Napolleon's Yanomamo: The Fierce People

Besides these imbricating principles for belongingness – place of residence and agnatic kinship – a Nuer man is indebted towards his affines as well as age-mates. This manifests in multiple ways. Fighting is a common act in the Nuer society. Although they are raised to solve disputes by fighting, they avoid conflicts with his kinsmen. If one is dead during fighting, the dead man’s kinsmen is obliged to seek revenge on the killer. It is considered a tremendous humiliation if the kinsmen avoids to retaliate the homicide. Therefore, many Neur seek to prevent battles with other lineages. Due to their aggressive nature, fueds frequently erupts among them. As some fueds last for multiple years, some even flare into a bigger scale violence. This

CASE STUDY 2

In his ethnography “Yanomamo: The Fierce People,” Napolleon A. Chagnon seeks to describe the behavior of the Yanomamo and their social organization (1968). The human practices identified in this ethnography overlap the following aspects of politics and kinship: integration, conflict, agnatic kinship, affinity, authority, and marriage.

Yanomamo people occupy the forested hill areas sprawling the border between Venezuela and Brazil, and they practice horticulture. Chagnon describes Yanomamo as "the fierce people" who are actively involved in warfare.

For the Yanomamo, marriage plays a big role in forming alliances. Before understanding how, it is critical to understand the social structure the sociopolitical structure of Yanomamo society. Aggression is a prominent among the Yanomamo culture. It manifests in multiple ways: chest pounding, wife beating, dueling, and raiding with the intent to ambush and kill men from adversary villages. The following illustrates the aptitude of conflict among the Yanomamo: “raided approximately twenty-five times while I conducted the fieldwork, six times by the group I lived among.” Furthermore, Evans-Pritchard refers the general state of the Yanomamo society as “state of chronic

The members in a Yanomamo villages are mostly relatives. They practice bilateral cross-cousin marriage, which signifies that "a young woman must marry a man who is recognized as her mother's brother's son and father's sister's son." Hence, they use same kin terms to represent different groups of persons. Evans-Pritchard also refers this as “classificatory kinship terminology,” suggesting that a specific term is used to refer to people from same clan, generation and gender from the ego’s point of view. Over the time, as Evans-Pritchard suggests, this marriage system composes “a moiety system based on two patriclans which exchange women between them.” This is evident among the Yanomamo. Moreover, marriage also play a role in integration in the society. As they follow bilateral cross-cousin marriage, extension of marriage ties assimilates new lineages into the