Jump to content

Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/33

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
SOCIAL ORGANISATION
21

Similarly, a, who before the marriage of d was her father's sister, now becomes also her husband's mother, and B, her father's sister's husband, comes to stand in the relation of husband's father; if C should have any brothers and sisters, these cousins now become her brothers- and sisters-in-law.

The combinations of relationship which follow from the marriage of a man with the daughter of his mother's brother thus differ for a man and a woman, but if, as is usual, a man may marry the daughter either of his mother's brother or of his father's sister, these combinations of relationship will hold good for both men and women.

Another and more remote consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, if this become an established institution, is that the relationships of mother's brother and father's sister's husband will come to be combined in one and the same person, and that there will be a similar combination of the relationships of father's sister and mother's brother's wife. If the cross-cousin marriage be the habitual custom, B and b in Diagram 1 will be brother and sister; in consequence A will be at once the mother's brother and the father's sister's husband of C, while b will be both his father's sister and his mother's brother's wife. Since, however, the mother's brother is also the father-in-law, and the father's sister the mother-in-law, three different relationships will be combined in each case. Through the cross-cousin marriage the relationships