Mothers\' Brother in South Africa,

¶ … mothers' brother in South Africa," the author challenges clonclusions drawn by a Mr. Junod regarding family relations among an African tribe. His main criticism is that he thinks Junod has looked at family social structure too narrowly, and thus has missed the real implications of how certain relatives interact with each other. Junod noticed privileges a maternal nephew enjoys in regard to his mother's borther, if he is the child of his mother's sister. The author points out that in such societies, these special relationships extend both matrilarcihially and patrilarchially. He notes that Junod assumes that this special treatment by a relative of the mother means that the society must have been matrilineal at one time. The author suggests instead that few if any societies are 100% matriarchial or patriarchial, and that these privileged relationships reinforce extended family ties as well as views about how the two sexes should interact.

SUMMARY B

In "On joking relationships," the author described a type of relationship between two people where one is either allowed or required to taunt the other person, and the target must not be offended. This behavior combines aggressiveness with friendliness, and in other settings would cause the target to become hostile. The relationship may be between a husband and the siblings of his wife, but sometimes only the younger ones. It is typically accompanied by an attitude of great respect toward the wife's parents. The author argues that these patterns may contribute to stable relationships among extended families by assigning clear roles to everyone and notes that it is most common in cultures defined by kinship. He gives examples of this type of relationship from all over the world including Tonga, Southeast Africa, and several Native American tribes. Variations on these kinds of stylized relationship include one culture where two men who are initiated together thereafter do not speak, but do exchange gifts. Often the purpose is to establish respect and smooth social interactions to decrease friction.

SUMMARY C

In "On the concept of function in social science," the author considers what purpose social institutions serve. He starts by looking at Durkheim's definition, and then draws parallels between social life and organic life. He interprets the word "needs" as things that are "necessary conditions for existence." Thus, he views social institutions as directly related to survival. He suggests that societies should be analyzed in terms of morphology, physiology, and evolution or development, just as organisms can be studied in that way. The morphology, or structure, defines the inter-relations within the social institution. The physiology would describe what each component provides for the institution, and the development, how the institution continues itself in time. He notes some problems with this analogy. In particular, a social institution can change its structure in a relatively short period of time while a biological organism cannot. Thus this analogy does not describe how social structure can change. Another problem is that when biological organisms get sick we can make very clear distinctions between health and disease. These divisions are not nearly as clear in a social institution.

SUMMARY D