On Centrism and Dualism - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

INTRODUCTION
HEADLEY’S argument introduces siblingship as the essential concept for imagining and
expressing unity in Southeast Asia.
I will show that it is the valuation of unity that also represent the fundamental idea of
ERRINGTON’S comparative model. In her model the universal valuation of siblingship, its role
in imagining unity, and its relevance for establishing houses as ritual centers, constitutes the
common theme of viewing Southeast Asian social formation as Houses. In this context I will
highlight the importance of siblinghship as a heuristic category for the analysis of island
Southeast Asian social formations.
For a long time siblingship has been neglected in the anthropology of Southeast Asia. Jeremy
KEMP and Frans HÜSKEN (1991) claim that anthropologists working on Southeast Asia have
contributed two important themes to the general anthropological discourse, both are to be
found in the realm of kinship studies. Firstly, they refer to the analysis of what is known as
asymmetric marriage alliance 9 . Secondly, they highlight the rather blurred category of
cognatic societies, or cognatic kinship systems.
Of the two, the former achieved early prominence due to anthropology’s general emphasis on
unilineal descent
10 (ibid.: 1). 11 Therefore, cognatic systems were analytically neglected, if not
totally ignored. Even today cognatic systems do not receive the attention that one might
legitimately assume to be their due, given their demographic preponderance (the majority of
Southeast Asia’s population is living in cognatic societies) (ibid.). These two analytic
concepts, which emphasize affinity and cognation respectively, are intended to describe the
9 Asymmetric alliance describes systems in which women move asymmetrically between hierarchically
differentiated alliance groups, so that Ego’s group takes women from a different group than the one it gives them
to, which implies a minimum of three exchange groups. These exchange groups are generally understood as
unilineal descent groups, a principle of descent that stresses either the male or female side (cf. NEEDHAM 1979:
36-37).
10 In traditional kinship theory the relation between parent and child is understood as ties of filiation, sometimes
specified further as patrifiliation or matrifiliation. Filiation links are repeated generation after generation, and if
the social emphasis is on the whole series of such links then one talks of descent. Very often, links traced
through one parent are emphasized at the expense, relatively or absolutely, of those through the other. If links
through the father are emphasized, there is patrilineal or agnatic descent; if the mother represents the focus of
linkage, then there is matrilateral or uterine descent. In both cases, descent is unilineal, the descent line formed
by these links being traced back in time through persons of the same sex to the ancestor or founder of the line
(PARKIN 1997: 15). Groups that recruit their members according to unilineal principles are therefore called,
unilineal descent groups. For a detailed account of the anthropological concept of descent group, see DUMONT
(2006 [1971]). The study of social structure represents the main focus of British social anthropology during the
1940s and 50s. British social anthropologists, mainly working on Africa, were concerned with the analysis of the
political organization in societies lacking centralized political institutions. The theory of unilineal descent groups
dominated these investigations, as exemplified in Meyer FORTES (1953) article The Structure of Unilineal
Descent Groups. This anthropological perspective is also known as descent theory. For an apt summary of how
the relationship between British anthropologists and descent theory evolved see BERGER (2000: 38-43).
11 An example of this prominence in the context of island Southeast Asia is J.P.B. DE JOSSELIN DE JONG’S (1977
[1935]) so called ‘Field of Ethnological Study’ (FES), that deals exclusively with unilineal societies practicing
asymmetric marriage alliance.
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