Camel Raiding of North Arabian Bedouin: A Mechanism of Ecological Adaptation
T HE Bedouin camel breeding peoples of Arabia are among the most conspicuous in the public tradition of romanticized warrior nomads, but among the least used in current ethnological theory. Yet they inhabit a desert zone marked by varying and extreme geographical conditions for human survival and display in their modes of adaptation a wealth of features useful for developing cultural ecological theory. Moreover, their contiguity with regions occupied over millennia by complex states provides a host of problems of intercultural adaptations. Most prominent among these, perhaps, has been the persistence and elaboration of kinship as the organizing basis of these desert societies. This paper is concerned with examining some of the features and adaptive functions of one of the core mechanisms of Bedouin socio-cultural systems, institutionalized raiding, as a major factor in the persistence of such kin-based societies.2 Raiding is variously regarded as a sport, a passion, an industry by Western writers; it has been labelled brigandage, feuding, and warfare, and has been denounced and deplored, and rarely admired. But few serious students of Bedouin life have failed to appreciate its significance for the Bedouin, regardless of the moral or political stand from which the writers might evaluate it. Burckhardt, for example commented upon the precariousness of wealth in camel herds among the Bedouin, the rapid changes of individual fortunes as parties of men raided and counterraided each other's encampments. But he also calculated in monetary terms the cost of living as a Bedouin camel pastoralist. He concluded:
Affinal Ties, Subsistence, and Prestige among the Coast Salish1
THE nature of Northwest Coast social stratification and the nature of the institution most intimately related to it, the potlatch, are problems of widely recognized importance. Yet attempts at solving these problems have not been wholly satisfactory. Generalizations about social stratification have been betrayed by failure to give sufficient weight to all of the differences in social structure that existed among the various Northwest Coast tribes. Explanations of the potlatch have been only partial ones, finding its function in the expression of the individual's drive for high status or in the fulfillment of society's need for solidarity. Relating these functions to man's other requirements for survival has often been inhibited by an assumption that the satisfaction of alimentary needs through the food quest and the satisfaction of psychological needs through the manipulation of wealth form two separate systems, the "subsistence economy" and the "prestige economy." Or if a relationship between the two is hypothesized, the hypothesis usually makes the "prestige economy" dependent upon the "subsistence economy"; it is assumed that a rich habitat provides an abundance of food which in turn supports the prestige economy which in turn maintains social stratification. I believe, however, that it is more reasonable to assume that, for a population to have survived in a given environment for any length of time, its subsistence activities and prestige-gaining activities are likely to form a single integrated system by which that population has adapted to its environment. I will try to show how this may be true of one group of Northwest Coast tribes, the Coast Salish of Southern Georgia Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca,2 and in particular I will try to show that in the socio-economic system of these tribes a role of crucial importance was played by the ties established through intercommunity marriage. Native social organization in this area was characterized by a seeming looseness. Kinship was reckoned bilaterally. Residence was usually, but not always, patrilocal. The nuclear families of brothers, cousins, and brothers-inlaw formed extended families (x?anacellwam), occupying great cedar-plank houses and claiming rights to certain local resources and to certain inherited privileges. One or more such extended families formed a village or community. The community was linked through ties of marriage and kinship with other communities and these with still others to form a social network with no very clear boundaries. Groups of villages like the Lummi and Cowichan were linked by common dialect and traditions as "tribes" but in recent generations these village groupings were certainly not separate "societies."
The Social Institutions of the Kipsigis
THE Kipsigis, better known among Europeans and to an earlier generation of anthropologists as the Lumbwa, are numerically the most considerable group of Nilotic Hamites in Kenya, their nearest affinities being the Nandi, Suk, Kamasia and Turkana. With the Masai they have a traditional enmity, which they trace back to the time of their first entry into the country they now occupy. This migration, it is to be presumed, was from the north.The Social Institutions of the KipsigisBy Dr. J. G. Peristiany. Pp. xxxiv + 288 + 24 plates. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1939.) 18s. net.