Astuti River's Pedigrees-Madagascar

7/30/2019 Astuti River's Pedigrees-Madagascar

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Chapter 9

R e v e a l i n g a n d O b s c u r in g

R i v e r s ' s P e d ig r e e s

B i o l o g ic a l In h e r i t a n c e a n d K i n s h i p in M a d a g a s c a r

Rita Astuti

The Critique of the Study o f Kinship

One of the most serious charges that can be directed against fellow

anthropo logists is that their theoretical assumptions distort and impair

their understanding of the people they study. The field of kinship

studies is arguably w he re this charge has been mad e m ost frequ ently

and harshly. For examp le, Edm und Leach judged some of the cen

tral distinctions used in the comparative study of kinship systems by

his contemporaries to be a harmful 'straitjacket of thought' (Leach

1961: 4). In his view, apparently obvious and innocuous category

oppositions such as patrilineal/matrilineal were in fact responsible

for eth noc entric biases, tauto logy and circularity. In the same ve in,

he castigated Malinowski for a number of tendentious assumptions

on which he based his interpretation of the Trobriand word tabu

(that kinship terms refer to individuals, and that their prima ry m ea n

ing stems from the nuclear fam ily), wh ich pushed him into a maze

of anom alies and forced him to adopt desperate analytical exp ed i

ents (1958: 143).


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'ling and Obscuring Rivers's Pedigrees 21 5

Needham (1962) made similar points when he attacked Homans

and Schneider's analysis of unilateral cross-cousin marriage. The

central tenet of Homans and Schneider's theory was the extension

of sentiment hypothesis, and Needham's main l ine of attack consisted in showing that neither Homans and Schneider nor Radcliffe-

Brown before them had adduced any empirical evidence for the

alleged process of extension. M oreo ver, fol low ing Hocart, N eedham

pointed out that only a prejudice on the part of the European ob

server could lead on e to believe that kinship term inologies (i.e., the

extension of certain kinship terms beyond their alleged 'prim ary '

m eanings) could prov ide such evidence (N eedh am 1962: 37). But

apart from the passionate criticisms, N eedh am had a positive and

concrete recomm endation to offer: 'w he n exam ining a system of pre

scriptive alliances [it is essential] first of all to m ake the m ost intense

im agina tive effort to think in terms of [the people's ow n ] classifica

tion' (1965: 85).

Arguably, it is Schneider (1984) who has best demonstrated the

consequ ences o f a failing ima gination. Rhetorically, his critique of the

con ven tiona l study of kinship was particularly pow erfu l because, in

the first instance at least, it was directed at no other than himself.

He fam ously admitted that his original studies of Yapese kinship were

seriously f lawed for he had wrongly and ethnocentrical ly assumed

that relations that map ped on to the 'genealogical grid' (e.g., the rela

t ion betw een father and child) w ere ipso factokinship relations. Only

later did he realize that what he had mistakenly taken to be rela

tions defined by a link of procreation were in fact locally defined by

a link of dependence established through people's association with

the land and through work. For this reason, he argued, these Yapese

relations were notkinship relations, and he p redicted that if an thro

pologists we re to treat the existence of kinship as an em pirical ques

tion - rather than assume it - they w ould com e to realize that kinship

is 'a special custom distinctive of European culture, an interesting

oddity at worst, l ike the Toda bo w c erem on y' (1984: 201).

Schneider blam ed W .H.R. Rivers's 'genealogical m ethod ' for mis

leading anthrop ologists into 'assuming kinship' w h ere n one is pres

ent. As Schneider himself admitted, 'the fact is that one really can

collect a genealogy from any people, and by asking simply for the

father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, husband or wife of

each person on it expand that genealogy as far as the informant's

m em ory w il l carry him ' (1968: 13-14). The problem is that by so

doing anthropologists foreclose the outcome of their enquiry: be

fore they even start plotting down the pedigrees, anthropologists


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216 Rita Astuti

have already assumed that their informants have kinship. In other

words, because of the m ethod they used, anthropologists we re b i

ased to find natural links o f procreation ev en w h en the peop le they

studied invested such links with radically different meanings.Rivers was of course acutely aware of 'the great difference be

tween the systems of relationship of savage and civilized peoples'

(1968: 97), and he designed his m ethod accordingly. His recom m en

dation was to use as few kinsh ip terms as possible (father, m other,

child, husband and w ife) and to mak e it clear that on e w anted the

names o f the inform ant's ' real ' parents and n ot of any oth er peop le

w h o m ight be called such as a result of the classificatory system o f

relationship (1968: 97). He was confident that such a distinction

could be elicited simply and straightforwa rdly - deem ing his meth odto be appropriate even for anthropologists 'with no knowledge of

the langua ge and ve ry inferior interpreters' (1968: 107) - because

he be lieved that, insofar as pe op le universally recogn ize the links that

are engendered by human reproduction, they will also recognize

the difference b etw een 'real' parents and parents wh o are such as a

result of a social conv en tion.

Rivers's method, in other words, was not only predicated on the

assumption that everywhere kinship categories have a biological

referent, but also on the assumption that everywhere people drawa principled distinction between biological and social relations. In

the op inion of many, this latter assum ption has been as fun da m en

tal to kinship theorizin g as it has bee n fatal. By im posing alien o n

tological categories - the distinction be tw een 'facts of biolog y' and

'facts of sociality' - kinship theorists h ave systematically distorted our

understanding of other people's 'cultures of relatedness' (Carsten

2000 ). And this, as suggested at the outset, is surely on e o f the gravest

failures for any anthropologist.

Rivers in Madagascar

To il lustra te th e poin t, I shall start by im agin in g w hat w ou ld happen

if W.H.R. Rivers arrived in a Vezo village on the western coast of

Madagascar, armed with ' the genealogical method of anthropologi

cal enquiry' (Rivers 1968). One of his aims would be to collect the

pedigrees o f as man y kn ow ledgea ble and trustworthy informan ts as

possible, in order to compile a complete and accurate genealogical

record o f the w h ole com mu nity. Since Rivers told us h ow to collect

a pedigree, w e k no w ex actly ho w he wo uld start: by asking each of


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his inform ants to na m e their 'real' father and 'real' m oth er as op

posed to the vast number of people also referred to by these terms

(e.g., father's brothers, father's and m other's sisters). To co n ve y this.

Rivers would need to know theverb-&raiy, which is used to referto the phy siological ae tof.gen era tion o f both mothers and fathers.1

Allocu tions such as 'nenynEefa!^ando (} it ., the m other w h o gener-

ated yo u ) and 'baba niteraky anao' (lit., the father wh o generated y ou )

mark precisely the distinctions Rivers's genealogical mapping calls for.

Despite the relative ease w ith w hich Vezo can be made to discrim

inate linguistically b etw ee n a person's 'real' and 'classificatory' parents,

one should carefully consider the discrepancy between Riverss and

Ve zo inform ants' de ploy m en t of this distinction. Quite simply, w h ile

it is the discrim ination that Rivers need s m ost of all, it is the on e thatVezo people are most reticent to make. Let me explain.

On Babies' Looks

There is no denyin g that Vezo adults recognize the unique role played

by father and m other in generating a child. Although m y in form

ants were somewhat tentative in their views on such matters, their

view s abou t hum an procreation can be sum ma rized as follow s. Thefather's sem en is responsible fo r placing the child inside the m other's

wo m b. Th e w om b is called ' the house of the child' (tra tion zaza)and

it is in this house that the child is gradually formed. The child grows

little by little, thanks to the semen that the father keeps throwing

in, wh ile the m other 's m enstrual blood - wh ich stops f low ing out of

the w om b - builds up the placenta that enve lops the baby. Th e baby

is also hung ry for food, wh ich is supplied by w hat its mother eats du r

ing pregnancy and, later, by her breast milk. Thus, while 'the man is

the source of the pregn an cy' ( lehilahy rofo tora n' ateraha), the mother

is 'the real sou rce/ow ner of the ch ild' (ampela ro tena tompony), since

she is the one w h o puts in all the hard work of housing and feed ing

the baby (for more details, see Astuti 1993).

These v iew s about conceptio n and gesta tion appear to stipulate a

strong bodily connection between the child and the parents who

have generated it.2 Non etheless, wh en it comes to explaining h ow

their babies turn ou t to look the way they d o (e.g., big eyes, light skin

colour, b ent nose, etc.), Vezo adults, like oth er pe ople in Madagascar,

invoke mechanisms other than procreation, and the contributions

of people other than the baby's birth parents (see, e.g., Bloch 1993;

Thom as 1999). For exam ple , if a pregnant w om an takes a strong


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218 Rita Astuti

dislike to someone, whether related to her or not, her baby will come

to resemble the disliked person. By contrast, spending a lot of time

with, or even just thinking a lot about someone during pregnancy

will cause the child to look like the frequented person. If a pregnant

woman has a lover, the lover will 'steal ' some of the baby's facial

traits, which means that the baby's face will bear some signs of its

m other's relationship. M ore seriously: w h y wa s a certain child born

w ith a clubfoot? B ecause wh en his m oth er was a child she used to

tease one o f her contem poraries w h o had a clubfoot, the result of a

badly administered quinine injection. W h en she gave birth, she was

shocked to see that her baby had a defect identical to the one she

used to make fun of.

W h ile still in uterus, if no t before, the baby's appearances seem

thus to be shaped by the social relations in which it is already fully -

i f only vicariously - imm ersed. Such im m ersion w il l intensify after

birth, resulting in the further moulding of the baby's physiognomy.

During the first fe w week s after birth, m oth er and baby are literally

fused into on e an other as they lie togeth er wrap ped u p in layers and

layers of blankets; at this time, it is the m other's respon sibility to

protect and guard the baby from the m any w an derin g spirits that, if

they find the baby alone, will take hold of it and change its physi

og no m y - erasing, in so doing, the traces left by previou s hu m an

relationships. Such spirits have an easy job because o f babies' ph e

no m ena l plasticity, we ll captured by the pan-M alagasy term used to

describe them: they are 'water babies' (zaza-rano) - wobbly , bend

able, boneless. As such, their hold on life is at best tenuous and is

certainly never taken for granted.

This expla ins a rath er curious pra ct ice concernin g th e w a y peo

ple relate to babies and toddlers. W h en ev er Vezo adults see a n e w

born baby for the first tim e or encoun ter an older on e they h ave n ot

seen for a while, the on ly thing they ever say about its physical ap

pearance is that the baby in question is very ugly. They say it very

emphatical ly (r-a-a-a-ty zaza ty), so emphatically that one can sense

that they do not really mean it. The stated reason for such behav

iour is that peo ple do n ot w ant to bring bad luck on the baby by say

ing that it looks beautiful, h ealthy and chubby. Com plimen ts call for

trouble, as if one were drawing the attention of powerful forces,

such as disaffected ancestors, which may intervene to transform

goo d-lo ok ing, healthy and chubb y babies into ugly, sickly and b ony

ones.

There is, how ever, another aspect to th is over-em phatic absence

of com plimen ts and appreciation for babies' looks. W h ile peo ple are


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fling and Obscuring Rivers's Pedigrees 21 9

busy saying h ow ugly the baby is, they do no t engage in the standard

European practice of scanning the baby to establish its resemblance

to its birth parents. During fieldwo rk, as I struggled to r em em ber to

say that stunningly beautiful babies w er e v ery ugly, I did not thinkof asking Ve zo adults w h y they do n ot talk about the resemblance

be tw ee n babies and their birth parents. The ans we r to this question

might explain why, instead, they talk so much about the resem

blance b etw een babies and people otherthan their birth parents, as

these tw o ways o f 'seeing' resemblance are clearly connected.

I shall suggest an exp lanation. W he n peo ple in England say, as

they do, that m y son resem bles his father and m e (e.g., he has taken

after his father in the shape of his mouth, and after me in the shape

of his eyes), they establish our exclusive claims as his parents. We

wo uld find it odd if som eon e said, as Vezo p eop le wou ld, that m y

son resembles the yoga instructor I met weekly when I was preg

nant. The reason w e wo uld find it odd is not simply that w e do n ot

believe that a baby's features can be affected by the mother's rela

tionship with her yoga instructor (esp ecially if she is a w om an !);

m ore profoundly, w e wo uld f ind it odd because w e d o not feel that

a yoga instructor should have any claim over her pupil 's baby. By

contrast, what Vezo people would find odd is the suggestion that

birth parents hav e exclus ive claims o ve r their children, and remarks

about the resemblance betw een children and the parents w h o have

gene rated them wo uld be interpreted as a w ay o f suggesting just

that. This wo uld explain w h y Ve zo peo ple are not predisposed to see

resemblance where its existence is an index of a unique and exclu

sive relationship between parents and their children. Instead, the

many ways in which babies come to resemble people other than

their birth parents wo rk to dissolve that uniqueness and exclusivity,

by socializing paren thood and extend ing the child 's bodily con nec

tions we ll be yond those w ith its parents.

This w ay o f (no t) seein g resem bla nce is ju st one instance o f a

much wider strategy. As argued elsewhere (Astuti 2000a), the no

tion that children 'belong' to more people than their birth parents

(and that grandch ildren and great-grandch ildren 'belon g' to more

peo ple than their grandparents and great-grandparen ts) is central to

Vezo kinship and to the realization of people's most valued aim in

life: to reach old age surrounded by a vast number of descendants.

W h ile this objective is inh eren t to the Vezo un differentiated system

of kinship reckoning, which is inclusive rather than exclusive, peo

ple also actively pursue this end in their eve ryd ay practices. F or ex ample, although children tend to be raised by their birth parents, it


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220 Rita Astuti

is considered unforgivably rude for such parents to assert their

unique rights or duties over theirchildren. By contrast, every effort

is made to break down the boundaries that demarcate individual

fam ily units - for exam ple, by encoura ging children to eat from anyof the kitchens of their numerous 'parents' (e.g., mother's sisters,

m other's brothers, father's sisters, father's brothers, and so on ).4 A l

though there is a well-understood practical advantage in sharing

children in this way, an important effect of this practice is that it

trains children and adults alike to disregard the distinctions b etw een

one's birth and other classificatory parents, between one's full and

one's classificatory siblings. E xactly the sam e effect is ac hie ved w he n

people do not attend to the resemblance between babies and their

birth parents and choose to see it elsewhere.

Incommensurable Ontologies?

The eth nographic evid ence I have presented so fa r suggests that Vezo

pe ople ign ore the differences that are so central to Rivers's gen ea log

ical method. Indeed, Vezo cultural practices have the overall effect

o fobscuring the contours o f the ped igrees that Rivers's m etho d is d e

signed to revealwith such precision and definiteness. I suggest thatthere are tw o w ays in wh ich anthropologists can approach and m ake

sense of this discrepancy. The first one is to argue that, just like the

Yapese or Malay practices described by Schneider (1984) and Carsten

(1995, 1997), Vezo cultural practices reve al an on tolo gy that does

not draw the distinction between ' facts of biology' and ' facts of

sociality '5 - for exam ple, the beliefs about the source o f children's

ph ysiogn om y suggest that biological p arenthood is socialized (as e v

idenced by the many people the baby will resemble), while nurtur

ing relations are somatized (because of the effect that nurture has

on the bodily ma ke-up of the person). In this view, Rivers 's m ethod

and the study of kinship built on it are inadeq ua te because they are

predicated on a distinction that is disallowed by Vezo ontology.6

The second way, w h ic h I am advancin g here , is to question

whether Vezo cultural practices can be taken as reliable evidence of

people 's ontological com m itments. If, as I show below, Vezo d istin

guish between ' facts of biology' and ' facts of sociality' , the problem

w ith Rivers's m ethod is not that it imposes alien on tolog ical distinc

tions. The p rob lem is that it fails to capture the efforts th rough

which Vezo people create a world in which these distinctions have

been made irrelevant.


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To in troduce m y argum ent, I w ant to start w ith a vignette fr om

my last visit to the field. I was sitting next to Korsia, my 38-year-old

Vezo sister, who was preparing a chicken for the evening meal. In

previous conversations with other Vezo informants, I had noticed ama rked resistance against any attemp t on m y part to draw parallels

betw een animal and hum an anatom y (e.g., by pointing to the inter

nal organs of an animal to elicit the nam e of the same organs in hu

mans). The narratives, gossip and moralizing tales in which Vezo

adults explicitly formulate the idea that people are not animals -

that humans are of a categorically different kind than animals be

cause they h ave taboos (see Astuti 2000 b) - seemed to explain this

resistance. And yet, as I was looking at Korsia's expert handling of

the chicken, I decided that I should try my compare-humans-to-

animals question once more. The conversation started like this:

'What's the nam e of these things [the chicken's lung s]?' W he n I

asked whether human beings also have them, she thought about it,

and then, with the same uneasiness 1had detected in previous con

versations, she said: 'Yes, they must have them, the same as this

chicken, i f they breathe' (tsy maintsy misy, manahaky akoho ty, laha

miay). She then looked up, stopped what she was doing, and asked

herself, surprised and alarm ed b y what she had just said: 'Hum an

beings like chickens?!' (olom-belo manahaky akoho?!).

As she resumed handling the chicken, I asked her another ques

tion, this time introducing the comparison between animals and

people in the opposite direction. All human beings have something

called vavafo, literally the m ou th o f one 's heart,7 w hic h is located at

the centre of one's chest, at the base of one's breastbone, and is an

eminent part of the human body (it is the place where a person's

life-force resides and from where it departs when the person dies);

my question was whether chickens also have a vavafo. Once again,

Korsia took so m e time to think and then replied: 'A ll things, if alive,

must have a vavafo' (raha iaby, laha velo, tsy maintsy misy vavafo).

The reaso n this in cid ent is r ele vant to the argum ent I w ant to d e

velo p abou t Vezo kinship is that it nicely illustrates h ow in their in

ferential reasoning people may deploy knowledge (e.g. , all l iv ing

things share important characteristics that keep them alive; in some

im portan t respects, hum ans are like all other living things) that an

thropologists are otherwise extremely unlikely to stumble upon.

In this case, m y ques tions caugh t Korsia off-gua rd, as it w ere , and

prompted her to say what she would not normally choose to put

into wo rds - hen ce her surprise at hearing h erself saying 'huma n

beings like chickens?!' Note that the idea that, as living things, hu


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222 Rita Astuti

man beings and chickens are in some important sense similar was

inferentially useful - it enabled he r to conclude that hum ans have

lungs and that chickens have a vavafo - even i f it contradicted the

morally charged idea that people are not animals.

In much m ore systematic fashion, I have m ade use of an inferen

tial task to undertake a study of ho w Vezo p eop le construe the pro c

ess of biological inheritance. The m etho do logy I have ado pted was

originally devised by developmental psychologists to explore North

Am erican children's understanding of fam ily resemblance and o f the

role that procreation plays in the transmission of properties from

parents to offspring (S olom on et al. 1996). Like most tasks used by

dev elopm enta l psychologists, wh at I shall describe b elow as the ad op

tion task was designed with the fol lowing consideration in mind:

young children's k now le dge is sys te m atically undere stimated if it isassessed by ve rbal prod uction tasks, since children are typically u n

able to self-reflective ly describe wh at they k no w.8 Th erefo re, to es

tablish that a young child (or prelinguistic infant) masters certain

numerical, physical, psychological or biological concepts, develop

mental psychologists design experimental techniques that require

participants to choose between different outcomes (by looking,

pointing, reaching, answering simple forced-choice questions), but

do not expect them to be able to explain why they do so. The ex

perim enter infers from the child's response the kno w ledge that the

child m ust have (or lack) to com e to that particular conclusion.

In the case of the adoption task, participants are told a simple

story about a baby born to on e set of parents and raised by an other.

On e o f the birth parents is then attributed a certain prop erty, wh ile

one of the adoptive parents is attributed another contrastive prop

erty. Participants have to answer the following question: once the

baby is fully grown up, will s/he resemble the birth or the adoptive

parent in that prop erty? In o the r words , they h ave to mak e a simple

similarity judgm ent . Crucially, the task presents participants with tw o

distinct sets of properties: bodily properties on the one hand (e.g.,havitig blond as opposed to dark hair), and mental properties, such

as beliefs, on the other (e.g., believing that skunks can see in the

dark as opposed to believing that skunks cannot see in the dark). If

children judge that the adopted child will resemble the birth parent

on bod ily properties - because such properties are inherited through

fi liation - and the adop tive parent on m ental properties - because

such properties are acquired through learning and habituation -

one can infer that they, like North American adults, have come to

differentiate betw een tw o distinct causal mechanisms for the trans


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iting and Obscuring Rivers's Pedigrees 223

mission of two ontologically distinct properties of the person. Only

then can they be credited with a causal understanding of biological

inheritan ce as distinct from sociallearning.

The characteristics that m ake th e adoptio n task an appropria te

tool for w ork ing w ith children m ake it equa lly useful for wo rking

w ith adults, w h o are adept at systematizing and verb alizing their

view s a bout the wo rld. In the case of Vezo adults, the advantage o f

using the adop tion task to exp lore ho w they construe the process of

biolog ical inh eritanc e w as that it did no t directly tap into their stock

cultural kno w ledge . N otably, the adop tion task sets out a hy po thet

ical scenario - a riddle - w hich was in tentiona lly kept as culture-

neu tral as possible. For exa m ple, the story was told in such a w a ythat it did not ev ok e the social and moral setting in wh ich V ezo ad op

tion no rm ally takes place (i.e., am on g close relatives), and the traits

for the resemblance questions were chosen so as to be value-free

(e.g., bodily characteristics that people considered neither desirable

nor un attractive; beliefs that carried no obvious truth valu e). By vir

tue of their sheer oddness (see below), the resemblance questions

participants were confronted with did not prime their beliefs about

the plasticity of babies' ph ysiog nom y o r their narratives about the

role of social relations in shaping the organic make-up of the per

son. Instead, participants were forced, as it were, to put their think

ing cap on and figure out the answer to entirely new questions. As

Korsia's exa m ple a bo ve suggests, getting p eop le to reason in this wa y

m ay rev eal kn ow ledg e that they possess and use, but w hich they do

not norm ally choose to encode verbal ly.

I am acutely aware that anthropologists used to more informal

and open -end ed interview ing techniques are likely to argue that the

ado ption task is m eth od olo gica lly flaw ed because, just like Rivers's

genealogical method, it imposes on the participants the ontological

distinctions of the researcher - the dualism o f sociality and biology,

o f organism and person, o f birth and nurture. In this view, the f in d

ing that Vezo informants might reason in terms of these dichotomies

w ou ld be a misleading fabrication, the inevitable outcom e of a naive

m etho do logy . Despite their rhetorical force, these criticisms are m is

placed. The adoption task is undoubtedly constructed around these

dichotomies, but it does not imposethem on the participants. I f par

ticipants do not differentiate between birth and adoptive parents,between birth and nurture, between bodily and mental traits, they

can sail throu gh the task blissfully un aw are of the distinctions being

probed, free to use a nu m ber o f alternative, non -dualist ic reasoning

strategies (e.g., the 'true' parent is the one that generates, and the


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224 Rita Astuti

child will therefore resemble him on all traits; the 'true' parent is

the on e that adopts, and the child w ill therefore resem ble him on

all traits; the child will have whichever trait seems truer or prefer

able, irrespective of whether it is the trait attributed to the birth or

ado ptive parent; the child w ill resem ble the ad optive parents on all

traits because of its extreme malleability; etc.). That the adoption

task does not h ave the m agical p ow er to im pose dualistic categories

on to a m onistic m ind is no vacuous speculation. W h en used w ith

children, the ad option task has consistently failed to d etect any d if

ferentiation between inherited and acquired properties, between

birth and social parents, between ' facts of biology' and ' facts of so

ciality '.9 In oth er w ords , this task isa sensitive diagnostic tool; if par

ticipants are no t ' infecte d' by dualistic reasoning, they w ill not test

positive.

As we saw earlier, explicit Vezo beliefs about babies' looks seem

to systematically blur the ontological distinctions for which the

adoption task is designed to test. What happens, then, when Vezo

adults par ticipate in this task?10 The first thin g to be said is that they

w ere initially rather dou btful abou t the seriousness of the exercise.

They w ere used to havin g m e rele ntlessly asking all sorts o f ques

tions, but they were not prepared for questions of this kind:

The father11 who generated the child (baba niteraky azy) believed that

chameleons have 30 teeth, whereas the father who raised the child

( baba niteza azy) believed that chameleons have 20 teeth. In your

opinion, when the child is fully grown up, will he believe that

chameleons have 30 teeth like the father who generated h im or will

he believe that chameleons have 20 teeth like the father who raised

him?

During the piloting stage of the study, rumours spread around

the village that I was wasting peop le's time b y asking silly questions.I suggest that most of the initial frustration was generated by the

fact that adults assumed that I knew the answer to the questions I

was posing, thereby m aking th eir contribution red und ant and

po intless.12 Aw are of this prob lem , I introdu ced the task by p ointin g

ou t that some o f the questions I was about to ask could be answered

in more than one way and that I was interested in the different

opinions that peop le m ight hav e abou t them. I also added that I had

been sent to do this job by m y elders and teachers, and I asked p eo

ple to be supportive o f m y efforts to advan ce m y studies, as th ey had

so gen erous ly don e in the past. This appeal alm ost alwa ys m anaged

to well-dispose adult participants. Nonetheless, at the outset they


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Revealing andOfcjr lBPli Rivers's Pedigrees 225

w ere visibly puzzled by the procedu re, as they foun d the answers to

m y resemblance questions - w he the r about bodily traits or about

beliefs - far too obvious. It was on ly h alfway through the task -

w he n they had realized that on ly some o f the questions we re about

the adopted child's physical appearance {vatany) wh ile others we re

about his m ind or character (sainy, toetsiny)- that they became m ore

engag ed. There w er e at this m om en t clear signs of recogn ition (e.g.,

'N o w I can see wh at this is all ab ou t!') as participants saw the poin t

of wh at had seem ed un til then a pointless conversation. W ha t they

saw, ha lfway through the task, was that I was not trying to f ind out

the obvious, i.e., whether babies get their looks from the parents

who generated them (for those who were f irst presented with the

set of questions about bodily traits) , or wh ethe r peop le com e to b e

lieve w ha t they are taught by their parents (for those wh o w ere f irst

presented with the set of questions about beliefs). Rather, what I

was trying to find out was wh eth er there is any dif ference betw een

the way children come to have their parents' looks and the way

they come to share their parents' beliefs. As I have argued earlier,

nothing in the task forced them to get this point.

Participants' overall performance can be captured by analysing

their individual judg m en t patterns. Follow ing S olom on et al. (199 6),

participants were said to have shown a 'differentiated pattern' if they jud ged that the adopted child wo uld resem ble the birth parent

on most of the bodily traits and the adoptive father on most of the

beliefs; they were said to have shown a 'birth parent bias' if they

ju dged th at th e adopte d child w ou ld resem ble th e birth parent on

all or almost all traits; they were said to have shown an 'adoptive

parent bias' if they jud ged that the adopted child wo uld resem ble

the adoptiv e pa rent on all or alm ost all traits. Finally, participants w h o

did not show any of the above patterns were considered to have

shown a 'mixed pattern'.

An ove rw he lm ing 77 per cent of adult participants show ed a 'di f

ferentiated pa ttern '.14 For this pattern o f judgm ents to em erge, par

ticipants must have reasoned that bodily properties are inherited

through links of f iliation (hen ce the child's resem blance to the birth

parent), and that beliefs are transmitted through learning and teach

ing (hence the child's resemblance to the adoptive parent). This

finding suggests that Vezo adults differen tiate b etw een tw o causal

mechanisms (one having to do with generating children, the other

having to do with nurturing th em ) for the transmission of tw o dis

tinct kinds of pro perties (bo dily traits and beliefs). I take this as e v

idence that Vezo adults have constructed a concept of 'biological


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226 Rita Astuti

inheritance' as distinct from a concept of 'social learning' and, more

generally, that they draw the ontological distinction between 'facts

of biology' and 'facts of sociality'.

I should clarify that the claim I am advancing here is not that the

concepts of 'biological inheritance' and 'social learning' held by

Vezo adults map exactly on to the eq uiva lent set of concepts held by

Euro-American adults. Given the different intellectual traditions and

socio-economic contexts in which these concepts get constructed,

this claim would be daft ( for example, there is no evidence that

Vezo adults are familiar with Western accounts of biological inheri

tance in terms of gen etic cod ing). N oneth eless, I stand by the claim

that Vezo and Eu ro-Am erican concepts of biological inheritance and

social learning are commensurable to one another, insofar as they

play the same inferential role in adult reasoning about fam ily re

semblance. This is confirmed by the spontaneous justifications that

participants offered in support of their judgm ents, w hich provide a

m ore q ualitative picture o f their causal reasoning. To give a feel for

this m aterial, I present below som e extracts from the protocols of a

fe w participants w h o sh ow ed a 'differen tiated p atte rn'.15 Since the

task was very repetitive, participants provided justifications only for

a selection o f their judg m ents ; fo r each justification, th e traits for

which it was given are indicated in brackets.

23-Year-Old Male Informant

[The father w ho generated the child believed that papaya is healthier

than pineapple; the father who raised the child believed that pineap

ple is healthier than papaya.] He'll be like the father who raised him

because he grew up here [in the adoptive parents' village], and his

thoughts grew apart from the other father.

[The father who generated the child was cross-eyed; the father who

raised the child had straight eyes.] He'll be like his father, because he

is the one who generated him and for this reason the boy's face will

be like his.

49- Year-old Male In forma nt

[The father who generated the child had roundish ears; the father

wh o raised the child had pointed ears.] Like the father who generated

him. When it comes to believing things, the child will follow the fa

ther who raised him, but when it comes to the ways o f his body (fom-

ham-batany) this will depend on the father who generated him. These

things are determined by one's blood (mandeha aminy ra).


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iling and Obscuring Rivers's Pedigrees 221

60-Year-Old Male Informant

[The father who generated the child believed that cows have stronger

teeth than horses; the father who raised the boy believed that horseshave stronger teeth than cows.] Like the father who raised him be

cause the thoughts of those who raise him have power/influence

over him. They are the 'owners' o f the child (tompony)since the child

would not be alive if it were not for them. And yet the parents who

generated him also have power/influence since if it weren't for them

he would not have come out onto this earth.

[The father who generated him had pointed ears; the father who

raised him had roundish ears.] Like the father who generated him,

because that's where the child gets his template (modely) from.

49-Year-Old Female Informant

[The father who generated him had a flat appendix; the father who

raised him had a roundish appendix.] He will look only like the fa

ther who generated him. In his body (am-batany), he will be like the

one who generated him.

[The father who generated him believed that chameleons have 30

teeth; the father who raised him believed that chameleons have 20teeth.] Like the father who raised him because this is about his char

acter ( toetsiny) and not about his body (vatany), and he will believe

like the father who brought him up because he hears his words.

These sta tements are sign if icant fo r at leas t tw o reasons. First,

they c on firm that the cod ing of participants' resemblance judgm ents

captures som ething im portant about their reasoning strategy. W hat

I call a 'differentiated pattern' does reflect the participants' theoret

ically m otivated d istinction betw een tw o causal mechanisms for thetransmission of two ontologically different sets of properties. Vezo

adults could n ot have b een m ore articulate in iden tifying the d iffer

ence between a person's character and ways of thinking, which are

acquired through l istening, looking, learning and growing up with

som eone, and the properties of the body, wh ich are acquired through

the 'tem plate' that is passed on through procreation. S econd, the jus

ti f ications demonstrate that the conceptual knowledge Vezo adults

resorted to when answering the resemblance questions is readily

available to their conscious scrutiny and verbal elaboration. They

did n ot find it in any w ay difficult to put the ir causal reasoning into

words (as one might imagine they would i f, for example, they were

asked to reflect on certain aspects of the ir spatial or linguistic kno w !-


15/22

228 Rita Astuti

edg e). In m any ways, the justifications reveal that Vezo adults found

the task somewhat obvious and the reasoning necessary to solve it

positively transparent.

Erasing the Traces of Biological K inship

The results o f th e adoption task in dicate that Vezo adults d if fe renti

ate between the biological and the social processes that contribute

to the making of the person. As noted, Vezo seem to find the differ

ence between birth and nurture rather obvious and unworthy of

mu ch elaboration. W ha t they f ind m orally engaging, by contrast,

are the ways in which they can strive to attenuate this difference

and the divisive effects it has on the m apping o f kinship. Encou rag

ing children to eat and sleep in m any d ifferent houses is on e w ay;

asserting that babies' phy siogn om y is shaped by the actions o f pe o

ple other than the parents w h o gen erate th em is another. It stands

to reason that w e can not begin to understand the mo tivation b e

hind these practices if w e w ere to assume that Vezo on tolo gy is

blind to the difference that these ways of eating, sleeping and see

ing are meant to mitigate.

On this point, m y analysis is similar to that of Firth regarding the

Tikopia pra ct ice o f 't h e adherin g child ' (1963; 190-93). Firth reports

that the Tikopia recognize that babies are particularly attached to

their 'real' parents ( 'th e ch ief desire of the babe - its ow n paren ts').

To counte ract this tenden cy , they deplo y a num ber o f m echanism s

for 'detaching' children from their parents and making them 'ad

here' to other members of the wider kinship group. Infants are

taught not to turn towards their father or mother but towards the

elders of the group. Before they can walk or talk, they are ap

proached by mem bers of the extended fam ily w ho w hisper to them:

'You rem em ber m e. I am y ou r father [e.g., in the case of a classifi-

catory father) . W hen I go away, you com e and seek for me. Do not

cry for you r parents, cry for m e.' Finally, children can be m ore p er

m anently detached from their parents and made to 'adhere' to a dif

ferent domestic unit because 'it is bad for a child to adhere only to

its parents.' Firth points out that, as a result of these practices, it

m ight seem that the individual fam ily is not a real en tity am on g the

Tikopia , and th at it: has been su pplanted by the w id er kinship gro up.

Th is im press ion, how ever, is m is leadin g because it ignore s that th e

strength of the w ide r kinship group is built up by p eo ple s conscious

efforts to weaken the individual family.


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Revealing and O lx iirm g Rivers's Pedigrees 229

A similar argum ent can be made w ith reference to m y Vezo m a

terial. At first sight, it might appear that Vezo kinship transcends the

distinctions between the 'facts of biology' and the 'facts of sociality',

between physical and social identities, between organism and per

son. But this interpretation is misleading because it ignores people's

conscious efforts to work against the ties of biological kinship, to

obscure the boundaries of their pedigrees, to attenuate the differ

ence between birth and nurture in order to build a community in

which children are generated, nurtured and moulded by a much

larger network of relations than the ones demarcated by the 'facts

of b io log y'.16During one administration of the adoption task, one of the few

participants w h o sho w ed a 'birth parent bias' (that is, he jud ged that

the adopted child w ou ld resemble the birth p arent in all properties)

offere d a striking justification fo r one o f his judgm ents. H e said that

the adopted child would have pointed ears like his birth father be

cause 'in the case of human beings there must be a sign, a proof,

that you r child is yours' (olom-belo tsy maintsy misy fam antara io anaki-

nao). Granted that such signs exist and w ill not go away, the m ajor

ity of Vezo adults strive to erase them as best as they can.

Conclusion

Largely as a result of the sustained attacks against the study of kin

ship, the assertion that the ontolo gical distinction be tw een b iological

and social processes is a peculiar feature o f the W estern intellectual

tradition has becom e so m ething of an anthropological ax iom - self-

evident, incontrovertible and ideologically correct (see, e.g., Bouquet

1993; Carsten 1995, 1997; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Ingold

1991; Schneider 1984; Strathern 1992). This claim has been central

to the construc tivist turn in the study o f kinship, for it has been used

to argue that non-Western 'cultures of relatedness' are insensitive

to the distinction 'between kinship as a biological, genetic, instant,

pe rm an en t relationsh ip, and social identity as fluid ' (Carsten 1995:

23 5). F rom this on tological standpoint, there is no intractable core to

hu m an relatedness; 'kinsh ip itself is a process o f bec om ing ' (Carsten

1995: 223).

As noted by Viveiros de Castro (this volu m e), these conclusions

are presented as if they were 'the result of non-Western ideas hav

ing been effectively used to challenge Eurocentric anthropological

conceptions'. However, one could also legitimately argue that they


17/22

230 Rita Astuti

stem from the ver y specific historical and cultural developm ents tak

ing place in the West 'indepen den tly of any en lightenm ent dispensed

by anthropology', such as the perceived destabilization of nature

brought about by the ne w reproductive and biomedical technologies,and the current infatuation with 'creativity' and 'self-fashioning'.

Following Viveiros de Castro, I would suggest that insofar as the

current hegem onic conceptualizations of kinship ha ve been shaped

by these historical and cultural trends, there is in principle no guar

antee that they bring us any closer to the understanding of other

people's 'cultures of relatedness'. And indeed, as I have illustrated

in this chapter, they do not.

The evid ence I have pre sented has show n th at th e claim that

Vezo people conceptualize the nature of both biological and social

relations as fluid and processual, and that their ontology lacks the

distinction be tw een biological and social processes, is factually wro ng .

As 1 ho pe is clear, m y inten tion is no t to use this find ing to dismiss

the critique of the study of kinship and suggest that w e reve rt to col

lecting 'bodies of dry fact' (Rive rs 1914, quoted in Firth 1968: 19)

through the genealogical m ethod. Rather, m y aim has been to use

this f inding to understand h ow m y V ezo informan ts in Madagascar

conceptualize, reflect upon, and manipulate human kinship. Quite

simply, imputing a 'non-dualistic' ontology to them is no t the way

to do it.

Notes

This chapter is based on research undertaken in Madagascar, which was

funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant R000237191)

and the Nuffield Foundation (Social Science Research Foundation Fellow

ship, 1997-98). Data analysis was undertaken during a sabbatical year at

the Laboratory of Developmental Studies, Harvard University, funded by

the Economic and Social Research Council (Research Fellowship

R000271254, 2002-05) and the Leverhulme Foundation (Study Abroad

Fellowship, 2002-03). 1wish to thank all these institutions for their gener

ous support. The data presented in this chapter are part of a larger collabo

rative project between anthropologists and cognitive psychologists -

Maurice Bloch (London School of Economics), Susan Carey (Harvard),

Gregg Solomon (National Science Foundation) and myself. I am grateful to

Sandra Bamford and James Leach for organizing an excellent session at the

Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Or

leans, and for giving me an opportunity to present the results of this proj

ect to a challenging anthropological audience.


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Iling and Obscuring Rivers's Pedigrees 231

1. The term terakyis also used to refer to the act of generation of animals,

plants, wells (which generate water) or communal activities, such as

meetings, which can occasionally be judged to have been 'productive'.

2. The reader might interpret the brief description of Vezo views on pro

creation as suggesting that only fathers transfer bodily substance to

their children. This, however, does not seem to be the case. The most

compelling evidence that women's contribution of blood, food and

'housing' is equally, if not more 'substantive' than the contribution of

men's semen is the fact that, like other people in Madagascar, Vezo

consider the children of two sisters as enjoying the closest possible re

lation, closer, for example, than that between the children of two

brothers (for this reason, sexual taboos between the children of two sis

ters are the strongest and sexual relations between them are the mostincestuous). When asked why such people are so close, Vezo inform

ants say that it is because the children of two sisters were attached to

the same umbilical cord and shared the same womb (i.e., the wombs

of their respective mothers are treated as one and the same). From this

we can infer that whatever it is that is shared by the children of two

sisters that makes them so close - almost identical - to one another,

must have originated and must have been transferred to them from

their respective mothers.

3. The only con text when this is admissible is when ancestral matters are

concerned, such as the decision to perform the ritual that establishes

exclusive rights over one's children's dead bodies (see Astuti 1995 for

further details).

4. This behaviour is common throughout Madagascar (e.g., Bloch 1971:

83), and it extends to children's sleeping arrangements. Bloch (per

sonal communication) reports that during his fieldwork among the

Merina in the highlands of Madagascar, a little boy got lost in the fields.

However, since his parents assumed that he was staying with some

other 'parents' and it would have been considered rude for them to

look for him, it took some time before the extended family realized

that he was actually missing. See Bloch (1986) for a general discussion

of the way Merina construe biological ties and how they overcome

their divisiveness through ritual means.

5. This is the view o f McKinnon (2002) who, in her comments on my pa

per at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Associa

tion, stated that 'systems like those of the Vezo ... defy our dualisms

altogether'.

6. I here adopt one o f the philosophical uses of the term ontology, also

commonly followed by psychologists, to mean the set of things whoseexistence is acknowledged by a particular theory or system of thought

(see Lowe 1995: 634). For example, one o f the intuitive theories stud

ied by psychologists goes under the name of 'naive psychology'. Such

theory construes persons as psychological beings (rather than as, e.g.,


19/22

232 Rita Astuti

physical objects or biological entities) whose actions are caused and ex

plained in terms of their mental states (e.g., desires, hopes, beliefs,

etc.). Like other theories, 'naive psychology' specifies the existence and

the nature of the entities to w hich it applies - such things as mental

states and mental processes as distinct from such things as physical ob

jects and their mechanical behaviour. The on tology of na ive psychol

ogy' consists in this specification, and people who subscribe to the

theory of 'naive psychology' are thereby committed to its ontological

distinctions (for more details see, e.g., Carey 1985: chap. 6; Wellman

and Gelman 1992). The claim that Vezo people either make or do not

make the distinction between 'facts of bio logy ' and 'facts of sociality' is

thus a claim about ontology, for it addresses the question of whether

they hold an intuitive theory (in this case 'naive b iology ') that commits

them to the existence of such things as biological facts and processes as

opposed to social facts and processes.

7. Fo is commonly translated as heart, but the meaning of this term, in

Madagascar and in Southeast Asia more generally, is much richer as it

indicates the very root, origin, source of the entity to which it pertains.

8. Adults are equally unable to reflect on certain domains of their kno wl

edge, the best example being grammatical knowledge. Fluent adult

speakers are obviously able to apply grammatical rules, but they are

typically unable to state what these rules are.

9. Children in Europe and the U.S. have not shown evidence o f differen

tiated reasoning before the age of six or seven (e.g., Gimenez and Har

ris 2002; Solomon 2002; Solomon et al. 1996; Springer 1996; Springer

and Keil 1989; Weissman and Kalish 1999; Williams and Affleck 1999),

urban Tamil children in India have not done so before the age of

twelve (Mahalingham 1998), and rural Zafimaniry and Vezo children

in Madagascar have not before the age of thirteen or fourteen (Astuti,

Solomon and Carey 2004; Bloch, Solomon and Carey 2001).

10. The adoption task was first successfully used by Bloch am ong the Zafi

maniry of Madagascar (Bloch et al. 2001). After adapting it to local cir

cumstances, I used it with Vezo children, adolescents and adults (ranging

from six to ninety years of age). By dep loying several different versions

that manipulated the identity of the birth and adoptive parents, 1 wasable to explore two related issues: the way Vezo participants at differ

ent ages reason about the transmission of individual properties from

parents to children, and the way they reason about the transmission of

social group identity and species kind. For the purpose of the present

discussion, 1shall limit my attention to the data on Vezo adults' under

standing of biological inheritance. For the analysis of the entire data

set, see Astuti et al. 2004.

11. A control task was designed to establish whether participants might

reason differently depending on whether the link of filiation targeted

by the questions was paternal or maternal; there was no evidence of a


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Revealing and O b s ^ B g Rivers's Pedigrees 233

systematic effect and therefore in what follows I ignore this variable.

The fact that participants reasoned about the transmission of properties

from father to son in the same way in which they reasoned about the

transmission o f properties from mother to daughter, confirms the point

made earlier (see note 2) that Vezo regard women's and men's contri

butions to their children as equally 'substantive'.

12. I had encountered a similar problem when I asked people to tell me

how babies are made (lit.., 'What is it that places the child inside the

woman's belly?'). My closest female friends were at first puzzled that I

did not know, but after a few jokes to the effect of 'have you not found

this out yet?' they answered my question, pretending, as it were, that

I really did not know. W hen 1 returned to the field having had a son,

one wom an took me to one side and told me, 'If you really didnt know

before coming here, we did a good job at teaching you!'

13. The study was balanced across participants according to a I.atin-Square

design in order to control for the potential confounding factors of

wh ether the bodily traits we re presented before or after the beliefs, and

which value of a pair of features was attributed to the birth parent.

Thus, half of the participants were first asked the questions about the

resemblance on bodily traits, while the other half were first asked the

questions about the resemblance on beliefs. Preliminary analyses con

ducted on these factors revealed no significant effects on the results

presented below.14. Of the remaining 23 per cent, 6 per cent showed a 'birth parent bias',

3 percent an 'adoptive parent bias', and 13 per cent a 'mixed pattern'.

For the complete statistical analysis, see Astuti et al. 2004.

15. The complete quantitative and qualitative analysis of all the justif ica

tions can be found in Astuti et al. 2004. A sample of complete proto

cols by adult participants who showed 'differentiated', 'birth parent

bias', 'adoptive parent bias', and 'mixed' patterns can be found at

'http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/vezo.pdf'.

16. For a similar argument about gender identities among the Vezo, see

Astuti 1998.

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Documents

Astuti River's Pedigrees-Madagascar