On Centrism and Dualism - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

CENTRISM AND DUALISM
strategy for perpetuating and increasing the house estate. Both marriage strategies, exogamy
and endogamy, were practiced concurrently, one to increase access to property and the other
to prevent portions of the estate from leaving the house in marriage (ibid.: 182-183). 67 With
regard to this explicit emphasis on affinal strategies, marriage becomes the most important
social principle in LÉVI-STRAUSS conception of houses; a fact that situates the concept of
house societies neatly in his former theory of affinal alliance (GILLESPIE 2000b: 26) and yet
another proof of LÉVI-STRAUSS’ general belief in the structural significance of affinity.
In order to further develop his argument and to highlight that the house represents a social
category and not merely an architectural form or the locus of a household, LÉVI-STRAUSS
turned to medieval and early modern Europe. In their characterization of the noble houses of
Europe historians had described the similar kind of social entity that had confounded BOAS
and KROEBER in North America.
The medievalist Karl SCHMIED (1957) characterized the medieval house as something quite
different from a family or lineage. The noble ‘lineage’(Adelsgeschlecht) constituting the
house, does not coincide with the agnatic line and is often devoid of a biological basis, instead
consisting of a “spiritual and material heritage, comprising dignity, origins, kinship, names
and symbols, position, power and wealth, which once assumed […] took account of the
antiquity and distinction of the other noble lineages” (LÉVI-STRAUSS 1982: 174). LÉVI-
STRAUSS points out that in this case, the analytic language of the historian and anthropologist
resemble each other.
His [Lévi-Strauss’s, B.B.] definition emphasizes the perpetuation of, and the maintenance of an
estate by, a personne morale, a long-lived entity subject to rights and obligations. The “language”
of kinship and/or affinity is employed to achieve these twinned goals by providing the means to
legitimate the intact transfer of the estate across generations of house members (GILLESPIE 2000b:
27).
Even though LÉVI-STRAUSS’ originally came up with his house concept in the context of
analyzing patrilineal societies (cf. GILLESPIE 2000b: 28), he later focused his attention on
cognatic societies, especially those of Austronesia.
Cognatic kinship systems, in which kinship status is accounted equally through both parents,
had for a long time troubled scholars, who, according to the premises of descent theory, were
used to identify unilineal principles at the heart of social organization. In addition to the term
67 “As was seen in connection with the Kwakiutl, exogamous marriage is used to capture titles endogamous
marriage is used to prevent their leaving the house once they have been acquired. It is therefore a good strategy
to use the two principles concurrently, according to the time and opportunity, in order to maximize gains and
minimize losses.” (LEVI-STRAUSS 1982: 183)
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