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halls and genealogies as significant constituents of the lineage when in fact they were just status-symbols of a past era. In the end, that aspect of the lineage which constituted the product of an official culture must be distinguished from those real lineages "on the ground" having rights of settlement and built upon rules of inheritance and estate.
I would like to address my criticism with regard to three dimensions of his overall argument: 1) his assertion that the principles of lineage organization (i.e. descent) and village are distinct and that both then collaborate to produce a "lineage society" (his part 1), 2) his contention that the "great" lineages depicted in the historical and ethnographic literature are official "fictions" and thus should be dissociated from those real lineages on the ground” (his part 2), and 3) his argument that the appearance of lineage-villages and village-alliances in the "post-traditional” era was made possible only following the decline of the "great" clans (the historical relationship between parts 1 and 2). I think there are failures with respect to all three dimensions.
1
With respect to the first, frankly I see nothing in his alternative thesis which presents any salient criticism of Freedman's thesis or any serious understanding of the latter in its own terms. In fact, his basic argument would have been enhanced by not even referring to Freedman at all. Faure's attack on Freedman's focus on the apparent "coincidence of agnatic and local community” misses the mark completely because the actual local constitution of territorial groups was never a crucial concern in any of Freedman's monographs as it is for Faure as a local historian. In his preface to the first of two monographs on Chinese lineage organization, Freedman (1958:xii) recognized the existence of both single-lineage and multi-lineage villages in order to emphasize the thrust of his thesis as something quite other, namely the functional operation of the lineage (as descent group) in analytical terms, irrespective of how it happens to be constituted in territorial terms. As he put it rather unambiguously.
I must make it plain that while I attempt to remain faithful to the facts I have been able to adduce, the picture I gradually build up inevitably departs from reality by subsuming (territorial) variations under generalized heads. But if my picture of the localized lineage (as sociological ideal type) in
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halls and genealogies as significant constituents of the lineage when in fact they were just status-symbols of a past era. In the end, that aspect of the lineage which constituted the product of an official culture must be distinguished from those real lineages "on the ground" having rights of settlement and built upon rules of inheritance and estate.
I would like to address my criticism with regard to three dimensions of his overall argument: 1) his assertion that the principles of lineage organization (i.e. descent) and village are distinct and that both then collaborate to produce a lineage society" (his part 1), 2) his contention that the "great" lineages depicted in the historical and ethnographic literature are official "*fictions" and thus should be dissociated from those real lineages on the ground” (his part 2), and 3) his argument that the appearance of lineage-villages and village-alliances in the "post- traditional” era was made possible only following the decline of the "great" clans (the historical relationship between parts 1 and 2). I think there are failures with respect to all three dimensions.
1
With respect to the first, frankly I see nothing in his alternative thesis which presents any salient criticism of Freedman's thesis or any serious understanding of the latter in its own terms. In fact, his basic argument would have been enhanced by not even referring to Freedman at all. Faure's attack on Freedman's focus on the apparent "coincidence of agnatic and local community” misses the mark completely because the actual local constitution of territorial groups was never a crucial concern in any of Freedman's monographs as it is for Faure as a local historian. In his preface to the first of two monographs on Chinese lineage organization, Freedman (1958:xii) recognized the existence of both single-lineage and multi-lineage villages in order to emphasize the thrust of his thesis as something quite other, namely the functional operation of the lineage (as descent group) in analytical terms, irrespective of how it happens to be constituted in territorial terms. As he put it rather unambiguously.
I must make it plain that while I attempt to remain faithful to the facts I have been able to adduce, the picture I gradually build up ineviably departs from reality by subsuming (territorial) variations under generalized heads. But if my picture of the localized lineage (as sociological idealtype) in
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