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| Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity | |
|---|---|
| Name | Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity |
| Author | Lewis H. Morgan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Kinship classification |
| Published | 1871 |
Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity
Lewis H. Morgan's 1871 treatise on kinship classification synthesized fieldwork, comparative history, and legal records to propose systematic terms for kin relations; it influenced figures from Charles Darwin to Franz Boas and shaped debates at institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution and American Anthropological Association. Drawing on data from communities studied by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, John Wesley Powell, and collaborators among the Iroquois Confederacy, Morgan sought universal patterns linking kinship terminology to social organization, property transmission, and political structures examined later by scholars like Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Bronisław Malinowski.
Morgan developed his framework amid intellectual currents involving Herbert Spencer, Charles Lyell, and Thomas Huxley, while corresponding with Alexander von Humboldt-inspired networks and American reformers such as Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. His encounters with leaders of the Seneca Nation of New York and field collectors like George Gibbs informed empirical choices that intersected with debates in the Royal Geographical Society and reportage circulated through the Atlantic Monthly and North American Review. Influential contemporaries included Henry Clay-era politicians and jurists like Daniel Webster who debated legal implications, and intellectual patrons like G. P. Marsh and Ralph Waldo Emerson who amplified Morgan's comparative historical method.
Morgan situated kin terminology within broader comparative taxonomies advanced by Carl Linnaeus-inspired classifiers and critics such as Herbert Spencer and John Lubbock, dialoguing with ethnographers like Edward Tylor, James Frazer, and Claude Lévi-Strauss later reinterpreters. His classifications were read alongside legal analyses by Sir Henry Maine and economic histories by Karl Marx and Adam Smith; debates over social evolution involved participants such as Lewis Namier, Thorstein Veblen, and Jules Guesde. Anthropological institutions including University of Oxford, Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and museums like the British Museum and Field Museum became venues for contesting Morgan's taxonomy.
Morgan proposed rule-based sets of kin terms, distinguishing classificatory from descriptive systems, and correlating terminologies with descent principles observed by researchers like Edward Sapir and Alfred Kroeber. His model categorized kin by generation, sex, and lineage, echoing classificatory schemas used by jurists in cases adjudicated in courts overseen by figures like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and informed by census practices from the United States Census Bureau. Structural distinctions invoked comparisons with kin systems reported from regions studied by explorers such as David Livingstone, James Cook, and Alexander von Humboldt, and encoded in treaties and land claims reviewed by John Marshall and Worcester v. Georgia-era adjudicators.
Researchers applied Morgan's approach to analyze social units from the Iroquois Confederacy to the kin networks of Pacific islanders described by William Scoresby, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Robert FitzRoy, and to African lineages documented in travels by David Livingstone and colonial reports compiled by administrators like Lord Lugard and Frederick Lugard. Legal historians used the system to interpret inheritance disputes involving estates litigated in tribunals associated with Queen Victoria's legal reforms and municipal records from cities such as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. Comparative studies by scholars like Lewis Henry Morgan’s readers including Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown applied the taxonomy across field sites in Australia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.
Critics from traditions represented by Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Clifford Geertz argued against unilineal evolutionary assumptions attributed to Morgan, while legal scholars influenced by H.L.A. Hart and Lon Fuller questioned normative translations of kin terms. Postcolonial theorists citing Edward Said and historians influenced by Michel Foucault and Benedict Anderson critiqued universalizing tendencies; revisions incorporated insights from David Schneider, Marshall Sahlins, and cognitive anthropologists such as Lee Cronk and Stephen Gudeman. Methodological debates unfolded in forums including the Royal Anthropological Institute and journals edited at institutions such as University of Chicago and Columbia University.
Morgan's systems continued to shape curricula at Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of California, Berkeley and provided terminological groundwork for later syntheses by David Schneider, Jack Goody, and Geoffrey Lloyd. Debates stimulated by his work informed policy deliberations at agencies like the United Nations and frameworks in comparative law taught at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School, and inspired historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Natalie Zemon Davis. Contemporary kinship researchers cite dialogues with scholars such as Sarah Franklin, Caroline Bledsoe, and Janet Carsten while museums like the American Museum of Natural History and collections at the Library of Congress preserve archival legacies connected to Morgan's fieldwork.
Category:Kinship studies