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C.J. CALHOUN
University of North Carolina
Forte's account of ancestor worship and kinship among the Tallensihas recently been subjected to a variety of criticisms. Most of thesehave stemmed at least in part from misunderstandings of Fortes. Morefundamentally, many have tended to stress cultural categories andterminology to the exclusion of sociological analysis. They havereduced the authority of ancestors to a static set of norms or a seeminglyrandom collection of ritual observances. Some have even suggestedthat the distinctions between living and dead, agnatic and non-agnaticancestors, are matters of indifference. The present article challengesthese interpretations with a reconsideration of Forte's materialin which the authority of ancestors is treated sociologically andseen to be the key to the working of the Tale kinship system.
Introduction
In tradition Tale social thought, all authority is vested in ancestors,fathers of at least two generations removed, dead, and significantin being points of genealogical unification and differentiation. Though living persons do have authority in some matters, it is neverabsolute. It is either the authority of parents, which is part ofthe same pattern of relationship at that of ancestors, and alwayslimited by the authority of ancestors, or it is authority given byassumed devolution from ancestors. The authority of living personsis partial and subject to challenge; that of ancestors is pervasiveand absolute. Ancestral authority is the key to the working of theTale kinship system and the reproductive capacity of the society. Forte's analysis, though complex and sometimes with centralpoints left implicit, is sound. Forte's critics have consistently,sometimes seemingly wilfully, misunderstood him and have offered markedlyinadequate alternative treatments. In particular, they have abandonedsociological analysis for a variety of wholly culturological approaches. In this article I draw on Fortes and attempt sociologically to explainthe authority of ancestors.
The concept of authority
Authority, in the present usage, refers to the recognised a prioriright to determine the nature and outcome of social situations. Itis right which exists distinct from any might, neither contingentnor subject to challenge.
is right derived from creation, which thus takes precedence over thereasonings and machinations of things created, of living men. Inshort, the existence of he living is entirely contingent on the pastactions of the ancestors, and thus by extension, the lives of theliving are subject to the present will of the ancestors. But theauthority of ancestors among the Tallensi is genealogically specific,just as the relations of living men are genealogically specified. The logic of ancestral authority is a neat and accurate projectionof the jural capacities of the living as organised over varying socialidentities, individual or collective. It is no accident, thus, thatthe ancestors are dead. Because of their decease they are unableto take any direct action; their response is 'after the fact'and mediated by the living. This helps to ensure that the ancestorswill combine the virtues f flexibility with a complete absence oferror. Error can only be an inaccurate interpretation on the partof the living. It is difficult for ancestral authority to upset thesocial order, since it is a direct extension of that order. Powerwielded by a living individual is always likely to upset social ordersince it is by definition at least partially free from the constraintsof that order. For this reason only dead ancestors have completeauthority.
Power may be as capricious as the actor who wields it and may shiftquickly among actors. Authority, because it depends for its strengthon common recognition, is essentially collective and consistent innature (although the capricious vicissitudes of life may be explainedthrough reference to a figure of authority). Authority is right,whether or not it is followed; power is force. People thus oftenpropitiate authority after violating its dicta; the presence of authorityis seen in these acts of respect as much as in strict obedience. The presence of power is seen entirely in its effectuality. The ruleof law, and by extension the rule of social order, may be seen asmatters of authority, or right, rather than power or individual intention. This view follows a long philosophical tradition, and was particularlyprominent in nineteenth-century conservatism. It is also directlycongruent with Forte's description of distinctions made by hisTale informants (cf. 1945: 116; 1949: 235). In order to believe inauthority, one must believe in the existence of standards outsidethe province of specific human intentions, judgements and enforcements. Such an ideal standard may itself be evolving; respect for divineauthority did not vanish from medieval Christianity as it became Aristotelianinstead of Platonic. It is the task of mortal men to try to discoverthe will of gods and ancestors.
Durkheim, in a similar view, saw an impending crisis in the weakeningof the influence of religion which attended the growth of egoism. The authority of religion is inextricably linked to its ability to'socialise', that is, to determine collectively the individualexistence of its members. This is precisely what ancestral authorityis effective in doing among the Tallensi, for ancestral authorityrepresents a stronger social organisation than any indirectly worshippedby the adherents of the major (textual) world religions. 'Religions',according to Durkheim, 'can socialise us only insofar as theyrefuse us the right of free examination' (1897:376). Authorityrequires unquestioning acceptance. Even a bureaucracy, with its operationsupposedly based on the rationality of its procedures, must founderif authority within it is constantly questioned and changing (cf.Weber 1921:196).
Authority gains its potency not by denying all practice of reason,but by insuring that all reasoning begins from certain premisses. The rationalisations of the scholastic philosophers are thus legendary,but they were not in any way in conflict with their belief in Godor Christian mysteries. The scholastics who constructed elaborate'proofs' of the existence of God did so not to convincethemselves or sceptics, but in order to learn about the nature ofGod. They began with the assumption of God's existence and proceededto consider the conditions of our knowledge of God. So it is withthe worship of ancestors; the Tallensi need not constantly searchfor signs of the existence of ancestors, but rather for signs of thewill of ancestors. In this connexion I suggest it is not fruitfulto treat additional religion or authority as a set of rules or ideasprescribed with finality once and for all.
Weber was among the earlier and more influential scholars to describetraditional authority as a static catechism of 'norms',and thereby neglect the process of reasoning involved:
Domination that rests upon ... piety for what actually,allegedly, or presumably has always existed, will be called 'traditionalistauthority'. Patriarchalism is by far the most important typeof domination the legitimacy of which rests upon tradition ... Itis a characteristic of patriarchal and patrimonial authority ... thatthe system of inviolable norms is considered sacred; an infractionof them would result in magical or religious evils. (1915:296)I argue that the central characteristic of traditional authority isnot the timeless existence of a set of norms to whichall adhere but rather a variety of reasoning about issues which donot fit clearly into any set of explicit rules. Divination of thewill of ancestors is used to adjudicate issues which are either novelor complex enough to go beyond everyday rules of behaviour, or areinherently insoluble in terms of everyday rules of thought. Afterthe fact explanations of natural disasters in social or moral termsare of the latter variety; settlements of disrupted inheritance areof the former.
Weber developed his view of traditionalist authority in constantmental opposition to his notion of the rational-legal authority predominantin the modern West (Parsons (1947:51) suggests that the oppositionperhaps impeded his judgement). Central to Weber's definitionof rational-legal authority is its impersonality (see Weber 1925,Vol. I: 212-40 on the contrast between legal and traditional authority). In a rational organisation, such as a bureaucracy, the office, notthe individual, gives authority to pronouncements.
Fortes points out that the authority of parents and ancestors isnot as much a matter of their personal characteristics as of theirpurely formal status as parents of living offspring.
Ancestorhood is conferred on persons of the parental generationwho have jural authority in living social relations, not on thosewho imprint their personalities on their offspring by virtue of theirpart in bringing them up. (Fortes 1965:130)The relations of offspring to ancestors (as to parents) are obligatory,not simply a matter of the enforcement of the superordinate of thechoice of the subordinate. In this sense, the Tale pattern of organisationmay be seen to fall within Weber's essential definition of 'legal'authority. The idealisation of ancestors, based on their incorporeality,contributes further to his fit. Webercontinued his discussion of traditional, especially patriarchal authority(quoted above) by suggesting that in it:
there is a realm of free arbitrariness and favor of thelord, who in principle judges only in terms of 'personal',not 'functional', relations. In this sense, traditionalistauthority is irrational (1915:296).In fact, divination of ancestral will pays close attention to functionalissues in the society of the living. It must be obvious to all outsideanalysts that the expressed whims of the ancestors do not come froma 'realm of free arbitrariness.'
The morality of kinship
It is in something of a similar context that Bloch has emphasisedForte's arguments regarding the 'morality' of kinshipand rebutted those which take kinship as instrumental and as primarilythe object of manipulations based on immediate individual self-interest(1973). Bloch argues that in segmentary kinship-based societies,morality is primarily a matter of relationships. In this he echoesthe common sociological view of morality held by Europe's nineteenth-centuryconservatives (see Nisbet 1966:107-73, and Calhoun 1980). He suggeststhat moral relationships are those which are not organised for specificimmediate ends, but are long-term and binding as part of the socialorder. Specifically, their source is focused in the ancestors, notin individual decisions. Bloch sees the contrast of which de Tcquevillealso made much (cf. 1840:232), between particularistic norms of relationship(which leave everyone to establish and govern their own relationshipsby negotiation) and moral norms and kinship regulation (which makerelations a matter of social obligation for the individual, and, especiallyin close kinship, one to be assumed, not chosen). The latter orientationto relationships provides for greater social stability:
I have tried to show that it is only because of the factthat to the ancestors kinship is moral, that is non-specific and longterm, that it produces an adaptability potential to long term socialchange. If more rational ties were used, i.e. ties which are thefruit of a process of maximization, they would be more efficient inthe short term but more costly in the middle and long term (Bloch1973:86).Men do not live by plans alone, or, as Merton many years ago stressed,we need to recognise the importance - often positive - of unanticipatedconsequences of particular purposive acts for social organisation(1936). Bloch clearly shows the importance of this analytic separationof motive from effect; he introduces something of a canard, however,with his reference to 'adaptability potential to long term socialchange'. He makes an analogy to the principle of generalisedadaptation in biological evolution, a 'maximisation of options'principle of survival, which does not follow from the case he haspresented. He details an instance of the significance of kinshipmorality in maintaining long-term continuity not as anadaptation to long-term change, but rather to short-term fluctuation. Peasants keep their reciprocal obligations most up-to-date with distantof fictive kin because they can count on closer kin under any circumstances, even in a particularly desperate year. This is, infact, an aspect of the lineage system which Fortes emphasises:
Observation of the lineage system in action suggestedthat its distinguishing characteristic, as a regulating factor inthe social structure, was its tendency toward equilibrium. This operatedin such a way as to leave room for continual internal adjustmentsin the social organisation without endangering its long-term stability(1945:x).Bloch's analysis differs from that of Fortes in another significantway (which cannot be considered matter of error). He describes patternsof labour co-operation among the Merina in which active reciprocityis most important with distant or fictive kin, somewhat secondaryrelationships in terms of the formal system of descent-based bonds. This, he suggests, is because the nearer kinship ties are more insuredby the moral aspect of the relationship so that:
'Real' kinsmen would always come, they said,'artificial' kinsmen would only come if one kept up thetypical kinship behaviour of repeated requests for help. If one didnot do so these 'artificial' kinsmen would lapse (Bloch1973:79).Fortes, on the other hand, tells us that among the Tallensi,
The more distant a genealogical tie is, the more doesit become a matter of moral and ritual, rather than a jural and economicrelations (1949:18).Bloch argues that his findings contradict Fortes and demand some sortof resolution. Other differences in the two social organisation makeit difficult to settle the matter conclusively, but we may offer twoadditional considerations. First, the two statements are not necessarilyas contradictory as they might seem, if one bears in mind Forte'sdistinction between the mutuality of close agnatic relations and thereciprocity of more distant, especially merely cognatic, ties. Secondly,in Forte's description of the Tallensi we find that socio-spatialfields exist in which geographically proximate kin are also genealogicallynear. There would seem to be relatively few situations in traditionalTallensi farming which distant kin would be appropriate or practicalto call upon for assistance. We might expect to find something closert the situation Bloch describes among migrants into urban areas. Among the Merina, a high rate of geographical mobility has meant thatneighbours are not necessarily kinsmen, let alone close kinsmen, andmade the employment of kinship fictions to describe and govern relationshipswidespread. Although Bloch emphasised the importance of this mobilityin an earlier monograph (1971), in his (1973) comparison with Forte'sanalysis, he does not bring out the difference between the two cases.
Bloch's usage of the notion of artificial kin also raises somequestions, which apply to the whole treatment of fictive kin in anthropologicaldebate. Bloch, in common with most authors, describes artificialkinship as simply a matter of comparison with other kin categories(in general, not with particular relations; hence apparently the termartificial instead of fictive), seeing these latter as arranged ona single continuum of intensity. This treats relationships too exclusivelyas matters of inter-individual transactions. Bloch's fictivekinsmen are analogous to cognatic kin, as Fortes describes them, butnot agnatic (Fortes 1949: 13-14). They have relationships with individuals,which may be personally established, rather than group relationships situatedin a formal corporate organisation. They are relations thus of reciprocal,but not common, interest. Agnatic bonds are characterised by mutualityin part because agnates share responsibility and rights in inheritance,because together they form social units at higher levels of aggregation. Kin linked only by cognatic not agnatic bonds, have interests ineach other's welfare solely on the basis of exchange, not atall on the basis of commonality. Artificial kin are similar to cognatickin but for the fact that their relations are not formal. This iswhy keeping up the relationship is so important to them. The relationshipamong fictive or artificial kin is never implied by the rest of aset of common relations, as, for example, is the relationship amongbrothers. It is not the product of descent or marriage. It existsthrough its actualisation alone.
This is the key to much of the distinction between the Tallensi caseFortes describes and the Merina case Bloch describes. Among the Tallensi,distant cognatic kin become relevant only in situations where theyare called upon to assist in travel or to make sacrifices to theiragnatic ancestors who are their kinsmen's matrilineal ancestors. These distant cognatic kin seldom live nearby, and are thereforeunlikely to be of everyday significance. Close cognatic kin, however,are the persons most frequently called upon to form work parties. This is because the need for labour is seen as a personal issue. Among the Merina, unrelated persons are likely to live in close proximitywhile close cognates and agnates may be quite distant. In any event,however, the fluctuations in demand for co-operative labour makesit practical to maintain fictive kin relations on an everyday basis. It is in this that Bloch describes an adaptation to long-term change. The system itself is geared to deal with short-term fluctuation,but has been able to adapt to long-term change by substituting artificialfor cognatic kin (compare Jackson 1977).
Ancestral authority and lineage structure
The morality of kinship an the authority of ancestors areboth ideational extensions of a social organisation which is basedupon segmentary kinship. By emphasising these connexions, we arebetter able to understand the workings of the system of social organisationthan by granting primacy to the cultural plane or trying, for example,to interpret Tale cognatic kinship in terms of a forced and unsociologicalanalogy to the Kwaio, as did Keesing (1970). It is also importantto realise the particular workings of the system of ancestral authorityin sociological terms rather than assimilating it to the more generalculturological category of the morality of kinship. Ancestors definesocial groups - groups of persons subject of their authority. Itis of course true that ancestors can sometimes be held to have interferedin the lives of descendants outside of the corporate groupings theydefine, that is, in the line of their descendants who are only cognatic,not also agnatic. This is not a matter of authority. That is a matterof power (the real social power of living cognates) is indicated bythe fact that the interventions of cognatic ancestors are seen asgenerally much more capricious than those of agnatic ancestors. Keesingmisinterprets this set of issues in part because he has failed toread Fortes carefully. Erroneously, he says that
a Tale man, like a Kwaio man, does not sacrifice onlyto the lineage ancestors (as opposed to parents and grandparents)of his own lineage .... He sacrifices to these nonagnatic ancestorson many occasions (1970:766).In fact, a Tale man can only indirectly approach nonagnatic ancestors,may only attend but not lead sacrifices at their lineage homes. Furthermore,the personal 'destiny' (yin) ancestors arethe only major part of such sacrifices for which a man must seek theintervention of his non-agnatic kin. It is not at all clear, as Keesingasserts, that Fortes undervalued cognatic kinship. Rather, he emphasisedthe important distinction between agnates and kin who are merecognates. For the Tallensi it always matters whether connexions arematrilateral or patrilineal; it is never a matter of indifference,as Keesing's definitions would have it (cf. 1970:768).
One of the most important points in Forte's analysis of theTale ancestral system is that is is always a specific individual,more especially a genealogically specific individual, who becomesan ancestor. Fortes's emphasis on this has not kept others frommissing the point. Kopytoff, for example, has suggested that ancestorsare merely elders and we are ethnocentric to see them as anythingelse (1971). Kopytoff's argument has attracted credence outof proportion to its quality (cf. Sangree (1974), though note thequalifications which his comments on the complementarity of generationsrequire; or Mendosa (1976),who calls for a synthesis of Kopytoff andFortes without realising the fundamental nature of the contradiction). Fortes is quite clear on the matter:
When a particular - and it is always a particular person- is thus reinstated as an ancestor, it is, as I have argued, becausehe has living descendants of the right category. His reinstatementin this thus establishes his continued relevance for his society,not as a ghost, but as a regulative focus for the social relationsan activities that pursuit as the deposit, so the speak, of his lifeand career (1965:129).There is, for a corporate group of agnates, a single ancestor whois the salient point of collective reference. Similarly, there isa single ancestress, forming a matrilateral link, as represented inthe copying of ancestral shrines. It is the apices of groupings inthe kinship hierarchy which are crucial, then, in patrilineal descentamong the Tallensi:
Each segment has its focus of unity, and an index of itscorporate identity, in the ancestor by reference to whom it is differentiatedfrom other segments of the same order in the hierarchically organisedset of lineages (Fortes 1945:31).Important female ancestors are patrilineally determined - the motherof apical male ancestors - and matrilateral. Matrilateral connexionsare not of enduring significance.
The identity of the particular ancestor inheres in the social relationsof his descendants. Relations with ancestors are primarily manifestationsof the social system and not of particular physical relations withparents or ungrounded metaphysical beliefs:
Ancestorhood is conferred on persons of the parental generationwho have jural authority in living social relations, not on thosewho imprint their personalities on their offspring by virtue of theirpart in bringing them up (Fortes 1969:130)An ancestor has his authority not because of his personality, norin general because of his individual career. Exceptions to this occuronly inasmuch as men of social importance are more likely to havesons and keep them in a large unit of social solidarity until theirdeaths. Neither does an individual become an ancestor because ofany particular authority or esteem among members of his own generation. He has authority because of his genealogically structured positionwith regard to the living:
Ancestor worship is a representation of extension of theauthority component in the jural relations of successive generations(Fortes 1965:133).This authority component is of course formal. Although the ancestormust be someone in particular, he does not behave as anyone in particular. He represents the abstracted principles of lineage structure, authorityand values. In Kuper's words, 'the ancestors are the idealnot the actual personality' (1947:188; see also, Fortes 1949:235). Because of this idealisation of ancestors, that is, the independence(in principle) of their ancestral status from their lifetime careers,any man who
dies leaving a son ... becomes an ancestor of equal statuswith any other ancestor (Fortes 1965:133).He may not be of equal structural significance, or be equally likelyto be remembered, but he is an ancestor in an equal sense. He cannotbe overruled, and is not subject to qualifications on his authority.
Ancestors, not elders
Kopytoff finds this description unsatisfying (at least in 1971; notso much so in his earlier work):
I shall ... try to show that by viewing what have beencalled African ancestor cults as part of the eldership complex, wecan account more simply for many of Forte's generalisations andat the same time make redundant some of the problems he raises (1971:129-30).Kopytoff's argument is apparently based on the assumption thatall Africans are the same, for he continually speaks of 'Africanancestor cults' as a unit, while unthinkingly criticising Forte'sanalysis of the Tallensi on the basis of his own material on the Suku. He does this without even considering the relevance of the fact thatSuku descent-reckoning is matrilineal and Tallensi patrilineal. Hepays little heed generally to differences in social contexts or thechanges wrought in the decades between Forte's fieldwork andhis own.
Much of Kopytoff's article is occupied with an examination ofvarious Bantu languages in search of words translatable as 'ancestor'. His search is part of an attempt to show that the term and its connoteddistinction of living from dead are but ethnocentric impositions ofWestern anthropologists. Brain has convincingly challenged Kopytoff'sassertions on this, suggesting that his claim'that Bantu languages have no word for ancestral spirit is patentlyabsurd', and indeed that the noun classes used are differentfrom those for living persons (1973:126; see also Sangree 1974). Fortes also offers a term for ancestor and a distinct one for elder(yaab and kpeem), translations Kopytoffdoes not consider. Under Tale definition, an ancestor is any manwho dies leaving a son, as we saw. By this criterion, there are ancestorsin all societies; surely our questions concern their significance,or what variations there may be in ideas concerning them. Kopytoffis concerned to show us that:
Once we recognize that African 'ancestors' areabove all elders and are to be understood in terms of the same categoryas living elders, we shall stop pursuing a multitude of problems ofour own creation (1971:138).He is wrong. The distinction between ancestors and elders is a usefulone. Indeed, it distinguishes much in the Tale organisation of authorityfrom that of the Suku.
The two peoples differ in a number of ways. The most relevant atpresent is that the latter abuse authority on relative age:
In short, to those on the outside, a lineage is representedby the eldest member present. Within the lineage, the lineage isrepresented to any one member by any older member present and, collectively,by all older members living and dead (Kopytoff 1971:133)Kopytoff suggests that the distinction between living and dead is'incidental and contextual' and that the Suku share thisview (1971:133). Suku lineages do not seem to be internally differentiatedand hierarchically organised with reference to a monistic system suchas that of which ancestors are the focus for the Tallensi. Only atthe highest levels, of clans, are Tale ancestors dealt with 'ingeneral' (Fortes 1945:137). Surprisingly, Kopytoff asserts that:
The Suku pattern ... is congruent with most ethnographicdescriptions of African 'ancestral cults' and of the roleof elders (1971:134).Certainly this is not true of Forte's writings on the Tallensi,despite the fact that it is these to which Kopytoff directs the mostattention.
Residence in both the matrilineal Suku an the patrilineal Tallensiis primarily patrilocal. This means that a single system of tiesof graduated intensity and density among the Tallensi is paralleledby two crossed dimensions of social relations among the Suku. Thecognatic kinship relations which supplement and differentiate agnatickin among the Tallensi appear as more diametrically opposed amongthe Suku. Fortes described ancestral authority as an extension ofthe authority component in relations between the generations. Sukulineage elders, clearly, are not the same as the generational authorityfigures confronting particular individuals where they live. Residentialaffiliation, but not the structuring of descent is, congruent withpaternal authority among the Suku. Descent, residence and paternityare all part of the same monistic organisation of Tale society (seeJackson's 1977:134-5 argument that ancestor 'cults'are strong where lineage organisation controls local contiguity ratherthan being superseded by it). Tale society is thus the more logicallyconsistent, in Sorokin's term (1957:20). In the phrasing Lévi-Straussadopted to describe patterns of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage,the Tale system is harmonic, while the Suku system is no (1949:334). The formerhas strict genealogical determination of identity and authority relationswhich the latter does not, and which would be incongruent with therest of Suku social organisation. Age, as a basis for authority,necessarily introduces a greater individualism into the organisation. Since all authority relations among the Suku are determined by relativeage, they necessarily link individuals. They do not form the corporateunits which Tale organisation of authority does. There are thus significantreasons, quite beyond anyone's ethnocentrism, for the differencein descriptions of authority systems, and for retaining the term 'ancestor',at least in the Tale case.
Kopytoff argues at great length that the distinction between theliving and the dead is ethnocentric. My own biases are perhaps morevivocentric, for I am convinced that the dead are quite differentfrom the living, and nowhere more so than when we consider what actionan ancestor (or elder) can take to impose his authority on his kinsmen. In any given case, a majority of one's ancestors are likelyto be dead, particularly those beyond the range of grandparent. The Tallensi make a distinction at this level (incidentally congruentwith English language usage). An individual seldom has concrete dealingswith people beyond this range, dealings in which their personalitiesrather than their structural, genetic, or ideological significancesare at issue. Among the Tallensi, it is stereo-typically at the levelof grandparents that ancestors become the focus of new effective minimallineages.
The fact that ancestors are dead makes it much easier to idealisethem, to have them represent lineage values as opposed to personalinterests or idiosyncrasies of judgement. Living persons have a problematicpropensity for doing things, for acting on the bases of their ownsocial and psychical personalities. These are always only partialrepresentations of overall principles of social order. One of themost important characteristics of ancestors as authority figures,then, is their inactivity. Those things which they 'do'tend to appear to us as either chance occurrences or societal actions.
Ancestral authority in social practice.
Fortes describes what I have called societal actions in terms ofconsensus. This seems problematic, since however high consensus maybe, in our frame of reference, it is not absolute in Taleland. Noris consensus integral to the workings of ancestral authority, althoughit is of course advantageous, as in any system of authority. Whatis essential is acceptance of certain means or processes of judgement,notably divination. Access to control over such processes of judgementis quite stratified, both in terms of general social position andin terms of relational proximity to the principles in the case atissue. Enough people are generally involved to ensure that the decisionis more or less in accord with widespread opinion. It need not beexactly in accord, however, since opinion is seldom completely consensualand usually is somewhat malleable. The process of judgement and thepresentation and symbolic language of judgement as much as the specificoutcome of divination are central to reinforcing the social orderand ensuring acceptance of the decision.
Appeal to ancestors may be concerned with the post hocexplanation of some natural occurrence. Although not immediatelyapparent in such cases, it is still generally true that divinationconcerns social issues. Its findings almost always concern morallapses of one sort or another, and morality is essentially social;it is concerned with relationships among people, their behaviour towardseach other. The disease of a wife, for example, may be familiarlyexplained as due to her husband's failure to establish his ownhomestead, distinct from that of his proxy father. Divination isused to force the latter to be less tight-fisted (Fortes 1949:176). Alternatively, the ancestors may be called upon to resolve a dispute;to put it another way, disputants may carry out their arguments inthe language of ancestral authority. Specific ancestors hold primaryauthority over groups larger than households (that is, larger thanthose headed by living parents). They are also the prime referentsin the definition and differentiation of those corporate groups. The primary means of bringing the ancestral voice into the affairsof the living, and thus rendering an authoritative decision, is throughdivination.
Fortes does not tell us a great deal about Tale diviners, but itis clear that they are not the entrepreneurial specialists reportedamong a number of South African peoples (this reading is confirmedby personal communication with both Fortes and the more recent ethnographer,Hart, 1975). Most divining involves only local grouping and drawson local talent. Most men are qualified diviners, although only aminority are in active practice. It is not a full-time occupation:
Diviners are numerous. There may be as many as ten ortwenty in a large settlement, but only one or two of them will earnmore than a few pence a day by divining (Fortes 1945:10).There is no indication that the particular identity of the divinerhas any structural relevance to the cases on which he works.
When ancestors are invoked to bring about more complex social decisions,such as the settlement of long-standing disputes, two additional considerationsapply. The first is that a divination is subject to considerablestructuration, often with the conscious awareness of the participantsand interested parties (Fortes 1949:99). The second is that a divinationis not final, and may be ignored or questioned:
There are no jural sanctions compelling a man to abideby custom in cases of this kind; and as the Tallensi often say, mendo not fear to defy even the ancestor spirits, when their propertyof power is at stake (Fortes 1945:249).Although divinations may be restaged, claiming a failure of the mortalportion of the procedure, one may never 'go over the head'of an ancestor (as, for example, one may sometimes go over the headof living authorities to an ancestor). The ancestors stick together.
At least in ideology, everything in Tale society is subject to theauthority of ancestors. This is so because kinship is the dominantsystem of social organisation (see Fortes 1949:340), and ancestorsare 'the main ideological bulwark of the kinship system'(Fortes 1945:33). Kinship relations cannot be reduced to the economic,religious or any other category of activities; in Forte's term,they are axiomatic (1945:249; and 1949:346). The notion is important, and its logical analogy revealing. Kinship relations donot exist for any teleological reason; their moral status is not demonstrableon any sort of evidence, but rather is to be accepted prior to andas the foundation for reasoning about evidence. Just as Kierkegaardpositively and Hume negatively suggested that the only possible relationsto revealed religion are belief or disbelief (i.e., not demonstration)so it is with kinship for the Tallensi. The logical status of kinshipis primitive; from within the system it is not subject to criticism. Fortes is clearly not arguing that kinship exists because it is functional. He is arguing that it exists, and that certain functions follow onits operation. There is no logical way to say that kinship is functionalfor the Tale social system, since that system derives essentiallyfrom kinship. Of course, kinship may be of more or less significancefor any person or persons among the Tallensi, and it may be judgedgood or bad in its particular effects. The standards of such judgement,however, must come from outside the Tale system.
The authority of ancestors is an internal part of the kinship system,not an external idea applied discretely to certain social relations. Authority among the living comes only by 'transmission and assumeddevolution from ancestors' (Fortes 1961:187). This universalauthority of ancestors appears in practice (at all but the highestlevel of clans) as the relationship of a particular ancestor to agiven population of descendants.
The ancestors acknowledged in a given situation are primarilythose who are exclusive to the worshipping group and therefore distinguishthat group unequivocally from collateral and coordinate groups ofa like sort, who have remoter ascendants in common with them, andworship jointly with them in situations of common concern (Fortes1965:123).All facets and all variations of life are subject to ritual sanctionwithin the general framework f ancestral authority (Fortes 1945:144). A man may become the victim of his ancestors (a woman of hers and/orher husband's) for a wide range of faults not necessarily hisown or under his control. The system is not 'beatable'as there is no way to live a life of sufficient saintliness to placeone beyond the reach of the ancestors. Men are not able to judgemystical wrongs for themselves (Fortes 1959:35); these wrongs arethus not matters for human retribution. 'The community is neutral'(Fortes 1949:180), sometimes even sympathetic to those plagued byancestrally decreed misfortunes. The ancestors represent much thatis complex, even contradictory in social and natural existence; theirwill is thus not simple to understand.
The relations between men and their ancestors among theTallensi are a never-ceasing struggle. Men try to coerce and placatetheir ancestors by means of sacrifices. But the ancestors are unpredictable(Fortes 1945:145).Agnatic descent reveals the authority of ancestors, for agnatic descentis fundamental to the most enduring features of the social structure- the organisation of corporate groups. Continuity through time isexpressed by the agnatic ancestors; nonagnatic ancestors express thecontingent features of life. Thus the solidarity of a corporate group,and its distinction from other groups of the same order is expressedby reference to genealogically specific agnatic ancestors. When ancestorsgive voice to the distinction of social individuals, it is through a one-to-one relationship not strictly genealogically determinedFortes tells us that:
In the strictly personal affairs of the individual, hismatrilateral ancestors have as decisive a role in his life as hispatrilineal ancestors (1949:294).In fact, they may have even more such importance, since the patrilinealancestors seldom affect the individual in 'strictly personalaffairs', being concerned with him as a member of the lineagecorporation. A man's matrilateral ancestors, however, come froma variety of different lineages, and through them he has his own particularconstellation of extraclan descent relations, as symbolised in theirinclusion in his set of Destiny ancestors. Far from supporting Keesing's(1970) case for treating ancestors indiscriminately, the importanceof matrilateral ancestors in this specific context points up the importanceof the differentiation between agnatic and nonagnatic kin.
A man's Destiny ancestors are an ascending series of both patrilinealand matrilateral ancestors, usually dominated by the latter, and alwaysunique. Women have no distinct set of Destiny ancestors, but fallfirst under the tutelage of their fathers' and then of theirhusbands' Destinies (Fortes 1959:25). A woman (like a man) doeshave a distinct Prenatal Destiny which is the result of a sort ofpositive or negative spiritual sponsorship based on the unborn infant'ssupposed choice (thus the name 'spoken Destiny'; Fortes1949; 165). The Yin shrine is the shrine dedicated toman's Destiny ancestors, and as such its placement is a signof his growing social individuality or autonomy (Fortes 1959:25). An offering to a Yin shrine is often eaten only by theowner and his wife and children, his kin by birth not being allowedto share in it, as they do in his other sacrifices (Fortes 1959:26). Thus the common language of ancestral authority is able to take accountof the individuation as well as the unity of Tallensi. This is inno small part because ancestors are themselves always 'particular'and not an undifferentiated mass for the Tallensi (Fortes 1965:125). Individuation is, in any case, not a matter of extraordinary socialdifferences or radical structural opposition, as in a modern, especiallya class society. Destiny ancestors do not account for individualchoices, and indeed - largely for economic reasons - the range ofindividual choice is much constricted by out standards. What suchancestors do account for its events which distinguish individualson matters of common or shared preferences. Thus, as Fortes sayswith regard to Prenatal Destiny:
Proof that it is working itself out in an evil way isthe victim's irremediable but involuntary failure to fulfil theroles and achieve the performance regarded as normal for his statusin the social structure ... a failure in the relationship of belongingto society, which, for the Tallensi, means family lineage, and kin(1959: 41-2).A certain extent of individual variation is thus directly accountedfor in the very terms of authority which generally work to ensuresolidarity among those with common interest. In such a monistic system,sub-groupings may serve to provide for incorporation into larger groups,not necessarily to pull the larger apart, as the common sociologicalgeneralisation has it (cf. Merton 1957:287, or, to the contrary, Calhounin press).
The system of ancestral authority operates with a conception of almostentirely socialised man. Its stress is first and foremost on thesolidarity of lineage segments, secondarily on differentiation withinsuch corporate groups, and thirdly on individuation within an acceptedrange of social personalities. Failure to fit into society is synonymouswith stepping outside the pale of ancestral authority. In an earlywork, Gluckman at once stressed this, and reduced ancestral authorityto a mere cultural epiphenomenon of social relations:
The ancestral cult is a mechanism by which kinship bondsare affirmed ... and the hierarchy of society expressed. In thisthe ancestral cult is, like much ritual, a form of mnemonic, legallyprescribed actions which vividly express social relationships (1937:129).Although Fortes has emphasised that this is more than justa mnemonic (1959:19), he is clearly in accord.
There is the jural component of status in one's lineageand locus in the web of kinship, acquired by birth, through one'sparents, and forming an element in the continuity of the social structurethrough time. The ritual imprimatur for this is the conception ofthe ancestors as sovereign and eternal, mirroring the total systemof kinship and descent which is keen as an everlasting and fixed frameworkfor the individual's social existence (1959:40).The authority of ancestors is a good deal more than just a mnemonic,and more even than just a ritual imprimatur. It is a way of reasoningabout social relations, and as such inextricably tied up in the socialpractice which constitutes those relations. Fortes need not be readentirely in the unfortunate rhetoric of 'structures' and'principle' for which Sahlins faults him (Sahlins 1976:4-18). He also has an account of ancestral authority directly interms of social relationships.
Unlike the system of authority by age, which Kopytoff finds to bethe norm of Suku organisation (1971, see esp. example: 132), ancestralauthority leaves no living person with the authority to act in isolationon behalf of a corporation. Divination and other modes of relatingto ancestors are means of representing a collectivity, and often adrawing into action. The heads of segments may have more voice thanothers in the affairs of the higher order lineages, but beyond theeffective minimal lineage, no living person holds final authority:the lineage ancestor has the 'last word' (Fortes 1959:33). This means that only an essentially public process can arrive atan authoritative decision. Even were each headman able to representhis segment absolutely and without challenge , this would limit thecentralisation of power to a sort of oligarchy. Formally, at least,every headman of any given level has equal access to the salient ancestorof the level above, the level of their commonality.
The continuity of this system across levels (that is, essentially,through the statically viewed generations) is also important. Forteshas characterised ancestor worship as 'in essence the ritualisationof filial piety' (1959:18). It is clear that this is not epiphenomenalto material social practice, for, among other things, it means thatthe criteria of political enfranchisement are integral with the processof decision-making itself. A man seriously violating the norm offilial piety would not only
lay himself open to immediate punishment by the ancestors;he would, indeed, be unable to participate in the life of the communitysince he could not act for himself in ritual or jural affairs (Fortes1949:218)A man can be a member of the ritual and jural communities (which arethe same) only through his descent. In other words, he can only havea practical voice in the running of society in and through his relationsto his ancestors. The ancestors, as we have seen, are primarily concernedwith his relations to their other descendants - in other words, withperpetuating the social order.
Conclusion
The authority of ancestors is part of a system of social practicewhich works to ensure moral relationships among the members of societypredominantly organised through the structuration of kinship. Ancestorsare qualitatively different in death from the more idiosyncratic existencesthey had earlier in life. Agnatic ancestors provide the central schemeof reference and reasoning for the reproduction of Tale society. Through their authority they give sanction to the solidarity of lineagesegments. Nonagnatic ancestors provide ritual voice and sanctionfor the continuing dynamic of individuation within the highly sociatedoverall organisation. All this is done through the representationof specific moral relationships among the living in terms of commonmoral subjection to specific ancestors.
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