Crow-Omaha: New Light on a Classic Problem of Kinship Analysis

11. Schemas of Kinship Relations and the Construction of Social Categories among the Mebêngôkrê Kayapó

11 Schemas of Kinship Relations and the Construction of Social Categories among the Mebêngôkrê Kayapó Terence Turner This chapter deals with kinship and social organization among the Kayap ó, or as they call themselves, the Mebêngôkrê, a Gê-speaking people of central Brazil. I attempt to demonstrate how the social activities that produce families, domestic groups, kindreds, communal social groups, and social persons become the ontological forms and epistemological categories of kinship relations. The schema or form of these social activities not only constructs objectified forms of social relations, kinship relations among them, but when applied as an epistemological category to the classification of these objectified relations by a subject positioned within the system, the same schema can be shown to generate cate­ gories of kinship relations corresponding to Kayapó lexical categories of kin, including the classification of cross-cousins, which is of the “Omaha” type. I conclude with some general implications for the understanding of Omaha and other “generation-skewing” types of cousin classification. My basic analytical concept is the schema, defined as the form of an activity or process of interaction. The schematic form of an activity is an integral part of that activity considered as an objective (material) reality but is also integral to the cognitive (ideal) conception of that form by the actor(s). The schema thus serves as a subjective epistemological category by which actors orient their actions and categorize aspects and components of the situation of action. Schemas thus figure both as objective social and subjective cognitive constituents of material activities. As such, they serve as subjective epistemological categories that guide their own objectification, both in consciousness and in material reality. 224 Terence Turner Kayapó Social Organization The Kayapó, like the other Northern Gê peoples, live in large villages consisting of numerous matri-uxorilocal extended family households built around the periphery of a circular plaza. In the plaza stands a men’s house, which serves as the focus of the ceremonial and political life of the village, including the men’s and women’s age sets and their activities (figure 11.1). Village populations may exceed 1,000, normally contain unrelated men and women of marriageable age, and tend to be endogamous. Marriage is monogamous. The extended family household constitutes the basic segmentary unit of the structure of society as a whole. Its internal structure consists of elementary families linked by ties of matrifiliation (mother-daughter and sister-sister) between the women who act as mothers and wives in each elementary family. I use the term “unit” for a set of relations or group that contains within itself the structural properties of the social whole of which it forms a part. The term “element” (as in “elementary family”) is used for a relation or set of relations that forms a component of a segmentary unit. Marriage (aben wòrò mõ or “coming together with one another”) is only considered to be consummated by the pregnancy of the wife, and the birth of children is what definitively establishes an elementary family . Birth within a family established by a marriage or linkage by filiation to such an elementary family establishes “true” (kumren) or full kinship. Kinship is symmetrically bilateral and with one minor exception (a form of ceremonial companionship is patrilineally inherited) there is no rule of descent. The term õ bi-kwa, literally “one’s surrounding curved space,” denotes both kinship and the personal kindred, defined as a bilateral field of relations radiating from an elementary family at its center. Marriage is prohibited within the known range of genealogical relations. The affinal relations established by marriage are defined as a sort of incipient kinship, aben wòrò mõrõ kam õ bi-kwa, or “kinship by marriage,” a step in the transition to full kinship, which is fully realized by the birth of the next generation. The offspring of affines are considered full kin, which reflexively consolidates the kinship relation of the spouse-parents with each other’s kin. Postmarital residence is uniformly matri-uxorilocal. Although some ethnographers have taken this to imply that the Kayapó possess some 225 Figure 11.1 Kayapó village of Pykanu. Matri-uxorilocal extended family houses, central men’s house, and plaza for ceremonial activities. Source: Apoio AER de Colider (MT) e Coordenação de Educação 2007. 226 Terence Turner form of matrilineal descent that serves as the basis of the matri-uxorilocal household structure, such...