Comprensión de la empatía desde el ámbito de la Psicología de la

In 1957 a highly charged debate about ‘kinship’ began when Ernest Gellner, a philosopher and social anthropologist, who obtained his PhD in anthropology at LSE and was very much influenced by Malinowski (Gellner, 1998, p. viii), published a paper in the Philosophy of Science journal, applying the notion of an ‘ideal language’ to kinship structure (Gellner, 1957). For a language to be ‘ideal’, it would have to be “unambiguous [and] semantically invariant” (Buchler & Selby, 1968, p. 33) and Gellner maintained that his exercise of applying an ideal language to a limited field such as that of ‘kinship structure’ would be of “philosophic interest” and “might throw more light on why an ‘ideal language in general’ cannot be obtained” (Gellner, 1957, p. 242).

Gellner (1957) chose to apply ‘ideal language’ to ‘kinship’ for his philosophical exercise, as he perceived kinship structure to be “an aspect of society which is

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more tangible and stateable with accuracy than most” (1957, p. 235). He perceived kinship structure to comprise both physical and social relationships. This generated a response by Needham (1960) to show that “Gellner [was] misleading in his representation to philosophers of what social anthropologists actually do in the study of descent systems and of what the characteristics of such systems are” (Needham, 1960, p. 96). Needham’s main point was that Gellner was wrong to assert that “kinship roles are functions of the ‘biological kinship position’ of an individual” (1960, p. 97). Indeed, Needham argued that “biology is one matter and descent is quite another, of a different order. They will usually be concordant to some degree, but the defining character of descent systems is social” (1960, p. 97).

Gellner (1960), in return, repudiated Needham by taking one of Needham’s (1960) examples of leviratic marriage,24 _{Gellner (1960) explained:}

The anthropologist’s kinship term ‘leviratic’ is only applicable when certain real kinship relationships obtain. The relationship, and its offspring, can only be identified by the anthropologist as ‘leviratic’ because the anthropologist knows that the fiction by which offsprings [sic] are raised ‘in the dead man’s name’ is indeed a fiction (Gellner, 1960, p. 188).

This in turn was countered by Barnes (1961) who distinguished between “the genitor, the culturally-defined physical father” (p. 298) and ‘the genetic father’ in addition to ‘the pater’ which is usually defined as the social father. He explains that anthropologists are mainly interested in the genitor and the pater rather than the genetic father.

Barnes, however, does agree with Gellner’s two stages of comprehension. “First[ly], that physical and social kinship are not identical [and] second[ly], that they are essentially connected” (1961, p. 298). Barnes then adds “a third stage: that the significant connexion [sic] does not involve genetic kinship but

24 _{Leviratic marriages are those where a man marries his brother’s widow and continues to}

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exists between two different classes of social personality, between social and physical kinship as culturally perceived” (1961, p. 298).

Gellner’s (1963) article was a lengthy response and will not be fully covered here but I noted with interest that in ruminating over Barnes’ argument, Gellner referred back to Malinowski’s functionalism based on basic human needs. Although he acknowledged that this perspective had since been abandoned, Gellner identified what he called a “kernel of truth” underlying Malinowski’s approach which he describes in the quotation below:

The categorisations “kinship”, “economy”, “politics” etc., are naturally imposed by observers, who have to proceed from certain easily identifiable features of any societies – the reproduction and allocation of children, power and control, the procuring and distribution of necessities … It is I suppose conceivable that anthropologists may one day replace existing categories such as politics, economy and kinship by others with other boundaries, just as historians may revise periodications of history…If a reform did take place, it is conceivable that there would be no single category, such as “kinship” is now, which was only identifiable and definable through its overlap with genetic kinship (Gellner, 1963, p. 248).

Gellner’s reasoning here is pivotal. Echoing Malinowski’s earlier reservations, Gellner postulates that categories such as ‘kinship’ are analytical tools imposed by researchers.25 _{This proposition later became central to Schneider’s} denunciation of ‘kinship’.

Barnes (1964) reiterated his original point “that the genetic father in leviratic marriage and in similar contexts is unknown and irrelevant [emphasis added]” (1964, p. 295) and continued to endorse Needham’s statement that “biology is one matter and descent is quite another, of a different order” (Needham, 1960, p.97). Barnes explained:

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It is precisely because biological or physical connexions [sic] are of a different order that they have to be examined specifically whenever they become socially significant [emphasis added]. But genetic connexions [sic], particularly those of genetic fatherhood, are often unknown (Barnes, 1964, p. 295).

John Beattie who studied social anthropology under Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes at Oxford after having previously studied philosophy (MacFarlane, 1983) also responded to Gellner in the same month as Barnes – July 1964. Beattie (1964) agreed with Needham that Gellner had misrepresented what social anthropologists actually do. Presaging the linguistic turn in anthropology26_{, Beattie’s (1964) counterargument portrays ‘kinship’ in terms of} indigenous representations about their social relationships through language.

Kinship terms are not the names of genealogical connexions [sic], even though they may be associated with such connexions [sic]; they are the names of categories, sometimes groups, of people, socially defined. And the anthropologist’s task is essentially to understand other people’s social categories, not uncritically to impose his [sic] own (Beattie, 1964, p. 101).

Although writing at the same time as Barnes in July 1964,27 _{Beattie (1964) echoes} Barnes in emphasising that in terms of physical facts being of concern to anthropologists, “it is not a question of epistemological status … but of relevance

[emphasis added]” (Beattie, 1964, p. 102). In terms of the categorisation issue, Beattie seems to de-reify‘kinship’:

To say that a relationship is a political one or an economic one at once gives us some idea of what kind of relationship it is (e.g. that it is concerned with maintenance of territorial order, or a with the production and distribution of resources). To say, on the other hand, that a social relationship is a kinship one is to tell us nothing at all of

26_{The linguistic turn is associated with Geertz’s work in the 1970s.}

27 _{As the papers were both published in July 1964 in different journals, it is unlikely that Beattie}

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its content. The whole point about kinship relations for the social anthropologist is that they must be something else, for example political, jural, economic or ritual. Kinship is the idiom in which certain kinds of political, jural, economic, etc., relations are talked and thought about in certain societies (Beattie, 1964, p. 102).

Beattie (1964) concluded by explaining that certain roles are “subsumed under ‘kinship’, not at all because of their content, which has to be defined in social terms, but because this is the idiom in which they are thought of and talked about in the society being studied” (1964, p. 102).

A few months later, American anthropologist, David Schneider responded to the whole debate and particularly to Beattie’s article. Schneider (1964) sums up the argument between Gellner and Beattie:

The simple fact of the matter seems to be that where Gellner says that social kinship is and should be defined in part in terms of physical kinship, Beattie comes very close to saying that there is no such thing as kinship at all (Schneider, 1964, p. 180).

Schneider (1964 p. 181) argues that Beattie “sees kinship as empty of content” because he has dismissed the possibility of biological definitions. Schneider speculates that perhaps Beattie has not yet “discovered the true content of kinship … He may have only looked for it in those so-called ‘primitive societies’ in which it is hardly possible to see the kinship for the economics or politics which obscure it” (p.181). Schneider (1964) goes on to suggest ‘kinship’ would be more easily distinguished in a country such as America “where kinship is laid bare to analytical inspection by virtue of the fact that it has been refracted from the economic and political … functions with which it is so closely associated elsewhere” (1964, p. 181).

Indeed, Schneider proceeded to culturally analyse American kinship. His quest was to explore “the nature of kinship” as well as studying “kinship in as close to its ‘pure form’ as possible” in other words in purely cultural terms (Schneider, 1968, pp. v-vi). However, he later decided that his book’s title,

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American Kinship: A Cultural Account, was a ‘misnomer’ because “in the pure culture level there is no such thing as ‘kinship’”(Schneider, 1972, p. 50) . Furthermore, Schneider (1972), citing Gellner’s (1957, 1960) argument about ‘kinship’ being based on “the true facts of biology as they concern human reproduction” (1972, p. 36), argues that ‘kinship’ as used by anthropologists to describe relationships is “an analytic category … [that] does not correspond to any cultural category known to man” (1972, p. 50).

Needham, Schneider’s ‘arch antagonist’ (Feinberg, 2001, p. 25) reached a similar conclusion a year or so earlier than Schneider. Needham (1971a, 1971b) judged ‘kinship’ to be “a thoroughly misleading term and a false criterion in the comparison of social facts” (1971a, p. cviii) before pronouncing that “there is no such thing as kinship” (1971b, p. 5). Thus, it would seem the two adversaries were both strongly influenced in similar ways by the Gellner debate.