On the Agnatic Ideology as an Integrating Force in Pastoral Societies

Abstract

The ideology of descent has a career of its own, largely independent of internal contradictions in recruitment and "a descent doctrine does not express group composition but imposes itself upon the composition." This is the point succinctly stated by Sahlins (1963, 1965), which also underlies the Barnes' following observation. "A genealogy in the pre-literate society is in general a charter, in Malinowski's sense, for a given configuration of contemporary social relations. Where there is a dogma of descent, and in particular a dogma of agnatic solidarity, the genealogy must reflect the contemporary situation or some desired modification of it, in terms of the dogma." (Barnes 1962). Our analysis of pastoral societies aims at providing a certain quantification of the above thesis. The study of pastoral societies seems to allow a more or less radical formulation along this line of argument because of the elastic nature of group composition and the vigorous tendency to rationalize it in terms of the agnatic doctrine. The substantial body of materials have been drawn from the Somali (Lewis 1961), the Samburu (Spencer 1965), and the Baggara Arabs (Cunnison 1966), all of which are defined by the authors as societies with the agnatic lineage system. A herding camp generally is the basic. unit comprising a spatially compact lineage segment. The demographic surveys, however, revealed that there is a fairly high incidence of camps containing affinally and non-agnatically related persons and coming-in strangers without any kinship relations whatsoever (20-3096 among the Somali and the Samburu as against agnatic members). Since marriage is prohibited within the 'primary lineage' in the Somali and within the 'clan' in the Samburu (as a corollary within camps as well) , affinal and congatic impurities in camps are those who or whose ascendants came to be attached to their wives' groups by uxorilocal mode of residence. In the course of time, however, these accessory members become incorporated into their host groups and accorded fullfledged membership to agnatic descent groups. There exist certain required formalities that mark the point of incorporation: the Somali are required to cooperate with wives' agnates in camel herdings and blood-money payments: the Samburu must observe the exogamous restrictions of the clan in regard to the host groups. The Humr, a 'tribe' among the Baggara Arabs, give preference to FBD marriage, thus marriages are very frequently practiced within the surra that is the smallest agnatic lineage segment and the basis of a single camp.