Revision summary
Matriliny assigns membership through women. Residence may send the husband or the heir to another house. Richards named this the matrilineal puzzle. Nayar taravad, Trobriand avunculocality, and Khasi uxorilocality are the teaching cases. Repairs include mother’s-brother authority and visiting marriage, not a simple matriarchy.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Matriliny traces group membership through women. Residence often still places husbands, brothers, and children in houses that pull against that rule. The contradiction is structural, not a mistake of the people.
Body
The mismatch
- Descent in a matrilineal system makes a child a member of the mother’s clan. Property and office may pass to the sister’s son, as Malinowski recorded for Trobriand chiefs.
- Residence after marriage may be avunculocal, duolocal, or even patrilocal. The husband then lives among his own or his wife’s people, while the heir belongs to another house.
- Audrey Richards called this the matrilineal puzzle: men hold authority in the sister’s group but live as husbands elsewhere.
Cases
- Nayar of Kerala, in the older taravad described by Kathleen Gough, had visiting husbands. Children belonged to the mother’s house; genitor and pater were split.
- Khasi of Meghalaya are matrilineal and often uxorilocal. The youngest daughter keeps the house, yet men still seek political voice outside the hearth, which is why Nongbri and others stress gender politics inside matriliny.
- Minangkabau of Sumatra and Ashanti of Ghana show the same pull between the mother’s lineage and the husband’s compound.
- Garos and some Nairs after legal reform moved toward neolocal houses, which further splits descent from everyday residence.
What follows
- Contradiction does not mean chaos. Cross-cousin marriage, mother’s-brother authority, and visiting marriage are working repairs.
- Lévi-Strauss read alliance as another logic. The ethnographic point remains: matriliny is not matriarchy, and residence can undo what descent writes.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
In matrilineal societies, the child belongs to the mother-line while the married man often sleeps in another residential group. Trobriand, Nayar, and Khasi cases show the puzzle and its repairs.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Household and domestic group.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2022 · Q5(e)). View answer →
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Does matriliny mean women rule the state?
No. Office often sits with mother’s brothers. Descent through women is not female government.
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Has the contradiction vanished in India?
Legal property reform and neolocal jobs have changed Nayar and Khasi practice, but the structural tension is still taught from the older ethnography.
Same topic · past papers
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2016 · Q4(a) · Anthropology GS 1 · 20 marks
Discuss the principles governing production, distribution and exchange in simple societies. -
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