Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

67
embracing kinship terminology (and the remnants of it can be observed in
modern cultures, for instance, when one says about a close friend that they are
“like brothers” or “like sisters”) as a means of social relations’ comprehension
and legitimization. In particular, a society can recognize biologically nonrelatives
as such (for example, in cases of fictive parenthood or brotherhood),
the biological degree of a relative’s proximity to an ego can be “corrupted” due
to social norms (in cultures with classificatory systems of kinship within which,
for instance, no distinction between siblings and cousins, parents and aunts,
uncles can be made), or biological kinship can be socially ignored (in
particular, matrilineal relatives in patrilineal cultures and patrilineal relatives in
matrilineal).
All in all, I regard the aforesaid as vivid and clear indications of the
fact that, although biological ties never lose their importance, in society this
importance acquires social essence; even the function of population
reproduction is not an exception. In the final analysis, kinship is a biologyrelated
social event, like absolutely all the phenomena that exist in social milieu
and hence are inevitably objectified, categorized, and transformed by it. In
fact, one can feel it even in our own society with its Eskimo (Murdock 1949)
terminology of kinship which seems to bring biological kinship to conformity
with social: for example, do not we recognize as parents and expect fulfillment
of all the respective duties from a couple that has adopted an “other’s” child
from an orphanage?
In situations when the decrease in kinship relations’ role of social
bandage becomes the case, people have to rely mainly on their personal
abilities and opportunities, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to broaden
the sphere of social ties treating other people of the same social status within
the wider society as their equals. All this leads to individualization and
rationalization of not social relations only, but of the human mentality, culture
as well (Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000b: 307–308). Besides, this also leads
to the appearance of legal systems which presuppose equal justice under law
for all the citizens (Dozhdev 1990; 1993: 170–179). For example, it does not
seem to be a mere coincidence that in ancient Rome the development of the
democratic civitas was accompanied by loosening of kinship ties (Dozhdev
2004/2000), or that egalitarization of the North-East Yemeni communities in
the Middle Ages went hand in hand with disintegration of the kin mutual
assistance and transition from the clan to individual landholding (Korotayev
2000). The latter case acquires especial instructiveness in comparison with,
e.g., the highlanders of North Africa – the Berbers who live in rather similar
environment but are characterized by much stronger kinship ties and much less
egalitarian socio-political organization (Bobrovnikov 2000). 45
At dawn of the 20 th century Heinrich Schurtz (1902) and ultimately as
far back as in the middle of the last century British structuralists and American
Boasians demonstrated that Morgan (as well as Maine [1861; 1875] before and