY, 141 2 n a t ur a lise da s a g e n t, 1 2 4 5 p e r so n a s,4 9 5 0 , 7 8 , 8 3 , I5 4 p o stp lu r a l, 1 3 5 6 , 1 3 7 reproducing individuals, third fact of E n g lish kin sh iP, 5 3 , 7 2 , ' 7 8 ,7 9 i n d i v i d ua lism a n d ch a n g e ,2 , 1 0 1I

Index and conti nui ty, l l - l 3 Arnold's critique of, 107 8 as a critique ol 107 8 as a Victorian value,44-5, 127 as English character, 13, 30-'3, 180 competitive. 108 modernist PreciPitation of, 15,{ 8 prescriptive, 149, 152, 168 9 quantification effect oi 15ff

rhetori cal ,187 individuality as first fact of English kinship, 14, 72, 83,169 independent of life, 64 in Melanesian imagerY, 57-9 of forms, 39. 48 51, 74 Pl^te 7 surfei t of, l 7l , 183 w i thout di versi ty,42,192 3 i nferti l i ty, 176 7 s?., new reproductive technologies informality and use of personal names, l7-20 inheritance in descent group theorY, 68 i n geneti ci di om, 53, 55, 8G-1, 178 of social norms, 157 8 initiation, Baruya, 62 interior exterior; sce exterior; domestlc interior in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), 41,46 7' 54 plate 6, 188 and 'test tube babies', 40, 55 i sol ati oni sm,12'14. )1. 132 cri ti que of, 107 8 of foetus, 50 see independence;privacY IVF; see In-vitro ftrtilisation Japanese-American kinshiP, 23, 26 K ent,3l ,92, 102 pl ate l 1 K i ng, Truby, 122 ki nshi p as fami l y, 133, 137 as social construction of natural facts' 52,87,93. I 19, 139, l 5l -2 classificationsof-, 63ff 42' diminished significance of,22 n 6'

6 9 , 1 3 26 . 1 8 2 , 2 0 0 75 egocentricversussociocentric, systemol 15-16,82,177fr'l E"nglish 188

merographic connections in, 75-6, 77, 86 7,125,206 n 30 quantified, 29 termi nol o gi es ,16 22, 18 P l al e 2,82 Lancaster,Osbert, 32, 33 Plate 3 law consumption of, 170 Plate l9 the order of. 4, 187 vani shi ngof, 152 life artificial, 169 conceptsof,62,63 72 personsa s part of,72,75-6 registeredin individual bodY, 66 registeredin relationshiPs, 71, 72 styl e, l 0l literacy, 92,98- 109passim, 105 6, 139' 157.

t73 literalisation and literal mindedness,6 7, 42, 145 oi biology as genetics, 178 of choice. 163 ofi deas ofhuman nature, 174-5 practice of, 5, 80, 103, 137 9,154, 173, 1834, 190, 196 Li verpool , 13 London study, 12-13, 18, 20. 24, 81, 89, 90. 134. 13 9 l ove,78, 156 Maine, Henry, 16, 108 9 manasement and personhood, 129tr, 1424, 183 idiom of, 109 12 passim 159 see regulation Manchester,10, 12 13,35 pl ate 4,36,102 plate I I market menral i ty , l 2 13, l 8l 2 pl ate 20 and choi ce, 163, 165 6, 193 rndividualised, 163 in gametesand embryos, 41, 175-6 marriage and cl ass.89 90.93 I ptts s i m and famil y , 137 and property, gT 8 and terminating relationships, 64 as regulating needs, 156 as union, 79 B aruya,62 undone at death, 64, 65,70 1 Marx, K arl , l l l Massim, archipelago (Papua New Guinea), 68

235

see Gawa; Molima: Muyuw; Sabarl Island; Trobriands maternal bondi ng, 48* 51, 125 matrilineal kin reckoning, 63, 68 sea Gawal Muyuw; Sabarl; Trobriands Mekeo, North (Papua New Guinea coast), 64-s ,68, 69 Melanesia, comparative material on, 55-72, 189 mereol ogy ,73,204 5 nn 21,22 Merina (Madagascar), 68 9 merographic connection, 72 81, 81, 125, 137, 150, 172,175,204 5 n2l c ol l aps eof, 136, 137 8, 150, 167-8, 193 ov erl ap i n,84, 130 1, 188. 196 merographic person, 150, 172 middle class A rnol d on, 108 c ul ture. 100 1, 106 devolution of. 98- 109 pa.ssrnr kinship, 24-30 passim in America, 25' 82 3 reflection and analysis by' 26' 44 5' 105-6' 139, 140 2 see class prejudice; morality mi ni aturi s ati on, 100, l 0l , 103 model ,2, 183' 187 i n anthropol ogy ' 4 of k now l edge,7,72-3. 169 s el f-reP l i c ati ng,[69 see reproductive model modernrsm as epoc h, 3, 7-8, 11,45, 53, 87. 146, 184, 197 as s ty l e, 165,212 n 15 displaced, 149 Mol i ma (Mas s i m),69-71 money , 96 and greed, t12 15 as enabl i ng tec hnol ogy ,130. 136, 142 3 .reecommercial interest montage. 127 morality as choice, l5l-2, 153-62 mi ddl e c l as s ,99 105, 108, 19l society as source of, l2l Morgan. Lew i s H enry . 3, l Gl 7, 20,27, 45, 52. 66,9t. 108, l 9l mother, 83 and baby ,48-51 as support system, 49, 73, 83 biological vs. social, 6l invisibility of , 49-52, 73

236 Melanesian images of. 56 63 professionalisationof, 105,6, 109 ll,

In d e x

needs bi ol ogi cal , 156,203 n 16 t25 of society, 122"4 passim, 155..6 see surrogate mother; maternal bonding j1 new reproducti vetechnol ogi es,39 55 mournrng po.rrim. 54 plate 6. 143, 175ff. 188 l' | for relatives, 52, 66 s(e donor i nsemi nati on;i n-vi tro practices, Molima, 69-70 fertilisation; surrogate mother multidimensional unity New York, 36 in family, 167 8 nostal gi a,43,93 in kitchen decor, 166 7 American. 186 i n i n d i v id u a l, 1 6 7 as styl e, 163,164 Muyuw (Massim. Papua New Guinea). 64, for communi ty. 146 6 8 , 6 9 .7 1 for di versi ty, 39, 188 l or i ndi vi dual , 187, 188, 195 name for relationships, 189, 195 a n d k i n te r m , 1 7 2 1 , 1 8 p la r e 2 , 8 3 for the home, 130, 188 C h r i s t i an , l7 l8 n ovel ty, 10,93 perpetual increaseof, 65 and birth. 53, 55, 59 60 national culture and diversity, 69 o f E n g l ish , 3 l- 2 ,3 6 , I 1 7 , 1 2 0 , 1 3 9 and tradition; see tradition tyranny of, 152 cancelled, 150 n a t u r a l , f a c t s,2 , 7 , 3 0 tr ,4 3 ,4 6 , 5 l 3 , 5 5 , 7 8 , produced. 36, 53, 55 79, l19, 1934; of life. 7.-9, 63, 86, l 5 l : r eve a le din a r t, ll3 . ll5 , ll6 obligation, between parents and children, l 5 bond; see maternal bonding obstetrics, 48 child. 52; see illegitimacy order d e v e l o p m e n t,1 2 5 of know l edge, l 3l diversity and individuality as, 35 personal, 109 l0 d r i v e : s e e b io lo g ica ld r ive soci al , 108-9. l l 2-13, l l .fl 5, 157 p e r s o n , I I6 , 1 2 4 taken for granted. 120 n a t u r a l i s a t i on ,9 l- 2 , I 1 2 ree regulation as regulation, 156 organ, implants, transplants, 180, 183 4 of concept of society, lI2, ll8, 122, organic 1 5 0 . 1 5 5 , 1 9 4 ;in d ivid u a l, 1 2 4 , 1 5 0 , mathematics; .reequantification 1 5 5 ; ' na tu r e ' , ll8 , l5 l soci ety,105, l l 4-15, l l 8 nature organisation absent from Melanesian models, 55-.6j absent.167 passtm and regul ati on, 105, 109 a n d d i v e r sity:se ed ive r sity as pernicious, 146 and reality, 52, 6l concept of, 109, l l l , i l 2 15, l 2l , a s g r o u n d , 1 0 5 , l' 1 7 ,1 9 4 - 5 ; se eco n te xt t234, t89 assisted;see assistingnature l nternal to person, 103;domai n. 172; changing attitudes towards, 2, I I househol d, 103-6 consumed. 152. l7l 84 pa.s.sim different meanings of, t72 Papua New Guinea, 10, 55 d i m i n u t i on o f,3 9 4 6 , 1 7 2 3 see Melanesia diverse meanings of, 39 parenthood, genetic, 178-9 God a function of, 187 .reenew reproductive technologies h y p o s t a stise d I, I l, I 1 5 parents nature{ulture dichotomy; see and chi l dren, 12 14, 15ff,49 51,125, culture nature 178 and society, 87, 90tr, 93 8 passim, ll2, as a parr, 55, 79 t7t. t77 as i ndi vi dual s.86

Index as point of reference,70 constituted by desire, 178 division between, T2 i n Mel anes i anthought, 60,62,7{ l -1 part and whole relations; sce whole part rel ati ons and persons as part of life, society, 72, 109, 121 , 125, l 2' 1 between spouses,79 mereological, 180 rol es as parts , 132, 158 parthenogenesis,4 I past and future; see future epochal perceptions of, 190 I see tradition; nostalgia pasti che,144, 150, 165, 168. l 7l patrilineal kin reckoning, 63, 68 see Baruya; North Mekeo Penan (Borneo), 65 perfection in culture, 10G8, I I I in society, 108-9, I I I person and decomposition: .ice decomposition and deconception of, 62, 6+'6,70"1 and depersonalisation,Merina, 69 and imagery of 'home', 129ff and non-person, 142 as an i r:di v i dual . 19-20, 27,48 51,63, t23,125 7 as beginning, 63 as consumer, 174--5 as embodying relationships (Melanesia), 6t, 65,7 0,7l as'new ',53, 55, 59 60 distinguished from relative, 82 3; from rol e,133 pluralist, 150 postplural, 135'-6, 137 personal as si gn of i nformal i ty . 17 20 development, 127 personhood and l i fe,7 5, 84 vand reproduction, l'7G'7 de-concei v ed,701 enduri ng b ey ond death, 63, 75 terminating at death (Melanesia), 64 5 personification of conven ti on, 153, 158-9 ofnature, c ul ture, 1l l , l 17, l l 8ff, 193, 206n2.209n23

zJt

of persons,124,142 of society,1224, 154,157 perspective. 8, 14,15,22,43, 51,53,55,67, 'n ,9 2 ,9 8 , 1 0 0 ,1 0 1 ,1 0 8 ,1 9 0 and the middleclass,139 of viewpoiDts.140 5 as representations passim 58 in Melanesianaesthetics, in merographicconnection,73ff,76, 80, 8 3 ,8 7 ,1 3 1 ,5 ,1 5 0 ,1 6 8 .1 8 4 ,1 9 3 lossof, 142 p e ts,2 , 1 2 1 4 ,3 6 ,3 7 philistinism, l4l plasti-class, 1423,143plate 16,16l, 163, t67. 196,197 pluralistepoch,3 4, 81, 135,191 p l u r a l i ty,3 0 ,6 5 as increasein time, 65 conceptol 8, 2l-2. 36, 59,73,81, 83. 8 7 . 1 8 4 ,2 0 5n 2 6 in analysis,23ff in Melanesia,57 9 internal,167 not reproduced,199n 6 of cultures,120 pollution.37, 138plate15.174 seerain postmodernism,7 8, 144,149-51,195,199 n 6 .2 1 4 n 3 0 ,2 1 7 n 1 3 postplural epoch.3 4, 184,188.192,215n 43 individual,135-6 186ff nostalgia,39, pragmatism, 6 plate1, 7,95-6, 97, 128,132, 1 8 7 .1 9 5 prejudice;.rseclass privacy and homelife,29, 103,129 33, 186 in choicemaking,176 professionalisation medical,110 l l l 1 2 ,l l 8 , 1 5 0 ,1 8 9 o fco n str u cts, ofmotherhood,105 6. 109-ll property,78,97 I and patrimony,41, 103 204n 17 in WestAfrican succession, overbody parts,4l private,10,186 68, 157 8 transmitted, seebelonging prostitution,48 public and domestic,l, 10,103,106,12933

238

a n d pr iva te , 1 5 9 , 1 6 0 p la te 1 7 , 1 6 6 , 1 7 4 - 5 , 1 8 7 ff,2 1 3 n 2 5 b u i l d in g s, 1 0 6 , l1 4 , I 1 6 , liO, 1 3 8 p la te l5 q u a n t i f i c a tio n ,2 , 1 4 .7 3 ,8 6 , l3 S a n d i nd ivid u a lism , l5 a n d s ta tistica ld a ta , l5 l as magnification and scale change. l3l, 1 4 0, t4 t as number (enumerative), 26 7,29; see plurality a s v o lu m e ( o r g a n ic)o r d e g r e e ,2 6 7 ,2 9 30, 80; see amount in analytical practice, 26.30,97 in Melanesian thought, 56 9 ,reeminiaturisation r a i n . 1 0 , 3 7, 1 3 8 p la te 1 5 r a n k . 2 0 l . 8 8 9 . I 1 2 1 5p a ssin t between proprietor and servant, 136 7 naturalisation of, 90 1, 93 g passim, 106 p u l l i n g - d o wn , 1 0 6 , 1 0 7 p la te 1 3 , l4 l 2 ,rcedemocratisation reality and fictional relatives, 53, 6l a s a m atr e r o f visio n , 4 8 5 2 , 1 3 0 _ l merographic, 175 searching for, 137 8 see literalisalion r e a s o n ,9 5 , 1 9 l, 1 9 2 a n d c h o ice ,9 6 regulation,14, 103,105 6, 107 9, 109_16 passim, 152 and self-regulatingsystems, I l8 27 passtm challenged, 160 plate l7 of behaviour, 156 taken for granted, 120-l relationship a s a n a l ytica lco n n e ctio n , 1 2 , 1 4 ,7 2 , l5 l as artificial, 53 a s n a t u r a l, 5 1 , 1 2 2 as productive, l5 as support, in Melanesia, 7l-2 b e t w e e nin d ivid u a l a n d so cie ty,l2 l, 1 5 0 2, 1 5 5 , 1 6 8 , 1 8 9 , 1 9 6 ,2 0 9 n 2 4 d e n i e d , ll, t2 1 4 . t8 - 2 2 d i s p l a c e m e n to f, in M e la n e sia ,6 2 ,7 0 1 incomplete as a field, 83 'made', 25, 48 51, 53, 55 n o s t a l g iafo r , 1 8 9 reproduction of, in Melanesia, 60,62

In dex

)10

terminated by death, 64-5; by people, 64 versus individual rights, t79 .reeparents and children relative distinguished from l-amily, 9Gg distinguished from person, g2-3, l3l rel i gi on,99 l 0l , 105 representativeness,of accounts; .see general i sati on,139 reproductive model, of English, 14_15,22,

social system, concepl of, I 18 19, 122, 188 sae organisation; regulation socialisation, 109tr, I 19tr, 122 3, 125, 127, 157 8. 159, 193 Socialist politics, 147 8 societY,4 and consti tuent' groups ' ,69 and natur e; s c e nature agefi, 1224 ^s as aggreg ate,2G7,29 as col l ecti v i ty ,26-7,29, 120 as enabl i ng tec hnol ogy ,136 as nati on , 120 as total i s i ngpers pec ti v e,135 detachedf rom c ul ture, l 15 16, 119-20 di mi nuti o n of, 43 divisions of, 140 5 passim, 158 i nternal i s ed,168, 192 modernist ideas of, 154-8 persons as part of, 72 pol i te,89 versusi nd i v i dual t s c e i ndi v i dual Sperling, Diana, and family, Frontispiece. 88 90,9 8. 102, 136. 104 pl ate I2 spouse absent.13 7. 149 division of labour between, 79 see Dlarnage statc, the, 45,145,193, 201 n 14 vi ew of. A rnol d' s , 107 9, I l 2l R us k i n' s , I 14; Tha tc her' s , 144 5, 152, 181-2 plale 20 w el fare, 141,147 8.154 S tepl oe.P atri c k ,47 Slockbrokers Tudor, 32 3 plate 3, 102 plate ll, ll7 see cottage styl e. l 0l ,145 as manifestation of culture, 6, 25, l l 3_15 as manifestation of individuality, 20, 378 consumpt i onof, l 7l dead, 144 , 149 50 evrncedi n c hoi c e, 147, l S 8, 162 7, l 7l family as life-. 145ff substance

36, 46. 53, 55.72tr. l 19, t25, l 7t, l 9l ,198 antecedentsol, 93 compared w i ttr Mel anesi an,62,71 demise of, 193 of the future, 39,46 i , 13l , 193 of reality, 53 reproductive technology .reenew reproductive technology Repton, Hurnphrey, 103, 104 plate l2 respectability middle class, I0l 6 passim, 130, 139 rose, 34, 39, 104 ruralism and houses,102 pl ate l l i n i magery, 3l -2,34, l l '7 in William Cowper, 99 urban dichotomy, 34, 140, 149 R uski n. John. 107 pl ate 13, l l 3-15, l 9l , l 9B Sabarl Island (Massim, papua New Guinea),

60 scrence,46, 49. 5l fi cti on,42,43-4, 180 sentiment evlnced towards nature culture, IIl, 207*8 n 12; soci ery.l 2l 2,157. l 9l senti mental i ty,l 2 l 3 scrvanl. 20, 136-7 ; see Frontispiece sexual intercourse, 43, 78,9, 156 B aruya,87 Shakespeare,William, 30 Shelley, Mary, 44 siblings, 97 displace conjugal relations, 70 1, in Meri na,68; i n Mol i ma, 70 social change; .reechange soci alcl ass:seecl ass,rank social construction, 2 3, 4 5, ]--8,45, 5i, 55, n9, 1734, 1934 of individuals, 124, 192 soci al facts, 2,46, 150

fl ow of (M el anes i a),79; (E ngl i s h)80 .ree blood suburban archi tec ture,1.24,324 pl ate 3, 102 pl at e I l , 103 4, I 17 support system, 50 mother as, 49,73, 175, 183 m

relationship as, Melanesia, 7l 2 scc technology as enabling s urrogatemother, 39, 46, 53, 61, 175-6 S w ans ea.8 I Tal l ens i ,Ghana, 123 tas te, 100 t, l l 5, 162 see Choice Taylor family, 98 109 passim, 105 6, 108, 109,124,153 technology and des i re,177 as culture, 169tr, 173 as enabl i ng,46 n 2, 83. 128, 130, 136,

r'ts, 177,t834, 20t 2 domes ti c ,137 fear of, 42, 180 fi nanc eas . 136,142 see New Reproductive Technologies tenants ,ofc ounc i l hous es ,142, 165,6 Thatc her, Mrs ,36, 145 6, 158 9, 168-9, 173,213 n 23 and Thatc heri s m,143, 150 2, 195, 198, 202n2 tlme and generati on.15, 55. 61, 62 as multiplier, 66 dow nw ard fl ow of, 2G-1.52,67, 80 1 evoked in advertising, 163 7 increasing diversity of. 60, 75 in Melanesia, 60 3 non-recursive,7 l,-2, 8l recursive,62 tradi ti on, l 2l ,198 and nov el ty , 10, 11, 14, 36-7,59 60 and s ty l e,28 9 ' B ri ti s h' ,29, 187 diminution of, 43 in political rheroric,44-5, 139ff produced, 36, 106 rev i v ed,6 pl ate l , 7 8, 94 pl ate 10, 130, 1434 .seenostalgia transmission as self-replication, 169 E ngl i s h. Tl of features (Gawa), 57 of geneti cmateri al ,78 8l of property; .reeinheritance ofs oc i ety , 120, 157 8 of substance(Baruya), 60 Trobriands (Massim, Papua New Guinea), 59, 63. 64.70_ 7l