Continuity and Discontinuity : on the Thesis of Louis DUMONT on the Generation

Abstract

The problem examined in this article is the relationships between generations. Traditional customs surrouding the relationships and their significance are also examined. The generation here is not one of chronology but biologically between parents and children, which is called the genealogical generation or the genealogical level in the anthropological literature. A generation has for long been considered to be one of the most important criteria in social classification. But more interesting is the relationship between generations and various customs surrounding the generations. As it is often pointed out in many societies, the relatoniship between two proximate generations, that is, between the generation of patents and the generation of children, is characterized by a mutual reserve where any kind of familiarity is forbidden. This relationship in its most severe cases is sometimes called "avoidance", in which both generations, as a rule, are strictly separated from each other. This is also an authoritative relationship that one subjugates the other. In opposition to this is the relationship between two alternate generations, or between the grandparents' generation and the grandchildren's generation. It is characterized by equality, friendliness and familiarity In this relationship both generations are often identified in the way that grandchildren inherit their grandparents' names or grandparents, are reincarnated as grandchildren, or even in some cases, grandchildren are treated as members of the grandparents' generation. The extreme of this familiar relationship is the so-called joking relationship where members of the both generations have the privilege of indulging in obscene joking or teasing at the expense of the others, in a manner never permitted between adjacent generations. What is interesting here is this marked contrast between these two kinds of relationships, the familiarity of two alternate generations on the one hand and the mutual reserve of two adjacent generations on the other. These two kinds of relationships may result in a social dichotomy. Each pair of opposed consecutive generations allies with its alternative ones respectively and thus forms two sets of alternating generation groups. This kind of grouping is in fact known and the concomitant of this is the spatial separation of a village or the dual division of a whole tribe. This dichotomy often regulates a marriage ; a member of one division must not marry a member of another for whom a sense of reserve is required. One must marry a member of his own division. In such case the division deserves the name "the endogamous generation moiety". These relationships between generations are often interpreted as the result of parental authority over their children. It is supposed that, because children are educated and disciplined severely by their parents and so are subordinated to them at least in their early life, the relationship between two proximate generations must be a difficult one. But there does not exist between two alternate generations such a disciplinarian relationship. It is even supposed that two alternate generations are drawn together by a mutual sympathy created by their respective discontent toward the intervening generation. But this supposition can not be supported by ethnographical facts. Firstly, in many cases examined here, it is not the parents but the grandparents who educate the children and this begins after the children are separated from their parents. Secondly, the relationship of mutual reserve is not restricted to the parents and their children, but rather it is the relationship between generations as a whole