Review

Reviewed Work(s): Die Achuara-Jivaro: Wirtschaftliche und soziale Organisationsformen

am peruarischen Amazonas. by Richard Gippelhauser and Elke Mader
Review by: Isabelle Daillant
Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 671-672
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803965
Accessed: 18-02-2018 10:21 UTC

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 672 BOOK REVIEWS

order first to determine the frequency of co- ing anthropologists. The abundant use of Eng-
operative work between given actors as well as lish conceptual terms, and indeed the
their kinship relationships, within and between bibliography, also clearly reflect this situation.
both households and settlements, and second to This contribution can therefore be regarded as a
assess the threshold beyond which autonomy valuable, if elementary, introduction in German
becomes possible for a local production-group. to this aspect of South American ethnology.
It appears that, with the exception of the ISABELLE DAILLANT
mother-daughter dyad, strongly co-operating University of Paris X - Nanterre
kin are always male affines.
The second part, describing the Achuar's so-
cial organization, is divided into four chapters. GOH, TAxo. Sumba bibliography; with a foreword
Beginning with the kinship system, Gippel- by James J. Fox. x, 96 pp., map, bibliogr.
hauser demonstrates at length that, given the Canberra: Australian National University,
terminology and marriage rules, we are ob- 1991. $A15 (surface mail), $A20 (air mail)
viously dealing with a Dravidian system and the
This bibliography of writings on the eastern In-
society is cognatic with individuals having mini- donesian island of Sumba is a posthumous
mal and maximal kindreds. Concerning
publication. It appears not quite three years after
residence, a widely respected rule provides that
the death of its author, a Japanese student of the
the son-in-law should live with his father-in-
Australian National University, while engaged
law, which (in accordance with the Achuar's in doctoral fieldwork on the island. Goh died of
point of view) the author suggests calling tropical malaria in October 1988. He compiled
'socerolocality'. After the father-in-law's death the bibliography in Canberra in 1987.
neolocality prevails, so that the Achuar would
A foreword by Goh's supervisor at the ANU,
be 'socero-neolocal'. The last two very short James J. Fox, precedes the bibliography, which
chapters deal with the composition and organi- comprises nearly 800 published and unpublished
zation of local groups and of wider titles, including books, theses, articles, reviews
socio-political groupings (which normally re- and other short pieces. A three-page supple-
main latent but crystallize during conflicts). ment, also provided by Fox and consisting
Within local groups, adult women are consan- mostly of titles published after 1988, appears at
guines and adult men affines, which tallies with the end. The work is very comprehensive
the first chapter's concluding remark about co- (though, inevitably, not absolutely complete)
operation. and certainly surpasses anything hitherto avail-
Apart from these hints, no explicit reference is able. Goh included annotations with many titles.
made here to the emphasis put on female con- These are useful, especially where works in for-
sanguinity and male affinity, which, according eign languages such as Dutch, Indonesian or
to other authors, is a very characteristic feature Japanese are concemed. Some notes, however,
of Achuar general ideology, and no attempt is seem to focus on a single aspect of a publication,
made to go beyond mere economic and resi- presumably the one that most interested the bib-
dential description. Terminology also reflects liographer. (Thus, I may not be the only one
this general tendency, but Gippelhauser's only surprised by the description of my book, Rindi
comment on this is that in the first ascending [The Hague, 1981], simply as 'an analysis of dual
generation the bifurcate-merging principle is classification in Sumbanese symbolism' [p. 26].)
more clearly marked among males than among Oddly, only a minority of the published reviews
females. This neglect of the ideology underlyingof recent book-length works on Sumba are
the described facts is quite characteristic of the listed.
whole book. Particularly since Fox describes the author as a
Nothing in the general conclusions of this young scholar of exceptional promise, it is a pity
study is really new, and it is not for any theoreti-
that his foreword provides few details of Goh's
cal contribution that it will find an audience. proposed research or of the ethnography he
Yet it may be useful in two ways: scholars inter- completed dunng his eight months on Sumba.
ested in comparative surveys will find good Janet Hoskins, who met Goh a few months
quantified empincal data, clearly presented in a before his death, is quoted to the effect that he
series of tables and diagrams readily under- had 'embarked on the kind of study that it has
standable without much German. On the other always seemed someone should have done in
hand, students (able to read it) will find a very East Sumba' (p. viii). But unfortunately no clue
accessible, step-by-step explanation of the is given as to what sort of study that might be.
Dravidian system. It may appear surprising that The foreword also includes one or two curious
Gippelhauser should spend some ten pages ex- errors. For example, the Sumbanese district of
plaining rather scholastically that the Rindi is twice given as 'Rende'. (The former is
terminology is not of an Iroquois but of a not only my transcription, but is the one given
Dravidian type. It should be recalled, however, in published dictionaries by Kapita [1982]
that he deals here with a field which so far has and Onvlee [1984].) Also, the map that fol-
been left largely unexplored by German-speak- lows the foreword (p. xii) does not in fact show

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