Radcliffe-Brown: "Patrilineal and Matrilineal Succession"

Originally published in 1935 in the Iowa Law Review 20#2 (January), but I've given the pagination from the more accessible reprint in RB's Structure and Function in Primitive Society. As George Stocking has pointed out in several places (eg his After Tylor), RB was heavily influenced in his later career by his reading of Henry Maine's Ancient Law, and this essay is one of the clearest examples. The image developed here of the unilineal descent group as a legal corporation controlling the inheritance of rights (not just material property) set the stage for a series of legalistic images which became profoundly influential in the ethnography of British social anthropologists during the 1940's and 1950's, but which were even more influential in the development of the text-book simplifications of clan and lineage organization which persist until today. The term "corporate unilineal descent group" came to name a major category of phenomena in "primitive" society. I have highlighted certain words.

    If we are to understand aright the laws and customs of non-European peoples we must be careful not to interpret them in terms of our own legal conceptions, which, simple and obvious as some of them may seem to us, are the product of a long and complex historical development and are special to our own culture. If, for instance, we attempt to apply to the customs of the simpler peoples our own precise distinctions between the law relating to persons and the law relating to things we shall produce nothing but confusion in the result.
    With us one of the most important aspects of succession is the transmission of property by inheritance. Yet in some of the simplest societies this is a matter of almost no significance at all. In an Australian tribe, for example, a man possesses a few weapons, tools, utensils and personal ornaments, things of little value or permanence. On his death some of them may be destroyed, others may be distributed among his relatives and friends. But their disposal is of so little importance, unless in relation to ritual, that it is often difficult to find any rules of customary procedure. But even in such simple societies, where inheritance of private property may be said not to exist or to be of minimal importance, there are problems of succession in the widest sense of the term.
    The term 'succession' will here be taken as referring to the transmission of rights in general. A right exists in, and is definable in terms of, recognised social usage. A right may be that of an individual or a collection of individuals. It may be defined as a measure of control that a person, or a collection of persons, has over the acts of some person or persons, said to be thereby made liable to the performance of a duty. Rights may be classified as of three main kinds:
(a)Rights over a person imposing some duty or duties upon that person. This is the jus in personam of Roman law. A father may exercise such rights over his son, or a nation over its citizens.
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(b) Rights over a person 'as against the world', i.e. imposing duties on all other persons in respect of that particular person. This is the jus in rem of Roman law in relation to persons.
(c) Rights over a thing, i.e. some object other than a person, as against the world, imposing duties on other persons in relation to that thing.
    The rights classified under (b) and (c) are fundamentally of the same kind, distinguished only as they relate to persons or to things, and are of a different kind from those classified under (a).
    We may consider a few examples from such a simple society as an Australian tribe. A man has certain rights over his wife. Some of them are rights in personam whereby he may require from her the performance of certain duties. Others are rights in rem. If anyone should kill the wife he commits an injury against the husband. If anyone should have sexual intercourse with the wife without the consent of the husband he commits an injury against the latter. In some tribes a man may lend his wife to another; this is an exercise by the husband both of his rights in personam and of his rights in rem.
    In a great number of Australian tribes the custom of the levirate holds sway. By this, when a man dies all his rights over his wife (and over his immature children) are transferred to his younger brother, or failing such, to an agnatic cousin. This is a simple instance of fraternal succession. What is transferred is certain rights in personam and in rem over certain persons (the wife and children) and with these rights there go, of course, certain obligations or duties.
    Let us next consider, in such a tribe as the Kariera of Western Australia, the nature of the group that I shall call a 'horde'. This is a body of persons who jointly possess, occupy and exploit a certain defined area of country. The rights of the horde over its territory can be briefly indicated by saying that no person who is not a member of the horde has the right to any animal, vegetable or mineral product from the territory except by invitation or consent of members of the horde. Acts of trespass against this exclusive right of a horde to its territory seem to have been very rare in the social life of the aborigines but it appears to have been generally held that anyone committing such a trespass could
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justifiably be killed.* This exclusive use of its territory by a horde is modified by obligations of 
* We have records from a part of South Australia of occasional deliberate acts of trespass with armed force, a body of men invading a territory in which red ochre was found for the purpose of obtaining a supply. This was actually an act of war and as the invaders took care to come in force the horde whose rights were thus invaded had no effective remedy.

hospitality whereby, when there is an abundance of some kind of food at a certain time, members of friendly neighbouring hordes are invited to come in and share it. The son of any woman born in the horde and married elsewhere is always entitled to visit his mother's horde and hunt in its territory.
    It is convenient to speak of such a group as the Kariera horde as a 'corporation' having an 'estate'. This is an extension of the terms 'corporation' arid 'estate' as they are commonly used in law, but I think this extension is justifiable, and hope that at any rate it will be admitted for the purposes of the present exposition. By an estate is here meant a collection of rights (whether over persons or things) with the implied duties, the unity of which is constituted either by the fact that they are the rights of a single person and can be transmitted, as a whole, or in division, to some other person or persons, or that they are the rights of a defined group (the corporation) which maintains a continuity of possession. A personal estate thus corresponds to that universitas juris which is what, in Roman law, was transmitted by inheritance.*
* Hereditas est successio in universum jus quod defunctus habuit: an inheritance is a succession to the entire legal position of a deceased man.

    The corporate estate of a Kariera horde includes in the first place its rights over its territory. The continuity of the horde is maintained by the continuity of possession of the territory, which remains constant, not subject to division or increase, for the Australian aborigines have no conception of the possibility of territorial conquest by armed force. The relation of a horde to its territory does not correspond exactly to what we regard as 'ownership' in modern law. It has some of the qualities of corporate ownership, but also partakes of the nature of the relation of a modern state to its territory, which we may speak of as the exercise of  'dominion'. Rights of ownership over land and rights of dominion have seemingly both had their origin by development and differentiation from such a simple relation as that exemplified in the Australian horde.
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    The estate of a horde includes not only its rights over a territory, but also its rights, in personam and in rem, over its members. The adult male members of the horde owe certain duties to it so that it has rights in personam over them. It also has rights in rem, for if one of them is killed, by violence or by sorcery, the horde as a whole conceives itself to have been injured and takes steps to obtain satisfaction. Women and children are not members of the horde in the same sense as adult males. If a man's wife is 'stolen' it is he as an individual who seeks satisfaction though he will have the backing of the other members of the horde. But indirectly she also belongs to the horde so that when her husband dies she should by custom pass into the possession of some other member of the horde and not to some person outside.
    Since the Kariera horde is exogamous every female child passes by marriage out of the possession of her parents and out of the possession of the horde into the possession of her husband in another horde. By Australian custom this transfer of possession, i.e. of rights, in personam and in rem, over a person, should normally involve compensation or indemnification, which, in many tribes, is provided by the man who receives a wife giving his sister in exchange to be the wife of his brother-in-law. Male children may be said to pass out of the possession of the parents and into direct possession of the horde at initiation. This is, in some tribes, symbolically expressed in the initiation ritual.
    The Kariera horde affords an example of perpetual corporate succession. It will be obvious, I think, that it contains the germs of the state and of sovereignty as we know them in more complex developments. Thus, as the terms have been used above, the United States of America is a 'corporation' having as its constituent 'estate' possession of, or dominion over, a certain territory (subject, unlike that of an Australian horde, to increase by conquest or purchase) and certain specific rights, in personam and in rem, over the persons of its citizens.
    The continuity of a corporation such as the Australian horde is dependent on the continuity of its estate. In the first place there is continuity of possession of the territory. Secondly, there is a continuity which transcends the space of a human life by the fact that as the group loses some members by death it acquires new members by the birth of children and the initiation of boys into the status of men.
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    If now we turn from considering the horde as a whole to consider the individual male members we find here also a process of customary transmission of rights. Children 'belong', we may say, primarily to the father, i.e. it is he who exercises over them rights in personam and in rem. As the father in turn belongs to the horde this horde has some rights over his children. When a girl reaches puberty the rights over her are transferred (perhaps not in entirety but in great part) from her father and his horde to her husband. When the boy reaches puberty he is transferred from his position of dependence on his father to that of an adult member of the horde. Now a member of the horde has certain rights over other members and over the territory of the horde. These rights are part of his personal estate or status. Thus there is a process of 'patrilineal succession' whereby the sons of male members of the horde become in their turn members, thus acquiring rights and having a share in the estate.
    We are thus brought, after necessary and it is hoped not too tedious preliminary considerations, to the problem with which this paper is to deal, that of the nature and function of the unilineal transmission of rights. In the patrilineal succession of the Australian horde the most considerable part of the body of rights of a male person, his status, his personal estate as a sharer or co-parcener in the estate of a horde, are derived by him through his father to the exclusion of his mother and are transmitted in turn to his sons to the exclusion of his daughters. It is important, however, to recognise that in this instance, and, so far as we know, in all instances of patrilineal succession, some rights are also transmitted through the mother. Thus in the Kariera tribe a man has certain quite important rights over his mother's horde, over its individual members, and over its territory.
    In matrilineal succession the greater part of the body of rights of an individual, over things, over persons, or as a member of a corporation, are derived by him through his mother and cannot be transmitted to his children but devolve upon his sister's children.
    As an example of a very thorough system of matrilineal succession we may consider the taravad of the Nayar caste of Malabar. A taravad is an incorporated matrilineal lineage. It includes all living descendants in the female line of an original ancestress. It has therefore both male and female members, all of whom are
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children of female members of the group. It is constituted as a corporation (a joint-family in the terminology of Indian lawyers) by the possession of an estate which includes in the first instance possession of a house or houses and land, and in the second place rights over the persons of its members. The control of the estate is in the hands of a 'manager' who is normally the oldest male member of the group. In order that the group may retain complete and exclusive possession of the children born to its female members the Nayars have established a system which denies all legal rights to a male parent. A Nayar girl is 'married' while still very young to a suitable bridegroom by the Hindu religious ceremony of the tying of a jewel. (It is probable that in former times the 'bridegroom' ceremoniously deflowered the virgin 'bride'.) On the third day the newly-wedded pair are divorced by the Hindu ceremony of dividing a piece of cloth. Thereafter the divorced bridegroom has no rights over the person, the estate or the children of his bride. At a later period the girl takes a lover. In former times, amongst some of the Nayar, if not generally, a woman was permitted by custom to have two or more lovers at the same time. As the lover is not married to the woman he also has no legal claims over her person or estate or over any children that may be born or the union.
    The Nayar system is the most thoroughgoing example of perpetual matrilineal succession. The lineage group maintains its continuity and its unity by not admitting any outside person to any share in its estate. It retains possession of its own women and claims exclusive rights over the children born to them.
    The status* of an individual at a given moment of time may be defined as the totality of all his
* It is well always to remember that status, estate, state, and the French etat are all different forms of one and the same word, the late Latin estatus.

rights and duties as recognised in the social usages (laws and customs) of the society to which he belongs. The rights constituting a status, and similarly the duties, are of many different kinds, some relating to 'the world at large', to the society as a whole, others relating to some definite social group of which the individual is a member (e.g. a man's rights over and duties towards his own clan), or to some group of which he is not a member but to which he stands in a special relation (e.g. a man's relation to his mother's clan in a patrilineal clan system, or to his father's clan in a matrilineal system), and
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yet others concern his special relations as an individual with other individuals.
    Everywhere in human society the status of an individual is very largely determined by birth as the child of a particular father and particular mother. Behind the question of succession, therefore, lies the question of what elements of status, i.e. what rights and duties, are transmitted to the child by the father on the one hand and by the mother on the other. Every society has to establish its system of rules in this matter and there is an immense diversity of systems to be found in surviving and historic communities. The almost universal rule is that an individual derives some elements of his status from or through his father, and others from or through his mother.
    It has to be remembered that in all societies there is a general difference between the status of a man and that of a woman, and in some societies these differences are very marked and very important. Thus when a son 'succeeds' his father he may attain a status very similar to that of his father, but a daughter cannot do so to the same extent. The reverse holds true in the instance of a mother and her daughter on the one hand and her son on the other. Thus in African kingdoms where succession is matrilineal a king is succeeded by his younger brother and then by his sister's son. The heir therefore acquires, through his mother, important elements of the status of his mother's brother. The king's sister, who holds a very important position, is, of course, succeeded by her daughter.
    One solution of the problem of the determination of status would be to let the sons derive from the father and daughters from the mother. This principle is only known to be adopted in a few tribes, about which we know very little, in East Africa and in New Britain. As a working arrangement it has weighty objections which cannot be gone into here.
    It is possible to have a system in which a child, by birth, acquires the same rights, of the same kind and to an equal degree, over the persons to whom he is related through his father and those to whom he is related through his mother. An instance of this is that where a person has an equal expectation of testamentary or intestate succession to the estate of the brothers and sisters of his father and those of his mother. A further instance is provided by the customs relating to wergild amongst the Teutonic peoples.
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By birth a man acquired rights over a number of persons who constituted his sib.* This included all
* Professor Lowie and some American writers use the term 'sib' as equivalent to what is here, in accordance with European usage, called a 'clan'. It seems desirable to retain the word 'sib' for the bilateral group of kindred to which it was originally applied.

his relatives through his father and through his mother, counting either through males or through females, within a certain range. This range varied in different Teutonic communities and perhaps in the same community at different times. Amongst some of the Anglo-Saxons it extended as far as fifth cousins. If a man were killed all the members of his sib could claim a share in the indemnity (wergild) paid by the killer, proportionate to the degree of the relationship. Inversely, if a man killed another all members of his sib were under obligation to contribute to the blood-money he had to pay, each contributing in the same proportion as he would receive if the man himself had been killed. The members of a man's sib had specific rights in rem in relation to him and specific duties in personam towards him.
    The solution adopted by the great majority of human societies of the problem relating to the determination of status has been one by which a child derives certain rights and duties through the father and others of a different kind through the mother. Where the rights and duties derived through the father preponderate in social importance over those derived through the mother we have what it is usual to call a patrilineal system. Inversely a matrilineal system is one in which the rights and duties derived through the mother preponderate over those derived through the father.
    There are, however, some societies in which there is a fairly even balance between the elements of status derived through the father and those through the mother. An example is provided by the OvaHerero of south-west Africa. Through his mother a child derives membership in an eanda, a matrilineal clan; through his father he becomes a member of an oruzo, a patrilineal clan. There is thus a double system of clans crossing one another. As both kinds of clans are exogamous a man cannot belong to the eanda of his father or to the oruzo of his mother. Through his mother and as a member of her eanda he has certain rights over, and duties towards, that group and particularly his mother's
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brothers and his sister's children. Secular property is inherited only within the eanda so that a man inherits such property from his mother's brother and transmits it to his sister's son. On the other hand through his father and as a member of his oruzo he has rights and duties of other kinds in relation to that group. Certain sacred cattle may only be inherited within the oruzo and are therefore transmitted from father to son.
    There are to be found in Africa and in Oceania other instances of systems in which patrilineal and matrilineal succession are combined and more or less balanced against one another. In a considerable part of Africa this is rationalised by a conception that every human being is compounded of two principles, one, called the 'blood' in Ashanti, derived from the mother, the other, the 'spirit', derived from the father.
    Probably the most important factor in determining the nature of succession in the simpler societies is the need of defining rights in rem over persons. When a child is born there is the question, 'To whom does the child belong?' It may, of course, be regarded as belonging jointly to the two parents. Both have an interest in it, both have rights in personam and in rem in relation to it. But there are other persons who have rights, in personam and in rem over the father (his parents, and brothers and sisters) and others who similarly have rights over the mother. In any society in which kinship is of fundamental importance in the total social structure, as it is in the majority of non-European societies, it is essential for social stability and continuity that the rights of different individuals over a given individual should be defined in such a way as to avoid as far as possible conflicts of rights. We have seen how the ancient Teutonic system gives similar, and in some instances equal, rights in rem to the father's kin and to the mother's kin of a given individual so that if he is killed all members of his sib (i.e. his kindred on both sides) are entitled to compensation. Let us now consider examples of the solution of this problem in matrilineal and patrilineal systems.
    For a matrilineal system we may return to the Nayar as affording an extreme, and therefore crucial instance. In that system the taravad, or joint-family, maintains intact and absolute its rights in rem over all its members. Marriage normally gives the husband certain rights in rem over his wife aud over the children. The Nayars may be said either to have eliminated marriage or to
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have eliminated this aspect of marriage. It is true that the union of a Nayar woman and her sambandham lover is often a life-long union of great affection and that the lover has a great attachment to the children. But legally he has no rights over his 'wife', if we call her such, or over the children. In turn the group has no rights in rem over him for these remain with his own taravad. The taravad as a corporation retains undivided and undisputed possession of its own estate.
    As an instance of a definitely patrilineal solution of the problem of the distribution of rights in rem we may take the Zulu-Kaffir tribes of South Africa. In these tribes marriage requires the payment of an indemnity in the form of a number of cattle, called the Ikazi, the act of transfer of these being known as uku-lobola. An unmarried girl belongs to her father, or to her guardian (father's brother or brother) if her father be dead, and to her agnatic kindred. They have over her certain rights in personam and in rem. An offence committed against her, as rape, seduction, maiming or homicide, is an injury to her kin and they have the right to be indemnified. A father may bring before the chief an action for compensation for an offence committed against his daughter. By the act of marriage the father and the agnatic kindred surrender a great part of these rights over the daughter to her husband and to his agnatic kindred. The payment of cattle is an indemnification for this surrender of rights. For these people the great value of a woman is as the mother of children. (For this reason there is no more unhappy, unwanted person among them than a barren woman.) The act of lobola is therefore primarily a procedure whereby those paying the cattle acquire undivided and indisputable rights over all children born to the woman. This is readily demonstrated by an analysis that would be out of place here. The natives state the principle in two ways: 'Cattle beget children'; 'The children are where the cattle are not.' In case of divorce either the wife and her children return to her father and any cattle paid are returned, or if (as is usual) the husband retains the children he must abandon claim to the cattle he has paid or to some portion thereof. On the death of a wife who has borne children (a barren wife may be repudiated and the repayment of the cattle or the substitution of a sister may be claimed) if all the cattle have been paid, the children remain with the father and the mother's kin have no rights in rem over them. The system
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here outlined is a simple legal procedure for giving the father and his agnatic kindred indisputable and undivided rights in rem over his children.
    Thus the system of patrilineal or matrilineal succession centres largely around the system of marriage. In an extreme matrilineal society a man has no rights in rem over his children, though he does usually have some rights in personam. The rights remain with the mother and her relatives. The result is to emphasise and maintain a close bond between brother and sister at the expense of the bond between husband and wife. Consequently the rights of the husband over his wife are limited. In an extreme patrilineal society we have exactly the opposite. Rights in rem over the children are exclusively exercised by the husband and his relatives. The bond between husband and wife is strenghtened at the expense of the bond between brother and sister. The rights of the husband over his wife are considerable; she is in manu, under his potestas.8
    Extreme patrilineal systems are comparatively rare, and extreme matrilineal systems perhaps even rarer. Generally there is some modification by which, while the kindred on the one side have a preponderant right, some rights are recognised on the other side also. Thus in the Cherokee tribe of North American Indians, while a man belonged to his mother's clan, so that if he were killed they and they alone would demand satisfaction, yet he stood in a very special relation to his father and to his father's clan.
    Little has been said so far about the inheritance of property. This is because in the simpler societies the transmission of property is generally dependent upon the transmission of status. Thus amongst the Nayar the important property (land, houses, etc.) is the undivided or joint possession of a corporation constituted by a matrilineal lineage. Amongst the Zulu-Kaffir tribes the sons succeed to a share of the father's estate to the exclusion of daughters and their descendants. In general, though there are a few exceptions, it may be said that the transmission of property follows the same line as does the transmission of status.
    With regard to the institutions of patrilineal and matrilineal succession the question is frequently asked as to what is their origin. The term 'origin' is ambiguous. In one sense we may talk of the 'historical origin'. The historical origin of the Nayar system, or that of the Zulu-Kaffirs, or of any other system, is a series of
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unique events extending often over a long period of gradual growth. The determination of the origin in this sense is the task of a historian. For the simpler peoples these histories are unknown and are the subject only of pure speculation, to my mind largely unprofitable. But the term 'origin' may be used in another sense, and very frequently it is used ambiguously with a confusion of the two meanings.
   Any social system, to survive, must conform to certain conditions. If we can define adequately one of these universal conditions, i.e. one to which all human societies must conform, we have a sociological law. Thereupon if it can be shown that a particular institution in a particular society is the means by which that society conforms to the law, i.e. to the necessary condition, we may speak of this as the 'sociological origin' of the institution. Thus an institution may be said to have its general raison d'etre (sociological origin) and its particular raison d'etre (historical origin). The first is for the sociologist or social anthropologist to discover by the comparative method. The second is for the historian to discover by examination of records or for the ethnologist, in the absence of records, to speculate about.
    One such law, or necessary condition of continued existence, is that of a certain degree of functional consistency amongst the constituent parts of the social system. Functional consistency is not the same thing as logical consistency; the latter is one special form of the former. Functional inconsistency exists whenever two aspects of the social system produce a conflict which can only be resolved by some change in the system itself. It is always a question of the functioning, i.e. the working of the system as a whole. Consistency is a relative matter. No social system ever attains to a perfect consistency, and it is for this reason that every system is constantly undergoing change. Any insufficiency in this respect in a social system tends to induce change, sometimes, though by no means always, through the conscious recognition of the insufficiency by members of the society and the conscious seeking of a remedy. To this law of the necessity of a certain degree of functional consistency we may add a second, which is a special instance of the first. Any human social life requires the establishment of a social structure consisting of a network of relations between individuals and groups of individuals. These relations all involve certain rights and duties which need to be defined in such a way
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that conflicts of rights can be resolved without destroying the structure. It is this need that is met by the establishment of systems of justice and legal institutions.
    Every system of rights necessarily involves the existence of common, joint or divided rights over the same person or thing. The father and the mother of a child both have rights in personam over their child. In an orderly family it is necessary that there should be no unresolved or unresolvable conflict between these rights. The same thing is true throughout a society as a whole in all the various relations into which persons are brought. When two persons A and B have rights over something Z or rights in rem over some person Z, there are three ways of adjusting these rights so as to avoid unresolvable conflicts. One is the mode of rights in common; A and B have similar and equal rights over Z and these are such that the rights of A will not conflict with those of B. An instance is to be found in the native tribes of South Africa in which, as the native saying is, 'grass and water are common'. Any member of a tribe has the right to graze his cattle or water them, or take water for his own use, in any part of the territory over which the tribe (represented by its chief) exercises dominion. A second is the mode of joint rights in which A and B (or any number of persons) exercise jointly certain rights over Z. The establishment of such joint rights immediately establishes what is here called a corporation. An infringement of the rights normally calls for a joint action on the part of the corporation, which may, of course, be carried out by its official representatives. A South African tribe has joint possession of its territory, the possession (the estate) being vested in the chief. An infringement of these rights may be adjusted by the chief or may lead to the action of war, in which, under the chief, the whole tribe seeks to maintain its rights. The third mode is that of rights in division. Here A has certain definite rights over Z and B has certain other definite rights; the respective rights may be defined either by custom or by a specific contract, or agreement. An example is the relation of owner and tenant of a leased land or building.
    So far as rights over persons go the exercise of rights in common is necessarily very limited. In an unfamiliar region one may ask direction from any person one meets and expect to receive whatever information that person can give. In English law the king's officers can demand from any passer-by 'in the king's name'
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assistance in the arrest of a malefactor.* Rights over persons in personam are usually exercised 
* The latter instance, however, might be interpreted as the exercise of a joint right, since the king is the representative of the nation which, as a corporation, has joint rights over the persons of its citizens.

either jointly or in division.
    Rights over persons in rem can obviously never be exercised in common. We have seen, from the example of the Teutonic customs relating to wergild, that they can be held in division. But such a thing is rare and for the reason that it requires a complicated definition of the respective shares of various kindred in their interest in their kinsmen. One has only to glance at some of the early laws of Norway and Sweden relating to the division of the wergild between agnatic and cognatic kin of different degrees to realise with what difficulties such a system is confronted in its working.
    It results from this that rights in rem over a person must as a general rule either be exclusively personal, i.e. confined to a single individual (a condition to which the rights of an owner over a slave may approximate in some instances) or must be joint. The rights of a Roman father over his children were nearly exclusive but even these, at certain periods of history certainly, were subject to the rights, exercised jointly, of the gens or of the state; even the potestas of a pater familiar was not absolute. Thus we may say that any society that recognises rights in rem over persons (and all known societies do so to some extent) will normally, and with only the rarest exceptions, make some provision for the joint exercise of such rights. This implies the existence of corporations of some kind, since a corporation is here defined as a collection of persons who jointly exercise some right or rights.
    A corporation can only form itself on the basis of a common interest. In the simplest societies the easiest, perhaps almost the only, ways in which common interests can be created are on the basis of locality, i.e. residence in the same local community or neighbourhood, or kinship. Corporations therefore tend to be established either on the one basis or the other or on both combined (the Kariera horde is an example of the latter) or else a double system of local groups and kinship groups is formed.
    We must here appeal to another sociological law, the necessity not merely for stability, definiteness and consistency in the social structure, but also for continuity. To provide continuity of social
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structure is essentially a function of corporations. Thus a modern nation has its continuity as a corporation exercising joint rights over its territory and over the persons of its citizens.
    We can imagine as a possibility an incorporated local community which was completely endogamous and which would therefore not have to face the issue of choosing between matrilineal and patrilineal succession, since any child born in the community would have both its parents there. But the moment there are intermarriages between two corporate local groups the question of lineal succession does arise. In such a situation it is possible that no customary rule may be established, each instance being adjusted by agreement of the persons most nearly concerned. It seems that this was the case of the hordes or local groups of the Andaman Islanders. The result is to produce a loose and indefinite structure. If any definite rule does arise it must usually take the form of one either of matrilineal or of patrilineal succession.
    If any society establishes a system of corporations on the basis of kinship --clans, joint-families, incorporated lineages-- it must necessarily adopt a system of unilineal reckoning of succession. It would, of course, be theoretically possible to establish some sort of rule whereby, when the parents belong to different groups, in certain definite circumstances the children belong to the father's group and in others to the mother's. This would produce complicated conditions, and in general any complicated definition of rights is likely to be functionally inefficient as compared with a simpler one.
    Thus the existence of unilineal (patrilineal or matrilineal) succession in the great majority of human societies can be traced to its sociological 'cause' or 'origin' in certain fundamental social necessities. Chief amongst them, I have suggested, is the need of defining, with sufficient precision to avoid unresolvable conflicts, the rights in rem over persons. The need of precise definition of rights in personam and of rights over things would seem to be secondary but still important factors.
    There are many facts which might be adduced to support this hypothesis. I will mention only one kind. In societies organised on the basis of clans one of the most important activities of the clan is to exact vengeance or indemnification when a clansman is killed. The list of known instances of this would fill many pages. The clan as a corporation has rights in rem over all its clansmen.
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If one is killed the clan is injured and it has the right, and its members are under an obligation, to  proceed to some action towards receiving satisfaction, either through vengeance or by receiving an indemnity.
    Thus the cause of the decay of the clan (the genos or gens) in ancient Greece and Rome was the transfer of its rights in rem (and necessarily therefore of some of its rights in personam) to the city or state, the nature of these rights being inevitably considerably modified in the process of transference. But the decay of the gens in Rome still left the patriarchal family as a corporation (as Maine long ago pointed out) the basis of which, however, was not merely the exercise of rights in rem by the pater familias over his children, but also the exercise of joint rights over property and the maintenance of a religious cult of ancestor-worship.
    The sociological laws, i.e. the necessary conditions of existence of a society, that have here been suggested as underlying the customs of unilineal (patrilineal or matrilineal) succession are:
1. The need for a formulation of rights over persons and things sufficiently precise in their general recognition as to avoid as far as possible unresolved conflicts.
2. The need for continuity of the social structure as a system of relations between persons, such relations being definable in terms of rights and duties.
    By American ethnologists who object to the method of explanation adopted in the preceding argument it is said that any sociological laws that can be formulated must necessarily be truisms. The truisms. But even so they would seem to need to be brought to the attention of at least some ethnologists. A recent writer on the subject of matrilineal and patrilineal succession*

* Ronald L. Olson, 'Clan and Moiety in North America', University of California Publications, 33: 409 & 411.

makes the following statements 'Unilateral institutions are in themselves anomalous and artificial. Matrilineal ones are doubly so.' 'Unilateral institutions, wherever found, represent deviations from the expectable, abnormalities in the social structure.' 'Unilateral reckoning contradicts the duality of parenthood and results in an unnatural stressing of one
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side of the family to the exclusion of the other.' On the basis of these assertions he seems to conclude that unilineal determination of status must have had a single origin in some one aberrant people and to have spread from them, by a process of 'diffusion', to vast numbers of peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Oceania and America. (One wonders, of course, why so many societies of so many different types should have accepted and retained such 'anomalous', 'abnormal' and 'unnatural' institutions.)
    I hope that the argument of this paper has shown, on the contrary, that unilineal institutions in some form, are almost, if not entirely, a necessity in any ordered social system. What is therefore unusual or rare (we need not say abnormal or anomalous and still less unnatural) is the discovery of a people such as the Teutonic peoples of Europe (apparently alone amongst Indo-European speaking peoples) maintaining for some period, until the coming of feudalism and Roman law, a system in which there is considerable, if not quite complete, avoidance of the unilineal principle, in which a person derives similar and equal rights through the father and through the mother.*
* There are systems of bilateral kinship with succession through both males and females in some parts of Indonesia, e.g. in the Ifugao of the Phillippine Islands. The discussion of these would be complex and require space that is not available.
    It might well be expected that such a paper as this would deal with the question of what general factors determine the selection by some people of the matrilineal and by others of the patrilineal pnnciple in determining status or succession. My opinion is that our knowledge and understanding are not sufficient to permit us to deal with this problem in any satisfactory manner.
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