Sex, culture, and myth / Bronislaw Malinowski.

  • Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1884-1942.
Date:
1962
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sex, culture, and myth / Bronislaw Malinowski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    exclusively female culture. Avunculate, one of the most important features of matrilineal societies, is scarcely touched upon by the author— the word is not in the index. The author then proceeds to^ prove that group marriage and sex com- munism exist, and in the course of this discussion commits himself to such extraordinary statements as that among animals the maternal and derivative, parental, filial, and fraternal instincts operate in accordance with the 'classificatory,' and not with the 'descriptive' system of relation- ship. It would appear that it is the former that is in a biological sense 'natural,' and the latter which is 'artificial.' The classificatory system in fact seems so natural to Mr. Briffault that he does not discuss it at all, nor does he, in the whole three volumes, give any analysis of primitive kinship, a gap really astounding in a work dealing with mother-right— which is after all but one aspect of primitive kinship. In the following chapters Mr. Briffault informs us that girls and women who are not married are under no restrictions as to their sexual relations. . . . To that rule there does not exist any known exception. Since we know that, according to Mr. Briffault, married women also in- dulge in group-marriage and other forms of licence, continence and individual sexual relations seem to have been completely absent from primitive life. As a matter of fact, the statement quoted is a most mis- leading generalisation, inaccurate in wording, unsupported by evidence, and based upon a fundamental misconception of human marriage and sexuality. After an account, given from his point of view, of primitive sex communism, group-marriage, sexual selection, and the various man- ners of concluding marriage, Mr. Briffault proceeds to attribute to woman the discovery of totemism, witchcraft and religion. It would be easy to indict The Mothers for its dogmatic and one-sided affirmations; for the straining of evidence, sometimes to the breaking point; for unsatisfactory definitions—or absence thereof—in such capital concepts as marriage, communism, kinship, avunculate, and mother-right. Much space is wasted in futile controversy; above all in virulent attacks upon Prof. Westermarck, generally by first distorting his views and then destroying them. On the other hand, the contributions of Crawley and Sidney Hartland, and the new and important work of Schmidt and Kop- pers, are completely ignored. Briffault's three enormous volumes might almost be called an encyclopaedia of matrimonial errors. The work, however, will be useful to a student, even though he reject most of its conclusions; for it gives a clear, well-written, and certainly unreserved statement of one side of the main problem of anthropology. To the amateur it will prove attractive reading as an introduction; and will be the more useful for its dramatic, strong, and effective narrative, which rivets the attention more forcefully and leaves a sharper imprint upon