In The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Lévi-Strauss provides an encyclopedic summary of kinship systems but focuses on a central theme: kinship systems are about the exchange of women, defining the categories of potential spouses and prohibited mates. “Marriage is thus a dramatic encounter between nature and culture, between alliance and kinship. . . . [M]arriage is an arbitration between two loves, parental and conjugal” (LéviStrauss 1969a:489). The value of this way of seeing kin relationships is demonstrated by his analysis of the relationship between a young man (Ego) and his mother’s brother, an institution called the avunculate.
The avunculate is a recurrent problem in kinship literature. Kin systems that recognized a special bond between Ego and his maternal uncle—often expressed in a joking relationship—had been interpreted as remnants of matrilineal systems, until they were shown to exist in patrilineal systems as well. Yet the avunculate relationship expresses not only a system of kin terminology but also a system of attitudes, and Lévi-Strauss, following Radcliffe-Brown, argued that the “avunculate covers two antithetical systems of attitudes”: one in which the uncle is feared and respected and one in which the relationship is easy and familiar (1963a:40). Further, there is an inverse relationship in the attitudes between Ego and his maternal uncle (mother’s brother) and Ego and his father; when the relationship between Ego and mother’s brother is familiar, the relationship between Ego and Father is formal, and vice versa.
Even more interesting is that these relationships (Ego:Father and Ego:Mother’s Brother) are linked to other relationships, namely between Ego’s father and mother or husband and wife (Father:Mother) and between brother and sister, in this case Ego’s mother and Ego’s mother’s brother (Mother:Mother’s Brother). The relationship between Ego and his maternal uncle fits into a set of relationships in which (1) the relationships between Ego and Father and Ego and Maternal Uncle are inversely correlated, and (2) the relationships between Father and Mother (or husband and wife) and Mother and Mother’s Brother (or
brother and sister) also are inversely correlated. This produces the possible arrangements shown in the diagram.
| A | B | C | D | Ego and Father Ego and Mother’s Brother Father and Mother Mother and Mother’s Brother |
familiar relationship; formal or hostile relationship The avunculate only makes sense as one relationship within a system, a structure in which there are attitudinal oppositions between generations and between husband and wife and brother/sister, constituting “the most elementary form of kinship that can exist. It is properly speaking, the unit of kinship” (Lévi-Strauss 1963a:46). It expresses the fundamental relationships of consanguinity, affinity, and descent in a formal, structured manner. That same search for structure led Lévi-Strauss to another domain of cultural phenomena—the study of myth.