article

The Social use of kinship terms among Brazilian Indians

American anthropologist, n.s.45Published In 1943 • Pages: 398-409

By: Lévi-Strauss, Claude.

AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This is a comparative study of one aspect of kin term usage among the Nambicuara and the Tupi of the sixteenth century, devoted mainly to what Levi-Strauss terms the 'compérage' - a special 'brother-in-law' relationship between individuals not united previously by any kinship tie in order to insure intermarriage and by this means to amalgamate familial or social groups, previously heterogeneous, into a new homogeneous unit. He gives an instance where this relationship was brought into effect for uniting two distinct groups of the Nambicuara. He believes this institution once had a much wider distribution on the South American continent. At the time of publication, Lévi-Strauss was with the New School for Social Research in New York.
SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
Kinship terminology
Kin relationships
Standard of living
Siblings-in-law
Polygamy
Homosexuality
Social relationships and groups
Disasters
Community structure
Linguistic identification
Cultural participation
Regulation of marriage
Conception
Social placement
cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
Nambicuara
HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
2010
RegionThe area the document pertains to
South America
Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
Amazon and Orinoco
Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
article
Evaluation
Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
Ethnologist
Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
5: Excellent Primary Data
AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
Timothy J. O'Leary ; 1958
Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
1938-1939
Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
1938-1939
Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
Mato Grosso state, Brazil
NotesAdditional notes
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Includes bibliographical references
LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
17015424
LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
Nambicuara Indians