M A U R I C E BLOCH

Zafimaniry birth and kinship theory:)

The Zafimaniry are a small group of people from Madagascar and this article concerns their ideas about birth. There has of late been much interest in anthropology about notions concerning birth mainly focusing on what it tells us about the folk theories of the body and the person. Very recently some anthropologists have argued that the introduction of new reproductive technologies has led to a veritable cultural revol- ution in the West, where notions of kinship and gender in particular have been fundamentally changed (Strathern 1992), and that as a result we must do what kinship theorists have had to do periodically since the beginning of our discipline, revise our theoretical assumptions of what is universal. Be that as it may, I want simply to argue here that, without the need to keep ourselves glued to newspapers for yet more startling announcements of the advances of medicine and law, the ethnographic record concerning such people as the Zafimaniry offers just as challenging data to received ideas concerning kinship in general.

This is because for the Zafimaniry, as for other Malagasy and Southeast Asian peoples, birth and biological parentage in itself has not much significance in the determination of the person and that, this being so, almost none of the traditional concerns of kinship theorists working in other parts of the world apply to people such as the Zafimaniry, since almost all usual theories of kinship implicitly accept that birth and parentage has, of itself, some sort of determining role. For example, if birth is not significant for the determination of the person, it simply does not make sense to ask whether the Zafimaniry use patrilineal descent to form groups o r whether they prac- tise cross-cousin marriage since all these questions imply that birth and parentage are relevant for status.

A similar point was recently made for Southeast Asia by Fox (1987), who argues that in this type of society the person only belongs to a kinship group after death. Indeed I argued something like this for the Merina of Madagascar (Bloch 1971: 174). More recently R. Astuti, writing about the west coast fishermen of the island, the

::- Field work was carried out among the Zafimaniry in 1971 and again in 1989-90. The earlier research was financed by the Social Science Research Council and the more recent research was financed by the Spencer Foundation. Among previous literature on the Zafimaniry is Vrin 1964, Coulaud 1973, Raminosoa 1971-2, Bloch 1975.

1 In the Austronesian world ones identity is not given at birth. One gets the impression, if one reads some of the African monographs that a persons social identity has been defined by the fact of being born in a lineage. N o w my view would be that in the Austronesian world social identity is not fixed. You are launched as the Timorese, Rotinese and the Savunese all say, you are on a path but have not necessarily reached any specific point. (Fox 1987: 174-5)

Social Anthropology (1993). I, I B , 119-132. @ 1993 European Association of Social Anthropologists 119

Vezo, discusses this general point in great detail and is led to conclude: Living Vezo are unkinded, not only because they learn to be what they are and shape themselves contingently through practice: . . . they are unkinded also because they share undiffer- entiated links of relatedness ... O n the other side ... there are tombs with solid concrete walls which house the ruzu, membership of which separates the dead into kinds (Astuti 1991: 326).

This is going even further than Fox and, although the Vezo may be an extreme case, even for Madagascar, Astutis formulation illuminates much of what has been obscure in the ethnography of that part of the world.

In this article I shall follow Astutis lead and Foxs more general comment in order to see how far they enable us to understand the practices surrounding birth among another Malagasy group: the Zafimaniry.

One of the implications of the general points made by Fox and Astuti considered above is the relative lack of significance of birth as an event for creating the social person. Consequently, since birth is not the prime mechanism through which the person enters the moral world or becomes defined socially, it is not surprising that, as we shall see, the significance attributed to birth is subordinated to the logic of other more central representations. These more central representations must therefore be considered before we turn to the specific matter of birth.

For the Zafimaniry specifically, the representation which creates enduring pos- itions in society is the process of marriage and house building; this means that the Zafimaniry are to a certain extent unlike the other people referred to above in that for them it is not entry into the tomb which ultimately defines the person, but rather the association with houses.

Zaflmanlry houses and marriage The Zafimaniry are a group of shifting cultivators, living in eastern Madagascar, traditionally relying mainly on maize, beans and taro, and numbering approximately 20,000. They live in a narrow band of montane forest at an altitude of approximately 1,400 m. Their social organisation is, I believe, well characterised, though merely in an indicative way by what LCvi-Strauss has called a house-based society (Lki-Strauss 1984), especially if we emphasise the close association he sees between the symbolism of the house as a building and the centrality of monogamous marriage. According to LCvi-Strauss, in house based-societies, instead of alliance occurring between units, marriage actually forms the core of the unit, a unit which is also the material house. Such characterisation applies well to the Zafimaniry.

Zafimaniry marriage and house creation are two very long drawn-out processes, o r rather two sides of the same process. Marriage without a house is a contradiction in terms, because the Zafimaniry notion which I choose to translate as marriage is distinguished from other forms of sexual union precisely by the fact that the couple set up a separate house together, something reflected in the normal Zafimaniry way of asking the question corresponding to our are you married?, by a phrase which literally means Have you obtained a house with a hearth?2

The process which leads to marriage begins, however, quite some time before the construction of the house. The beginning of this process is the tentative sexual affec-

2 Efa nahazo tokotrano ve?

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tion and intercourse which occurs between very young people. The Zafimaniry seem particularly to stress the chaotic, fluid and fickle character of this type of relationship, largely to contrast it with the stability and immobility ultimately achieved by a successful union fixed in a solid house. Ideally, out of chaotic promiscuity a more stable monogamous relationship based on mutual compatibility will gradually emerge, which will ultimately lead to the partners establishing a house with a hearth.

There are a number of points in this gradual process where minor rituals make it, as the Zafimaniry say, ~ l ea r .~ One of the most important of these rituals is the fanarnbarana (literally that which renders evident). This should end with the bride being given by her parents a cooking pot, a plate and a large stirring spoon, which she will take back to her husbands locality, where the marital house will normally be built and where these objects will furnish the hearth.

Before this ritual, if it takes place at all, the young man will have started to build a house, o r rather the framework for a house. This will be situated near his parents house, though in an inferior position, usually to the south and 10wer.~ It will be a very simple house, but it will have a hearth consisting of three stones within a wooden frame, and three posts. One of these, the central post, is the so called hot post because it is near the hearth; it will be the largest piece of wood in the house and be made from a wood said to be the hardest of all woods. At this early stage of the marriage process however, the rest of the house will be merely made of flimsy, woven, flattened out bamboos and reed mats which let in light and sound.6

In a way that is so obvious that it only rarely gets mentioned, the house posts are associated with the man of the couple. They are what he must put up, and the mans place in the house is traditionally sitting leaning against the central hot post. The woman, on the other hand, is associated with the activity of the hearth and the furniture of the hearth, the cooking pot, the serving plate and the big stirring spoon which she brings to the marriage.

However, the marriage is not completed merely by the building of the house and the furnishing of the hearth. A Zafimaniry marriage, to be a marriage and have any chance of lasting, also needs children. The practices surrounding childbirth are there- fore a further element of marriage creation and growth.

The birth of the first child in a way strengthens the marriage and in a way weakens it. It strengthens the marriage in that as a direct result the spouses become terminologi- cally related through teknonimy ; this links the two parents since, henceforth, they have the name of their child in common. However, the marriage is also weakened by the geographical displacement of the mother which birth brings. When a woman is pregnant and when the birth is approaching, she will leave either the house of her husbands parents, or of her husband if she is already living there, and go back to her natal house, whether this be in another village or in her own village. There she will remain for a number of months.

In theory at least, after a few months, the mother will return to her husbands

3 For Zafimaniry concepts of clarity see Bloch forthcoming a. 4 Recently, because of extreme poverty, the ritual has been missed out but the bringing of the

5 As everywhere in Madagascar the north is a superior direction to the south. 6 The wood of the hot post should be nato. The wood of the cold posts should be tamboneka. For

implements is done nevertheless.

descriptions of the structure of Zafimaniry houses, see Vrin 1964 and Coulaud 1973.

ZAFIMANIRY BIRTH AND K I N S H I P THEORY l.21

house, but, in fact, this never happens smoothly. For her to do that she has to be courted again in order to be convinced to go home. If this renewed courting is successful, she will probably obtain quite a few new clothes and renewed promises to be treated with great consideration by the family of her husband. However, the husband will very often not be successful in getting his wife and child back at this stage and the marriage will abort. Exactly the same return of the mother to her natal home and subsequent renegotiation is repeated after the birth of the second child and it is usually only after the birth of the third or fourth child of that marriage that the process of local oscillation ends. Then, instead of the mother of the child moving, it is the mother of the mother who comes to help in the birth at the house of her daughter and son-in-law.

The repeated remarriages occasioned by the birth of the first children, are an early part of the growth, creation and transformation of the union into a permanent reproductive unit of society, and it is only when children have been born in the marital house that one can see that the process of marriage is well on its way.

This process of growth is not the creation of a merely social unit. For the Zafimaniry this process is also that of house creation in a material sense. As the negotiations and movements of the participants create the marriage, they also create the building, since during the period of their occurrence the house is also changing physically. When first built, the house is highly permeable to the outside. One can see in when one looks through the roughly woven bamboo walls, and neighbours are continually looking in; one can also speak from the outside to people in the house as though no partition existed. With time however, as children are born to the couple, this flimsy permeability diminishes. The Zafimaniry say that the house is then gradu- ally acquiring bones. This refers to the massive wooden planks which little by little replace the woven bamboo. In the end the house will look like a Canadian log cabin, except that the timbers are vertical. The hardening of the house is not a finite process: more can always be done, especially because the hardening process is soon ac- companied by the decorative, low relief carving which the Zafimaniry put everywhere on the hard woods which constitute the house - especially on doors, windows and above all on the central posts. This beautifying is considered by the Zafimaniry as merely a further process of the general hardening of the building.

With time therefore, the house hardens and becomes more and more beautifully decorated. When this process is well advanced, and if everything has gone well, the children of the couple will themselves have begun the process of marriage and the family will be enlarging. The girls will to a certain extent have left, but only to a certain extent, since they will return continually, especially to have their children in their parents house. They will also return more frequently, but for shorter periods, together with their husbands and children to seek blessing from the womans parents, something which is necessary for any major enterprise they prepare to under- take, either as a couple or individually. The sons, for their part, will be building their own houses near to that of their parents but they, together with their wives and children, will continue to use the parental house in all sorts of ways on a daily basis. They will, like the daughters, together with their spouses and children, also seek blessing from their parents in their house.

7 Like the Merina, the Zafimaniry kinship system largely subsumes spouses of children under the general category of children.

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What all this means is that, in some important contexts, grown up sons and daughters, their spouses and children will act and speak of the house of their parents as if it was the one to which they are principally attached. This is so in an emotional and symbolic way but also in a practical way since they will behave there just as though they had never left and they will share in the tasks which maintain the house. In particular they, together with their spouses and children, will contribute through their labour to the hardening and decorating of the parental house. The same will be true of grandchildren and subsequent generations.

The production, maturation, marriage and reproduction of descendants therefore leads to, and is necessary for, the continuing construction and beautification of the house of the original couple, or to put it another way, it leads to, and is necessary for, the continuation and growth of the process of the marriage of the original couple, a process which, it will be remembered, began weakly with the chaotic affection and sex that joined them as children but which, if successful, now stands evident and beautiful in the form of a proud building.

Ultimately the house of such a successful couple will become for the descendants a holy house. This means that this is a house where the descendants come to ask for blessing, the central act of Zafimaniry religion. If the original couple are still alive they will be asked in person, but if they are dead it is the central house post and the hearth which are addressed as though they were the human couple. These things in particular and the house as a whole have therefore by then become the successful couple itself which endures in this way in the form of a growing house and which indeed continues to multiply and grow, perhaps more than a hundred years after the house and couple was formed.

It is therefore not through birth as an individual but through marriage as a couple with a hardening and beautifying house that the person becomes a fixed and perma- nent element of Zafimaniry moral society. However, in the process whereby the person becomes part of the social order they pass from being a living couple to become a permanent wooden object.

It is therefore not as an individual but as a couple that the person becomes a permanent and significant member of society but clearly among the Zafimaniry, as elsewhere people are not born as couples and so it is necessary to consider what happens to individuals before they begin to be merged into a couple and a house.

Like other Malagasy, the Zafimaniry stress the malleability, softness, bendiness and wetness of infants in contrast to the hardness, rigidity and dryness of the adult and the dead. But unlike the Merina who hold similar ideas, the hardening, straightening and drying of the body occurs not so much in terms of what happens to the body but, as we saw, in terms of the hardening, becoming rigid and drying of houses. This means that the fundamental contrast is between an individual who has not yet begun the process of marriage/house creation and one who has.

The contrast between a non-house/social person and one who is engaged in house support is also informed by the contrast between hunting and gathering and the agriculture of householders. Children and young men (girls marry younger and there- fore become domesticated earlier) are typically unpredictable, continually mobile forest foragers. By contrast the married pair should be agriculturalists in order to

8 Trano Masina. 9 I have several examples of such cases.

Z A F I M A N I R Y B I R T H A N D K I N S H I P T H E O R Y 123

produce the boiled starch foods which are seen as the basis of life and which will support a growing family. This activity, based on swiddens, further increases the image of the anchoring to the central place which is the house.

For the Zafimaniry therefore, as they endlessly repeat, though admittedly in a half-joking manner, children and young people are animals, because of their lack of moral responsibility as well as because of their tireless vitality. In a similar way the Vezo told Astuti that young children were not yet living people and, although the Zafimaniry never said this exactly to me, I believe they would agree.

It is as if humans were of two sorts. Firstly, they are animal beings with wildness, strength and lack of localisation and morality. Secondly, these animal beings may turn into social and moral beings as they become married and householders. The passage from one state of being to another is gradual and somewhat different for girls and boys. It is never quite completed in life in that the living, however old, always retain a little of their original wildness and unsociability, but it is the fundamental change that occurs in people, while birth is much less significant since it does not mark entry into the social world.

This dichotomisation partly explains the startling lack of any attempt at disciplin- ing young children, especially of young boys, among the Zafimaniry. They will say that there is no point in teaching them good manners when they are still so animal-like. In fact young Zafimaniry children are a little like very much loved pets in Europe. Everybody is drawn to small children; adults will drool over them, hug them, nurse them and blow affectionately into their mouth, but nobody seems to see in them the future caretakers of society.

In order to understand Zafimaniry birth and coming into the world practices it is therefore essential to remember two facts. First, the child that is born is not born a socialhoral being and second its birth is an essential part of the process by which its parents become such a being, since it is a part of their marriage and house.

Zafimaniry birth

It is convenient to begin an examination of Zafimaniry concepts concerning birth with their ideas about conception.

The Zafimaniry are maddeningly vague about the nature of conception especially when asked what either parent contributes to the child as a result of sexual intercourse. Although the Zafimaniry are curious about this matter they are not sure. This is not a topic for dogma but for free, scientific, discussion. I was thus given a whole range of different theories by different people. For example I was sometimes told that the child is formed by the water of life which comes from the brain of the father through his

10 Although the Zafimaniry are shifting cultivators, their fields are created within fixed village terri- tories and arc used for up to seven years.

1 I The change may brgin to a certain extent for boys at circumcision but at the moment I dont think so. I need to go through my notes on Zafimaniry circumcision before being sure. Another element which goes against the analysis here is that I was once told that in the past children were given at their naming ceremony a toy axe in the case of boys and a toy kettle in the case of girls. This I am told is not done any more and I have serious doubts about whether it ever really was so.

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spinal cord via the penis in the form of semen and that this then solidified into the child, probably as bone. I was also told that mothers had in them an egg of life from which the foetus was formed and that the father merely fed this egg. I was told by some people that they had learnt from the Catholic priest during a retreat that the child comes from the mixture of the blood of the mother and the father. In fact, when I raised the subject I was commonly answered by questions concerning what I thought about this matter and most often people simply told me that they did not know.

There is thus little of certainty in strictly genetic beliefs. O n the other hand the Zafimaniry are much more confident about what affects the growth of the child in the mothers womb. Apart from a few not very serious taboos the Zafimaniry think of the process of in utero maturation as fairly unproblematic.* There is one idea that is continually alluded to. The child, before it is born, is presumed to be highly malleable to environmental influences. These influences, which will permanently affect the body and character of the child, include what the mother does when pregnant, the people with whom she has sexual relations, the people whom she comes into contact with and who live in the same house as her, the character and state of the house (or houses) she lives in, the weather and so on . . . In fact this malleability, which is linked to the ideas concerning the softness and wetness of the infant and embryo noted above, is believed to continue through infancy so that throughout the period until marriage the child is being affected in a permanent way, both in body and in mind, by its human and non- human environment.

The malleability of the embryo and young person is also demonstrated in a ritual celebrated with greatly varying elaboration according to wealth and circumstances. This is the custom called tolotra hanina or given food. The ritual consists principally of the giving of a chicken which has been cooked wholeI3 to a mother of an unborn or relatively young childI4 by a man.15 This gift is intended to ultimately feed the child and makes the child of the woman resemble the giver physically and psychologically. The giver is usually the father but it may be any other man, for example the mothers brother. There is also a particularly elaborated form of this ritual when a man who has had several daughters who have borne children will give such a chicken to his daughters for each of his grandchildren to make these grandchildren look like him. Although there is much to be said about this practice, I simply note its existence here as yet a further mark of the general concept of the malleability of the child not only in utero but also post partum, especially since this ritual shows the relatively small importance attributed to who the parents of the child are against the significance attributed to the environment.

Even if pregnancy seems viewed with very little apprehension the actual birth is, and is well realised to be, a time of very great danger. The event is usually only witnessed by women but this is said to be merely because men do not know about

12 A stillbirth or an aborted foetus is no great worry to the community at large and such an occurrence

13 Normally the Malagasy cut up chickens before cooking them. I could get no explanation of the

14 I saw this done for children up to the age of approximately eight. 15 I do not know whether it would be possible for a woman to make such a gift to a mother. All the

is a totally private and outwardly untraumatic event.

significance of cooking the bird whole.

cases I heard about involved men.

ZAFIMANIRY BIRTH AND K I N S H I P T H E O R Y 125

these things. After the birth the placenta is immediately buried near the hearth. It is essential that when it is buried by the midwife she looks neither to the right nor the left lest, as a result, the child should grow up with a squint. This belief is linked to the fact that, as in many parts of southeast Asia, the placenta is considered to be a twin of the child.

Immediately after the birth, or perhaps just before it, a model house is built on the bed of the house where the birth has taken place and the mother and child should remain in this for a period of up to two months. The overt reason for such a house is to keep the child and mother warm. This is because the whole process of birth is for the Zafimaniry, as elsewhere in Madagascar, thought of as a process requiring the warming of the child and the mother. This is because birth is a cooling process which threatens the mother as it opens her up to harmful drafts which will blow up her womb, and which, to a lesser extent, threaten the child.18 It is therefore essential that the mother be kept warm by fires and by the building of an interior house. For reasons con- sidered below there is quite a lot of ambiguity about the building of such a house and some villages taboo it altogether.

What most differentiates Zafimaniry concerns with birth from those of Europe is something which it is difficult to illustrate ethnographically but which informs the whole proceedings. While perhaps it is true that in Europe the practices surrounding birth are predominantly child-centred, the Zafimaniry birth practices, precautions and rituals are almost entirely mother-focused. It is the threat to her life that is of dominant concern and which is talked about and it is above all what happens to her which matters. Indeed Zafimaniry mothers very often die in childbirth and everybody, including them, know this and are very anxious. O n the other hand, it seems that the Zafimaniry attitude towards infant death and miscarriage is that this is not a great tragedy, at least to anybody except the mother herself, and then it is hoped she may forget. I was told on the occasion of a difficult birth, when the mother did indeed die, that it did not much matter if the child died since she (the mother) will have many other children but if she dies she is ended.

After the birth most people in the village will visit the house of the mother giving little presents in her honour and perhaps also blessing her. The most stressed moment connected with birth however, is the naming ceremony which takes place six days after the birth of girls and seven days after the birth of boys. The name seems to be chosen

16 Men are not necessarily excluded and some fathers hang about sheepishly during the delivery and get ordered about. For example, after I had asked about childbirth I was told by the mother of a young pregnant woman whom I know very well and whom I had known as a small child that, if I wanted, I could be present at the birth. She had no difficulty in agreeing. The suggestion caused much hilarity and a few scandalous hypotheses but I believe they meant it. Actually the child was unfortunately born after 1 left. Some of the information on childbirth was obtained by Rita Astuti when she visited me in the field.

17 Actually an older twin, because it comes out second and is therefore thought to have pushed out the younger sibling and thereby demonstrated its seniority. In other parts of Madagascar the placenta is thought to be a younger twin.

18 Premature cooling is often given as the cause of miscarriage. 19 Others seem to dare to build only an incomplete house and so taboo such houses with roofs.

20 This does not mean that there is also not real joy at the birth of the child. Birth is an event for Certain words for this house are also tabooed.

rejoicing and children are always welcomed whether the mother is married or not.

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most often by the mother of the mother. There are no very strict rules of naming but the names given are often puns or variants on other names of members of the family. Some rich people consult astrologers concerning the suitability of the name but this is uncommon.

The naming ritual is attended by the women who were present at the actual birth and the father and perhaps some other male relative such as the mothers father who, in the absence of a father, takes on the role. The main part of the ritual consists in the marking of the forehead of the child with soot from the hearth and covering the parents face, and then that of all others present, with chalk. Chalk is auspicious and a mark of blessing for most Malagasy but among the Zafimaniry it is also said to make clear o r bright. This theme is picked up again in the treatment of the umbilical cord. This is wound round some dried flattened bamboo from the roof of the house which is then lit and which burns particularly brightly. As the bamboo is burning the child is raised six times above the flames (the number for blessing among the Zafimaniry) and the following words are intoned, though not too seriously:

Bright, bright, May his eyes see clarity May he see lots of money/silver May he see rnoney/silver which has been dropped May he see rnoney/silver which has been lost!

The remains of the umbilical cord are then placed in a beehive if it is a boy and in a reed bed if it is a girl. This hive and reed bed will ultimately be inherited by the child after the death of the person to whom it belongs.

Analysls of the birth rituals and practices

So far in this chapter I have argued that for the Zafimaniry the entry into society occurs not at birth but as part of the process of marriage and house creation. This section will look in more detail how this general fact is reflected in the practices and ideas concerning birth discussed above.

The fact that the embryo and the infant are not seen as social beings accords well with the Zafimaniry lack of dogmatic theories about conception and their emphasis on the physical and psychological malleability of early life. What is being said is that the child is not made by either conception or birth. The embryo and the infant live in a state which precedes the process of determination, hardening, localisation and ulti- mately of substitution by the house which will mark maturation in life and beyond. The child is only a potential person and this potential, because of the high infant mortality rate will, in most cases, not be fulfilled. Children are therefore malleable. The birth of children is as interesting as the birth of animals, an interesting area for speculation but of no great ideological importance. Everything about these animal-

21 Hito Hito Dia mahirata mahirata Hohitan vola be hohitan vola totraka Hohitan vola very

Z A F I M A N I R Y B I R T H A N D K I N S H I P T H E O R Y 127

beings is fascinatingly thought-provoking and delightful but not important morally or socially.

This being so, the relative elaboration of birth practices calls for explanation since, for the ritual of name-giving at least, the analogy with what happens in other systems, such as Christian baptism, seems to suggest that it marks the childs entry into social life. Such a comparison is however misleading because it forgets the essential character of teknonyms in general and of the specific form they take among the Zafimaniry.

Any person who has produced a child, whether this child survives o r not, will always be called by a teknonym unless a most deliberate and serious insult is intended. The teknonym will most commonly refer to this first child but if the person has other children they may occasionally be addressed by teknonyms referring to these other children. Even after death, on the rare occasion when an ancestor will be referred to by name, as, for example, when a blessing is asked by the descendants in the ancestors house, the original teknonym will be used. Thus, as far as names are concerned, having produced a child transforms you for good. Furthermore, for most people, the name that is given at birth is totally abandoned as soon as they produce a child. The only adults who are not addressed by teknonyms are those people who have not produced a child and who have not been able to adopt one. These are people who cannot be fully married since having children is an essential part of the process of marriage, they are therefore not proper social beings and are the most despised members of Zafimaniry society. Their total social and moral failure is marked whenever they are addressed. I remember very well an old lady in my village to whom this had happened who was constrained into playing a perpetual clowning role in the village as a way of deflecting the lack of respect to which she continually feared she might be treated.

The name that is given in the naming ceremony is therefore much more a name for the parents than it is a name for the child and that is what is so misleading in comparing Zafimaniry name-giving with a practice such as baptism. Nothing shows better that name-giving is above all a matter for the parents than the fact that if the first child dies, even in early infancy, the teknonyms based on the name of that child will be retained by the parents for the rest of their lives and beyond, even if they have many sub- sequent children. The name-giving ritual, especially when it is for a first child, is therefore above all a celebration of the entry into society of the parents not of the child. It is a part of that general process of marriage (after all, as noted above, it links the parents together since henceforth they share their childs name as the basis of their two teknonyms) o r house creation which dominates Zafimaniry symbolism.23

Some of the more detailed aspects of the naming ritual are also understandable in this general view. Firstly, the marking with chalk of the two parents, and subsequently of the other people present, denotes the fact that the giving of the name is first of all a blessing for the parents which, again like the name of the child itself, links the spouses by the simple fact that their faces are decorated together.

Secondly, the marking of the child with soot from the hearth, an act which might, at first, seem child focused, conveys above all the linking of the child to its parents hearth, the core of their growing house process. It is almost as if what is being

22 In order not to hurt such a persons feelings people try to avoid addressing them by any name at all

23 Someone who is very young and whose parents are still active will not be addressed by their but even this marks their failure.

teknonym except on very formal occasions.

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celebrated by this action is the production of the child from the marital hearth in analogy with the food that is cooked there: an analogy reminiscent of that argued by Carsten for Malaysz4

Thirdly, the symbolism of clarity which, as appears from the spell, is in part concerned with the sight of the child, is also centrally linked to the symbolism of the house by the fact that it is a roofing bamboo which is being burnt to produce the clear light. This is because the roof of the house, with its two sloping sides, is often used in Zafimaniry symbolism to symbolise the unity of the married couple who live beneath it. Furthermore, in a way which can only be touched upon here, the symbolism of clarity in general is also closely linked to the image of the emerging and growing house.25

All these aspects of the naming ritual therefore emphasise that the birth of the child is socially important, not because it marks the childs entry into the social world, but because it is a part of the process of the growth of the parents houselmarriage.

The same theme emerges from the practices which occur at the time of the birth itself. The burial of the placenta near the hearth marks most strongly the attachment of the child to his parents house. The placenta, as noted above, is referred to as the twin of the infant. Twins for the Zafimaniry represent the closest possible kin relation and, as for all kin, but especially strongly in their case, what affects one affects the other. This is shown by the fact that the way the placenta is treated may mark the child. Furthermore, by burying the placenta of the child near the marital hearth the child is thereby tied for ever by the closest possible social tie to the houses destiny.

Apparently similar is the meaning of the building of the miniature house for the mother after the birth. This is a kind of hyper-house which encloses again the mother who has been opened by birth, and by extension emphatically stresses the childs attachment and containment by the house in which it is born.

Such an interpretation of the practice accords well with what the Zafimaniry say, but it also leaves us with a problem. If the symbolism is yet again this most acceptable of themes, why should the building of such a miniature house be surrounded by the ambiguities and the taboos mentioned above? The answer to this paradox is to be found in an aspect of Zafimaniry house symbolism on which I have so far barely touched.2b This is the fact that Zafimaniry houses retain all their children, grandchil- dren and so on, regardless of gender, since these all belong to the holy houses from which they are descended and from where they must obtain blessing. If this were not enough, because Zafimaniry marriage, to a certain extent, involves the adoption of a childs spouse by its parents, the inclusive and, one might say, predatory tendency of the Zafimaniry house to expand in terms of numbers is extraordinary. Such undiffer- entiation is problematic on an individual level in that it means that any Zafimaniry belongs to, a t least, the house of the parents of both its parents and of its spouse.27 This multiple affiliation results in a kind of inconclusive tug of war over children which continues throughout life and beyond, and which, among other things, leads young couples to oscillate their residence between the houses of their respective parents.

24 In Carsten and Hugh-Jones, eds., forthcoming. 25 This will be argued fully in Bloch, forthcoming a. 26 This is discussed more fully in Bloch, forthcoming b. 27 In many cases the spouses house is that of a parent.

Z A F I M A N I R Y B I R T H A N D K I N S H I P T H E O R Y I29

It is this element which explains the problem with the building of the house on the bed of the mother. The building of the hyper-house seems, in the case of the first three children at least, an emphatic and potentially exclusive celebration of the affiliation of the child to its mothers parents house. Such an emphasis therefore also carries the suggestion of the end of the marriage and house of the childs own parents since, if the child only belongs to his mothers side, this is a sign that the union of its parents has failed. This possibility is of course very real since such failure is quite a common occurrence, especially when the husband does not succeed in begging back his wife and child from her parents after a birth. The potential problem with building a house in the mothers parents home is therefore that it strongly suggests the possibility of her non-return to her marital home. Hence the variety of taboos and hesitations surrounding the building and naming of such a house, to the extent that in some villages there are rules that forbid such houses being completed with roofs, while in others they are forbidden altogether. Far from these taboos and hesitations negating the centrality of the house/marriage theme, they in fact take us ever more deeply into the symbolic logic of the system.

There is one element of Zafimaniry birth which, however, genuinely does not fit in with the logic of house/marriage. That is the pre-mortem inheritance of a beehive for boys and a reed bed for girls which occurs immediately after birth. The gift of these things is clearly child focused, they will remain its individual property and they herald the beginning of certain types of economic activities on its part.

In order to understand the significance of such a practice and how it relates to the dominant symbolism, it is necessary to understand the place of honey and mats, the products of beehives and reed beds, in Zafimaniry economy and thought. For them, as for other shifting cultivators, land is not a significant inheritable resource. The main transmitted property is the house. This remains the joint property of all the descend- ants of the original couple who founded it and which continues to unite and mystically guide them as house beings. Beehives and reed beds are different however. As means of production they are much less important than land but still they have considerable significance. However, unlike all other means of production they are owned individu- ally and therefore transmitted in a special way. Beehives are inherited from one man to another and reed beds are passed from one woman to another. As a result beehives and reed beds contrast with conjugal communal property as one gender alone individual property.

This is to the fact that honey and mats are intimately linked to a subordinate though significant aspect of the person which is never totally subsumed by the unity of the couple and the house during life. This element is the continuation in adulthood of a little of the pre house/marriage existence of the child with its association with the wild and hunting and gathering. This leftover of childhood is perhaps not too serious but is greatly valued as an outlet for occasional youth like individuality and fun. For adults the element is focused practically and symbolically in a number of ways on honey in the case of men and mats in the case of women.28 The giving of beehives and reed beds at birth is therefore an assurance that the new born will always retain access to that

28 Honey is produced by wild bees who come of their own accord into beehives which have been placed in trees. Honey is therefore thought of as a wild product. The reeds which are relevant here also grow wild but most importantly they are used by Zafirnaniry women to make mats which they sell individually and which produce a money income which they retain for themselves.

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individual world. These gifts therefore do genuinely stress another theme than that which dominates the principal symbolism of Zafimaniry birth. The dominant theme, however, remains that of house creation.

Apart from the qualification introduced by beehives and reed beds, it can there- fore be said emphatically that for the Zafimaniry the birth of a child does not mark its entry into social life, rather it is part of the wider process of the entry of its parents into that life. One could say, therefore, that for them, it is not so much the parents which produce the child but rather that its birth is part of the production of the parents as an enduring couple.29

Conclusion

It is now possible to return to the quotation from Fox with which I began this discussion. Clearly for the Zafimaniry he is right when he stresses that in Austronesian cultures birth does not determine. As for the Rotinese to whom he refers, it is the passage through life and its continuation after death which determines, so that kinship could be said to be created through death rather than through birth. But such a formulation needs qualifying, at least for the Zafimaniry, since for them, it is not simply the passage of an individual towards a final destination which matters in creating the person. Perhaps formulation would apply for the very beginning of the process, but rapidly the individual is subsumed into an undifferentiated couple and ultimately the couple whose joint destiny is what matters and which will itself be subsumed into an object, a house which grows, hardens and beautifies. Indeed, in the case of the Zafimaniry the idiom of launching, which in any case they do not use, is still too much what a European kinship system would lead us to expect. Birth, for them, does not even mark the beginning of the launching of the social/house being; birth only can be said to launch the uncertain and temporary animal-being whose abolition is ultimately necessary for the fulfilment of permanent social existence as a holy house.

But even taking such qualifications into account, Fox is right to generally contrast Austronesian systems with the African, European, Mediterranean and East Asian systems where birth does indeed seem to determine fundamental id en ti tie^.^' Building on such a distinction one could perhaps introduce a distinction in kinship studies between birth based systems and others, which would include tomb based systems, house based systems (like the Zafimaniry) and possibly food based systems. The implications of such a suggestion are clearly much too far reaching to be dealt with here. However, one thing is clear: much as the comparison of culturally different kinship systems is problematic, the comparison of different birth systems also requires great caution. However counterintuitive this might seem, we may not be dealing with the same phenomena in different places. At the very least the comparison

29 I am grateful to Janet Carsten for a variant of this formulation. 30 But then it is rather puzzling to find that on the next page Fox reiterates his earlier position

concerning Roti, since this is so clearly based on the determining significance of birth, at least as far as the clan element is concerned, which according to him, is inherited from fathers who give their children bones, skull and name while blood and life comes from the fathers wife givers. If that is so, Roti could easily be handled within traditional kinship theory and his strictures about Austro- nesian systems would not apply to Roti while they d o most strongly to the Zafimaniry. Perhaps it is time Fox revised what he has to say about the Rotinese in the light of his more general remarks.

Z A F l M A N l R Y B I R T H A N D K I N S H I P T H E O R Y 131

of birth requires a preliminary placing of birth within a wider framework of mean- ings.

Maurice Bloch Department of Anthropology London School of Economics and Political Science Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE U. K.

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