The avunculate, sometimes called avunculism or avuncularism, is any social institution where a special relationship exists between an

uncle An uncle is usually defined as a male relative who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent, as well as the parent of the cousins. Uncles who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. The female counterpart of an un ...

and his sisters' children. This relationship can be formal or informal, depending on the society. Early anthropological research focused on the association between the avunculate and

matrilineal Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...

descent, while later research has expanded to consider the avunculate in general society.

Definition

The term ''avunculate'' comes from the Latin '' avunculus,'' the maternal uncle. The 1989 ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

'' defines "avunculate" as follows: :"Avunculate. The special relationship existing in some societies between a maternal uncle and his sister's son; maternal uncles regarded as a collective body. ::1920 R. H. LOWIE Prim. Soc. v. 81 Ethnologists describe under the heading of avunculate the customs regulating in an altogether special way the relations of a nephew to his maternal uncle. Ibid. vii. 171 The Omaha are patrilineal now, but their having the avunculate proves that they once traced descent through the mother, for on no other hypothesis can such a usage be explained. ... "

Avunculocal societies

An avunculocal society is one in which a married couple traditionally lives with the man's mother's eldest brother, which most often occurs in

societies. The

anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...

term "avunculocal residence" refers to this convention, which has been identified in about 4% of the world's societies. This pattern generally occurs when a man obtains his status, his job role, or his privileges from their nearest elder matrilineal male relative. When a woman's son lives near her brother, he is able to more easily learn how he needs to behave in the matrilineal role he has inherited.

Cultures with a formal avunculate

According to the Kazakh common law, the avunculate nephews could take anything from the relatives of the mother up to three times. In the Kyrgyz past a nephew, at a feast at his maternal uncle or grandfather, could take any horse from their herd or any delicacy.Yu.Zuev, ''"Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology"'', Almaty, Daik-Press, 2002, p. 30, In the Southwest United States, the

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

tribe practices a form of this, where the uncle is responsible for teaching the children social values and proper behavior while inheritance and ancestry is reckoned through the mother's family alone. Modern day influences have somewhat but not completely erased this tradition. The Chamorros of the

Mariana Islands The Mariana Islands ( ; ), also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12th and 21st pa ...

and the

Taíno The Taíno are the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The ...

Turks and Caicos Islands The Turks and Caicos Islands (abbreviated TCI; and ) are a British Overseas Territory consisting of the larger Caicos Islands and smaller Turks Islands, two groups of tropical islands in the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean and no ...

are examples of societies that have practiced avunculocal residence.

Anthropology research

Research on the avunculate in the early 20th century focused on the association between the avunculate and patrilineal/matrilineal societies.

Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He was a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the mov ...

categorized various avunculate arrangements based on the location of residence in 1922. Henri Alexandre Juno made the claim that the avunculate in the

Tsonga Tsonga may refer to: * Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa * Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa. * Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) ...

indicated that society had previously been matrilineal.

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 – 24 October 1955) was an English social anthropologist who helped further develop the theory of structural functionalism. He conducted fieldwork in the Andam ...

identified the Tsonga (BaThonga) of

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

, the

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

ns of the Pacific, and the Nama of Namibia as avunculate societies as early as 1924. He also expanded the concept to incorporate other family relationships. Later research moved beyond the issue of matrilinealism.

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...

incorporating the avunculate into his "atom of kinship". Jan N. Bremmer argued based on a survey of the Indo-European peoples that the avunculate is explained by the principle of education outside the (extended) family, and does not indicate matrilinealism.

Avunculate marriage

In historical (not anthropological) terminology, an

avunculate marriage An avunculate marriage (or uncle/aunt-niece/nephew marriage) is a marriage with a parent's sibling or with one's sibling's child—i.e., between an uncle or aunt and their niece or nephew. Such a marriage may occur between biological (consangu ...

is the marriage of a man with the daughter of his sister (not explicitly forbidden by the listings in Leviticus 18). In most cultures with avunculate customs in the sense used by anthropologists, such a marriage would violate incest taboos governing relations between members of the same matrilineal lineage.

Notes

References

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