Different kinship and authority patterns generate different structures of emotional attachment

Evidence

Anthropologists took an early interest in Freudian concepts (Devereux, 1980). Although most remained sceptical of Freud’s own anthropological speculations, especially his theory of the parricidal “primal horde,” many found his formulation of the Oedipus complex of great pertinence to their ethnographic work. Malinowski, in his field study of Trobriand Islanders, had argued the case for a matrilineal variant in which the maternal uncle rather than the father plays the key role in the Oedipal triangle. In this culture the young man must become a mother’s brother to his sister’s children when he grows up and hence must renounce identification with his father at an early stage of the game. In other words different patterns of authority, power, and kinship generate different structures of emotional attachment and conflict (Malinowski, 1954). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1361

Anthropologists took an early interest in Freudian concepts (Devereux, 1980). Although most remained sceptical of Freud’s own anthropological speculations, especially his theory of the parricidal “primal horde,” many found his formulation of the Oedipus complex of great pertinence to their ethnographic work. … Malinowski, in his field study of Trobriand Islanders, had argued the case for a matrilineal variant in which the maternal uncle rather than the father plays the key role in the Oedipal triangle. In this culture the young man must become a mother’s brother to his sister’s children when he grows up and hence must renounce identification with his father at an early stage of the game. … In other words different patterns of authority, power, and kinship generate different structures of emotional attachment and conflict (Malinowski, 1954). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1361

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Oedipus complex debate and cross-cultural kinship theory more broadly, a strand of anthropology adjacent to the sacrifice and ritual material in the reader’s library. — connects to: Control society operates through familial emotional bondage — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 686; Prenatal sonograms mediate parental attachment to a fetus as image — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 259; Children’s mission columns encoded different kinship frames for white and black authors — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 555
• DEFINE: Establishes the culturally variable Oedipal variant, a useful precision point when the vault discusses psychoanalytic or universalist claims about human nature.
• QUESTION: Does this Malinowski finding get invoked in later CRT-pyschoanalytic debates about the structure of racialized families and authority?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1361