Dual forms of social organisation - some useful anthropological quotes.

While the actual lived experiences of First Peoples provide valuable examples of forms of dual organisations, something of that wisdom can be found translated into the work of some modern anthropologists.

There are a few useful quotes which i share with interested readers.

Modern anthropologists of the Dutch Leiden orientation, working within the former Dutch colonial possessions (now Indonesia and Papua) found the role of dual organisation particularly striking. They may well be the European experts in such matters. Some more from them later.

The foremost modern anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, who had spent some time in South America, also turned his mind to such matters.

He has a chapter called “Dual Organisations” in his 1949 work which was translated into English in 1967 “The Elementary Structures of Kinship”.

In that chapter he teases out a few aspects which are relevant here:

 “… the one common characteristic of moieties is that there are two of them, and the duality is called upon to play highly varying roles as the circumstances require. Sometimes it governs marriages, economic exchanges and ritual, and sometimes some of these and sometimes only sporting contests. There would appear to be as many different institutions as there are distinguishable modalities.” (page 75)

“To understand their common basis, inquiry must be directed to certain fundamental structures of the human mind, rather than to some privileged region of the world or to a certain period in the history of civilisation.” (page 75)

“These facts tally with others which might have been added in revealing dual organization less as in institution with certain precise and identifiable features than as a method for solving multiple problems.” (page 82, emphasis added.)

  

“A probably unilateral analysis of dual organisation has all too often propounded the principle of reciprocity as its main cause and result … However, we should not forget that a moiety system can express not only mechanisms of reciprocity but also relations of subordination. However, the principle of reciprocity is at play even in these relations of subordination; this is because subordination itself is reciprocal: the moiety who wins the top spot on one plane concedes it to the opposing moiety in another.” (page ?, quoted in his later work (English trans 1995) “The Story of Lynx” at page 237. emphasis added)

These quotes provide us with some motifs for what follows. Levi-Strauss also touches, in passing, on the modern two-party system as an indication of dualism  - which i will not quote as i hope to return to it later.

For those who wish to read more from Levi-Strauss on this topic, one of his main papers is “Do Dual Organisations exist?” which is included in Structural Anthropology (Vol 1) p 132-163. He wrote this in relation to the work of Dutch anthropology.

No doubt Levi-Strauss’ trailblazing study of American mythology contains other important material. He specifically takes the topic up again in the final chapter of “The Story of Lynx” reacting, in part, to “The Attraction of Opposites. Thought and Society in the Dualistic Mode” 1989 edited by D. Maybury-Lewis and U. Almagor.

Check out:

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=x-WilndJnoEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false