"An attempt to monopolize one's partner is always considered shameful and stupid," Hua writes, "and the villagers will mock it for a long time."
Incomprehensible as this might first appear, Hua explains the sense and practicality of Na mores, given their parameters. The society is matrilineal. Children belong to the mother's lignee (line of blood-related descendants of a common ancestor), and the basic relationships in a household are mother-child and brother-sister.
Siblings live and eat together all their lives, and raise whatever children the women bear. "We are closest to our mothers, our maternal uncles, and our brothers and sisters," a Na man told Hua. "To leave your mother and sisters for a wife, that would be shameful."
All the males of a household are called "uncle" by the children, and all children are treated equally no matter who their genetic father might be.
The incest taboo is strong and assiduously observed. Blood relatives of the opposite sex are even prohibited from discussing or hearing about sexual issues in one another's presence. The prohibition dictates that blood relatives of the opposite sex cannot appear together in a photograph, or watch television at the same time!
Na regard a vow of fidelity as shameful because it involves a negotiation or exchange, which goes against Na customs. As Hua explains, "Sexuality is not a piece of merchandise, but a purely sentimental and amorous matter that implies no mutual constraints."
The only time cohabitation of an unrelated couple occurs is when natural circumstances leave a household short of males or females and survival of the line is threatened. Adoption is the main solution, cohabitation—a "marriage" of sorts, with ritualized negotiations between entire families and gift exchanges—a last resort, the temporary solution to a crisis.
A few gender-dependent practices ring a faint bell for the Westerner. Men visit women's homes, not vice versa. Although women are free to accept and reject whichever partners they choose, a woman who initiates sex is disparaged as a "sow in heat charging through the fog."
Article comments
1 - DrPat
Great first post, David! Welcome!
The matrilineal society was also a common choice in Amerind cultures, and has been used as a backdrop for numerous science fiction novels. (Tepper's Raising the Stones comes to mind.)
I congratulate you for digging your way through this book, which by all accounts (see the reviews on the Amazon site) is "dry, clinical and exhaustive" and intended for the specialist.
Bravo!
2 - Bog B L
That's a real different perspective. But it is primitive, like the author said only 'diversity of sexual partners' is all what you get. Nature gave humans the neo-cortex, so that we can blend emotion and reason. Also dolphins are monogamous and they don't mind. If we can do Na style below 30 years it would be a woderful compromise to this crapy society.
3 - Danny
I read this book and found it very informative and inspiring to say the least. It would seem to me that the Na have a superior system of family structuring and community. It's been around roughtly 3000 years or longer. That's more than I can say for our own Judeo-Christian marriage based societies here in the west.