Kathleen Gough

The Origin of the Family

The trouble with the origin of the family is that no one really knows. Since Engels wrote The Origin of the Family. Private Property and the State in 1884, a great deal of new evidence has come in. Yet the gaps are still enormous. It is not known when the family originated, although it was probably between two million and 100,000 years ago. It is not known whether it developed once or in separate times and places. It is not known whether some kind of embryonic family came before, with, or after the origin of language. Since language is the accepted criterion of humanness, this means that we do not even know whether our ancestors acquired the basics of family life before or after they were human. The chances are that language and the family developed together over a long period, but the evidence is sketchy. Although the origin of the family is speculative, it is better to speculate with than without evidence. The evidence comes from three sources. One is the social and physical lives of non-human primates-especially the New and Old World monkeys and, still more, the great apes, humanitys closest relatives. The second source is the tools and home sites of prehistoric humans and proto-humans. The third is the family lives of hunters and gatherers of wild provender who have been studied in modern times. Each of these sources is imperfect: monkeys and apes, because they are not pre-human ancestors, although they are our cousins; fossil hominids, because they left so little vestige of their social life; hunters and gatherers, because none of them has, in historic times, possessed a technology and society as primitive as those of early humans. All show the results of long endeavor in specialized, marginal environments. But together, these sources give valuable clues.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND IMPERIALISM

This paper was first prepared for an audience of anthropologists in the United States of America, where I have taught and researched for the past twelve years. Some of the questions that it raises apply, although perhaps less acutely, to social and cultural anthropologists from the other industrial nations of Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The international circumstances to which I refer no doubt also create problems for anthropologists born and resident in a number of the Latin American, Asian, and African countries where much anthropological research is carried out. I should be especially glad if this paper stimulates some among the latter anthropologists to comment on how these circumstances are viewed by them and how they affect their work.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Indian Peasant Uprisings

AbstractThe past decade has seen an upsurge of peasant militancy in India, chiefly under the leadership of revolutionary communists who owe part of their inspiration to the Chinese revolution and e...

Imperialism and Revolutionary Potential in South Asia

The first part of this paper, dated November 11, 1971, was prepared for the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in New York, November 17-20, 1971 (a longer version appears in the January 1972 Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars). Part II was written subsequently and is dated January 6, 1972. Kathleen Gough is a research scholar in anthropology at the Institute of Asian and Slavonic Studies, University of British Columbia. —The EditorsThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Economics of Development in Village India.

The social, political and economic impact of the decline of the old colonial powers in Africa, India and the Middle East are still key areas of scholarly research and debate. Based on careful social observation and empirical research, these titles explore the tension between agriculture and industry in developing economies, and trace the complex political process of independence. Aimed at administrators and academics, these studies are central to Development Studies, and also present the work of renowned anthropologists such as Raymond Firth.

The Indian Revolutionary Potential

Peasant revolts in India have been historically less significant than in China, but during British rule they occurred more frequently than the Western literature suggests. Here I shall explore the character of peasant resistance in relation to political parties in Southern India, especially in Malabar, a region in the north of Kerala, and Tanjore, a district of southeast Madras.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.