Hippler, Arthur E.

English

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62 REVIEWS ESKIMO KINSMEN: CHANGING FA“ ILY RELATIONSHIP IN NORTHWEST ALASKA. BY ERNEST S. BURCH JR. St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1975. 9% x 6% inches. Hard cover, $12.95. This very  useful  work  by an unusually  com- petent anthropologist is an attempt to inte- grate the existing literature on Eskimo kinship and interpersonal relations with  his own field work on Eskimo kinship and its meaning. In particular, Bwch traces the sequences of change in kinship and in social  relationships over a period of more than 100 years. His research was a combination of dependence upon the memories and goodwill of infor- mants, detailed cross-checking of data pro- vided for consistency, and reliance on published data itself. It apptars to have been an acceptable approach. Describing the past  subsistence  cycle,  Burch notes that Eskimos  used kin groups as hunting groups, so that kinship was a factor of social organisation. Moreover, Eskimo suspicious- ness of strangers and of intergroup violence made kin ties absolutely necessary for the protection of the individual away from, or even at, home. Cruelty to those without kin support - orphans, for example - was  uni- versal. One basic thrust of the book is that the disease and alcoholism  which  followed  upon the Eskimo’s contacts with  white  people resulted in great population destruction and massive migration between 1850 and 1885, and these so disrupted kin ties as to cause increasing use of non-kin-based forms of activity, such as employment  with  white people. Inmoredetai1,Burch covers the sedentariza- tion of Eskimos from 1890 to the commence- ment of the Second World War. Establish- ment of schools acted as  a  centralizing factor, while the need to hunt and trap tended to decentralize  Eskimo  life. The drop in fur prices during the great depression, however, caused the almost  complete concentration of Eskimos into villages  by 1940. This  ended the kin-based settling of disputes  (by  feud or war). Instead, school, church and village activity took over  kin-based educational religious and recreational functions. By this time  Eskimos had come into contact with Eskimos and others in urban meas and in work relation- ships, a fact which further attenuated the value of the kin ties. Burch notes not only the real but also the fictive  elements of Eskimo kinship in which, for example, one was related to anyone one had ever had sexual relations with, as well BS to their children. In fact, Eskimo  kinship was strengthened  by  lineal, marital and  fictive  aug- mentation and permanence, limited only by demography and lack of knowledge  of persons supposedly related, or individual desires to deactivate  relationships. Although  Burch takes issue  with the general anthropological assumption of “formlessness’’ in Eskimo  kinship  and  social  organization,  he includes so many additional conjunctions in Eskimo “real life”  behaviour  (regional  varia- tions in classification and terminology, alter- native classifications,  synonyms, naming, substitution, inconsistencies, etc.) as to sup- port the argument that Eskimo kinship was really  a  personally  flexible tool with  very  few formally limiting elements. Burch  identifies 33 roles and 27 reciprocal relationships implicit in Eskimo kinship and examines them primarily from the point of view  of their “solidarity  aspect”. For example, he notes emotional distance in the marital relationship, early avoidance patterns (men used to live in the mens’  house), and brittle- ness. He describes marriage primarily as an economic relationship and also suggests ab- original  rigidity in roles (but  notes  considera- ble variations in individual  cases). Marriages were  expected to be unstable,  though  in  recent times their bonds  have  been  firmer.  Infidelity, always the chief cause of strain, has become more  narrowly  defined  recently;  civil  divorce is now less  common and easy than the sever- ance of ties under the aboriginal system. Burch  describes  husband- and wife-sharing, but  denies their common  occurrence. He be- lieves the prime motivation to be one of increasing kin ties, though by his own presented data, fear of  jealousy  (in a recipro- cal arrangement) and sexual  interest seem the more dominant, and his data could be inter- preted to show that tolerance of such forms by mates was  a  defensive  manoeuvre to over- come potential violence as a result of  infidel- ity, or an excuse for sexual attraction to non-mates. In discussing cross-generation relations he notes that, although infanticide is practised, children in the aboriginal system were well cared for.  Adoption was,  however, so common that children could  be thought of as kinship currency. Education was  putatively  by  exam- ple, but this method  became  less  possible  with the increase in population in the twentieth century due to better health care.  Obedience was demanded from children and physical punishment was often harsh. Relationships were,  however,  normally  loving,  only  be- coming formal with increasing age. Favour- itism and non-favouritism of children  reflected the treatment parents received from grand- parents (for whom the grandchild  was  named). REVIEWS 63 Burch finds this behaviour inexplicable, al- though it can be  explained in psychoanalytical terms. Burch also attempts to explain that geronti- cide was rare and only  practised  “when necessary”; again, however, an alternative explanation based upon inconsistences in child care is possible, a d  more likely.  Burch also discusses  nepotic  relationships  (varied);  in-law relationships  (strained);  siblings (normal rivalry and love),  co-siblings  (potential  mates) and affinal (varied)  relationships. More important to Burch are the strategy and patterns of.afFiliation. He feels that by tradition Eskimos needed kin to survive, to gain wealth and power and, more recently, simply for W a t i v e  needs, for “happiness”. Since kin affiliation was crucial, some aboriginal  villages  were almost entirely multi- generational “single” .families. He described the household  composition of several turn-of- the-century  villages in detail. These cases support Burch’s argument for  the continuing importance of family ties in northwestern Alaska. He notes that to focus on the nuclear family alone would obscure the range and flexibility of kin  ties used by Eskimos. Burch’s work, overall, is careful, detailed and useful. Information is  presented in nor- mative and behavioural terms. Care and objectivity are the most valuable aspects of this  useful  book.  They impart, unfortunately, a somewhat  lifeless  flavour to excellent  ma- terial. This may be because Burch‘s assump- tions about motivation include no element of dynamic psychological thinking, and relafe to commonsense terms such as “survival”, “power”,  “wealth” and “affiliation”.  Why this is an essential.part of Eskimo  life, and how it evolved, is not explained, and a comparison with other cultures is not made. Because of this, details regarding motivation and &kt, which are only  sporadically  distributed throughout this work, have a  potentially  dif- ferent meaning to the psychologically  sophis- ticated reader. All this would be irrelevant except that the title “relationships” impliea some  psYchological aspects to this reviewer. In fairness, this was not Burch’s aim.  None- theless, the reader might keep in mind that it is the structure and pattern of family relation- ships, rather than any significant  affective information,  which is meant by  Burch’s title, That structure and pattern are well  defined. Arthur E. Hippler PERMAFROST TERMINOLOGY. m- PARED BY R. I. E. BROWN AND W. 0. KUPSCH. Ottawa: National Research Council Of Can- ada, 1974. (Technical Memorandum no. 11 1). 5% x 8% inches, 62 pages, illustrated. Soft cover, $3.00. This glossary of terms is designed to aid the increasing  number of people in Canada who are intcmted in ‘weas affected  by permafrost. It is a very  useful  compilation of the terms in current use, and as such fulfils a real need. The major part constitutea a listing of 146 terms and their definitions, with additional clarifying  comments and references where appropriate. Nearly 100 alternative terms and cro& references are also given. The glossary was compiled  under the spon- sorship of the Permafrost Subcommittee of the Associate  Committee on Geotachnical Research of the National Research  Council of Canada. At two stages in its compilation, opinions were sought from many people in- volved in permafrost research in Canada, and as far as possible h qon6enms was  obtained. In some cases, however, the authors report “conflicting opinions”, and in an attempt to resolve them have  xpanded the existing detinitions in some cases,  even to the point of introducing new qualifications that are proba- bly not universally  applicable. For example, solifluction  is  defined as “the process o f  slow, gravitational, downslope movement of satu- rated, nonfrozen earth material behaving apparently as a viscous mass over a surface of frozen material.” While there is a strong trend towards the use of “solifiuction” only with regard to cold  climates (with the impli- cation of freezing ur thawing procases nor- mally  involved), a restriction to saturated flow “over a surface of frozen material” is probably further than some researchers will wish to go. The authors also discuss the problem of the dual use of the word  “frozen”. On the one hand, “freezing” is thought of as a process which OCCIKS when water  changes from liquid to solid, and thus it might be thought essential that “frozen  ground” contain ice. On the other hand, the term “frozen” can be taken as applying to all makrials at a temperature of below O’C, whether the water present is in liquid or solid state (for it is  necessary to note that underwater sediments  will not freeze at precisely 0°C). The authors have  con- formed to normal modem practice in using “frozen” in the last-mentioned  sense in rela- tion to permafrost.  Following this policy, specimen  sections in the glossary  read: ‘‘permafrost: the thermal condition in soil or rock having temperatures below 0°C 

Eskimo Kinsmen: Changing Family Relationship in Northwest Alaska, by Ernest S. Burch, Jr.

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Eskimo Kinsmen: Changing Family Relationship in Northwest Alaska, by Ernest S. Burch, Jr.

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