DIANE E.
KING
Lineal masculinity:
Gendered memory within patriliny
A B S T R A C T
In this article, we present a model of gender within
patrilineal descent for a broad region covering Asia,
Europe, and North Africa. We develop the concept of
“lineal masculinity,” a perceived ontological essence
that flows to and through men over the generations.
It is especially expressed through people’s notions
of the past, present, and future of their
patrilineages. We elaborate lineal masculinity in
terms of male achievement, lineage founders,
lineage segmentation, and male reproduction. Our
model offers cross-cultural analysis and so provides
an alternative to the position of strong cultural
relativism in kinship and gender studies. [patriliny,
masculinity, lineage theory, kinship, gender, identity,
memory]
AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 323–336, ISSN 0094-0496, online
ISSN 1548-1425. C 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01258.x
University of Kentucky
LINDA STONE
Washington State University
I want to be remembered by my children, my grandsons. . . . I want to
achieve something so that my name will stay forever.
—Mohammed Ali Salih, 58-year-old Kurdish man, Kurdistan Region,
Iraq, 2008
n this article, we offer a new model of gender within one mode of
I
kin reckoning, namely, patrilineal descent, or patriliny. We develop a
concept of (bio)cultural reproduction that we call “lineal masculin-
ity.” Lineal masculinity flows through time, through males to succes-
sive generations. Only sons pass it on. Masculinity within patriliny is
linealized in ways that femininity is not because it is connected to ontology:
Only men are considered generative persons who can create other persons
through the procreative act (a point Carol Delaney [1986, 1987, 1991] ar-
gues and elaborates on). An ideal patrilineage continues its pattern of gen-
erating new members through fathers for many generations. Most promi-
nent patrilineages replicate one or more honorific categories originating
with the male lineage founder and successively serving as a label for all of
his patrilineal descendants. Lineal masculinity is communal in the sense
that it is received from one’s patrilineal forebears and shared with colat-
erals. Each individual man builds on, maintains, or diminishes whatever
lineal masculinity he has received from his lineage (most directly, his fa-
ther). A man seeking to build on received lineal masculinity typically needs
charismatic leadership ability.
Our model of gender within patriliny contrasts with the approach of
strong cultural relativism that is currently dominant in kinship studies in
anthropology. This relativist position followed on the demise of kinship in
the 1970s, brought about, in part, by David M. Schneider (1972:59), who
made the devastating pronouncement that kinship was an invalid cross-
cultural category. Schneider argued that “kinship” in anthropology had,
all along, been rooted in notions of biological reproduction that reflected
a Euro-American cultural bias and were not universal. In 1987, Sylvia J.
Yanagisako and Jane Collier sought to do for “gender” what Schneider had
American Ethnologist  Volume 37 Number 2 May 2010
done for “kinship.” They drew a sharp parallel: Just as the
concept of “kinship” in anthropology had been distorted
by Western, or Euro-American, cultural assumptions about
biological connections among people, so too the study of
“gender” had been seriously flawed by Western cultural no-
tions of male and female biological differences in reproduc-
tion. They and others demonstrated that some cultures do
not necessarily see male–female sexual difference and re-
production of human life in this way (for a review, see Stone
2004).
Yanagisako and Collier argued that anthropology
should see kinship and gender as “mutually constituted”
or as “two sides of the same coin” on the very basis that
they had both suffered distortion from Western cultural per-
ceptions of biology and sexual difference. The two fields
of study should be “a single field that has not succeeded
in freeing itself from notions about natural differences be-
tween people” (Yanagisako and Collier 1987:15).
Earlier feminist writers had argued that biological dif-
ferences between males and females are real but that they
are interpreted and evaluated differently in various cul-
tures such that gender is a cultural construction, not rooted
in human biology. With Collier and Yanagisako, the male–
female biological differences themselves became “cultural
constructions,” that is, not metacultural realities. This posi-
tion became known as “cultural constructivism.” It asserted
that cultures construct reality, not that cultures interpret re-
ality in different ways and certainly not that external reali-
ties shape cultural constructions.
With this position of relativism, Collier and Yanag-
isako argued that kinship and gender could only be under-
stood from within each society separately, echoing the po-
sition of relativism Schneider had taken with kinship. Their
work was highly influential and did inspire richer ethno-
graphies, with greater attention to local cultural perspec-
tives on kinship, gender, sexual difference, and reproduc-
tion (see, especially, articles in Carsten 2000; Franklin and
McKinnon 2001; Schweitzer 2000; Yanagisako and Delaney
1995). There were, however, criticisms of this approach. Ob-
jections were raised as to the legitimacy of discounting bi-
ology so fully, refusing it any role in accounting for gender
cross-culturally (Scheffler 1991; Stone 2010). Another crit-
icism was that this approach failed to establish a mean-
ingful basis for seeing kinship and gender as a single field.
The question was raised, does it really make sense to ar-
gue that kinship and gender be seen as “mutually con-
stituted” because both were subjected to the same error
in anthropological thought (Stone 2001:18 n. 4, 2004:249)?
John Borneman (1996) also raised objections to Collier and
Yanagisako’s model of gender in relation to anthropologi-
cal discourses on marriage. Finally, many anthropologists
were uncomfortable with an approach that, although not
against comparative ethnography, was so focused on local
constructions that it undermined cross-cultural compar-
324
isons (Carsten 2000, 2004) and so lost sight of any broader,
regional patterns of kinship and gender. That kinship and
gender could only be understood from within particular
cultures discouraged a search for cross-culturally relevant
analytical categories.
In this article, we offer an alternative approach to kin-
ship and gender that preserves attention to local cultural
constructions of both but also lends itself to cross-cultural
comparison and allows for the detection of kinship and gen-
der patterns obtaining across cultures and within broad re-
gions. We propose that kinship and gender can, indeed,
be seen as “mutually constituted,” not because they have
shared a flaw in their anthropological past but because cru-
cial dimensions of gender are transmitted through struc-
tures of kinship. In so doing, we follow R. W. Connell, one of
the major theorists of masculinity, who argued that ethnog-
raphy can only be part of a social science of gender by
“recognizing the social relations that are the conditions for
producing ethnographic knowledge” (2005:33). For us, the
social relations engendered by patriliny produce a mas-
culinity with a linealized dimension.
We open with an elaboration of lineal masculinity
within patriliny, framing our discussion in terms of male
achievement and lineage founders. This discussion then
leads us to consider a new model for lineage segmentation.
Finally, we argue for the significance of patrogenesis and the
relevance of lineal masculinity to male reproduction and
fertility. This article is based on a survey of the relevant liter-
ature as well as on research conducted by King among Iraqi
Kurds since 1995 and work by Stone in Nepal from the 1970s
to the 1990s.
Locating patriliny and lineal masculinity
Patriliny is found in many parts of the world, but the area
that extends from Morocco to Pakistan (most of which is
now known in international relations as the Middle East
and North Africa [MENA] region) is one where it holds
great sway, perhaps with greater intensity and geographical
contiguousness than anywhere else. We are aware of only
two nonpatrilineal groups in this area: Jews and Tuareg.
Some traditions within Judaism, including the legal sys-
tem in Israel, recognize matrilineal succession of Jewish-
ness from one generation to the next. Many Tuareg trace
both matrilines and patrilines, the former being older and
the latter being attributed to more recent Islamic influence
(Rasmussen 1991). Otherwise, people belonging to the cul-
tures in this contiguous area recognize and practice a rather
rigid form of patrilineal descent encompassing identity cat-
egories ranging from inheritance practices (many derived
from Islamic law) to membership in the state (citizenship),1
and any changes in the characteristics of patriliny that may
be occurring appear to be ones of degree, not kind.2

Patriliny is well represented in major sacred texts, in-
cluding in the Bible and Quran. In ancient Egypt, “men were
castigated if they were unable to father children, as their
virility was called into question along with the inability to
found a lineage” (Meskell 1999:62). Leila Hudson describes
an “extreme” form of patriliny in Ottoman dynastic prac-
tices in which the sultans’ concubines “were retired after
the birth of one male child” (2005:333) and thereafter ded-
icated themselves completely to their son’s advancement
as a potential successor to the throne. More universally,
among Arab states, only Tunisia and Morocco currently al-
low women to pass citizenship to their children.3
Patriliny has been a salient feature of much of the pop-
ulation of China for centuries. Even in emphasizing mu-
table kin relations produced and transformed over time
against a “male-dominated system of rigidly-defined ag-
natic groups,” Charles Stafford concedes that patriliny still
“does carry great force in China” (2000:38). Robert P. Weller’s
description of idealized Chinese lineage tracing emphasizes
its durability and masculine properties:
In theory Chinese families extended back in time for
millennia and would continue on indefinitely in a line
traced from fathers to sons. Ancestor worship was one
of the many media that made such a view meaningful;
it commemorated the patriline in tablets on a promi-
nent altar in the front room of the house (and some-
times in communal lineage halls) and required periodic
worship. [1999:341]
Monica Das Gupta et al. call patriliny in India, China, and
Korea, where the majority of people belong to various pa-
trilineal ethnic and cultural groups, “strikingly similar” and
note that “only men constitute and reproduce the social or-
der . . . the significant social reproduction is that by the fa-
ther of the son” (2000:2). Das Gupta argues that the striking
preference for sons evident in current demographic data for
China can be accounted for by “the fact that people want
sons in order to continue the husband’s lineage” (2008:4).
Patriliny is and, historically, has been found in many
other places as well. In most European states, citizenship
was passed from one generation to the next by fathers, and
not mothers, until the second half of the 20th century, and
many other customs and laws favored male succession, or
inheritance of both tangibles (such as land) and intangi-
bles (such as social status), or both. In the western British
Isles between ca. 1100 and 1400, “it was within this world
of lineages that the individual found his identity, both in
time in his descent from the lineage founder and laterally
in terms of his parentes and cognati” (Davies 2001:176).
Michael Herzfeld argues that “agnatic logic” is still alive
and well in Europe even though “Western European coun-
tries . . . consider themselves long shed of such embarrass-
Lineal masculinity  American Ethnologist
ing hints of prehistory” (2005:121). This agnatic bent per-
sists despite the relegation of high fertility and patriarchal
values to an imagined and denigrated “peasant” past in
modern European subject formation (Krause 2005). Thus,
patriliny and the concept of “lineal masculinity” it often en-
tails are applicable to the broad region of Eurasia, although
most of our discussion in this article centers on the Middle
East and South Asia.4 We also do not think it inappropri-
ate to include groups that exhibit the traits on which we fo-
cus and that are found adjacent to this area, for example,
the Nuer of Sudan and the West African Mole-Dagmane–
speaking peoples.
Focusing on Eurasia recalls the work of Jack Goody
(1973, 1976, 1990), whose insights on the socioeconomic
development and domestic patterns of this region are rel-
evant to our model. Goody drew a broad contrast between
preindustrial Eurasian societies, in which marriage pay-
ments in the form of dowry were (and in many areas still
are) prominent, and societies of sub-Saharan Africa charac-
terized by bridewealth. Eurasian dowry is wealth that par-
ents bestow on a daughter at her marriage, but its ultimate
purpose is to serve as an economic resource for the couple
and to be inherited by their children. Together with the in-
herited property a groom brings to the marriage, the dowry
becomes part of what Goody called a “conjugal fund.” In
some Eurasian societies, wealth passes from the groom’s
family to that of the bride (and so is sometimes referred to as
“bridewealth” by ethnographers), but most of this too winds
up in a conjugal fund, which Goody referred to as “indirect
dowry.” True bridewealth, as seen in sub-Saharan Africa, is
wealth that passes from the kin of the groom to the kin of
the bride, with whom it stays.
Goody then linked this contrast between dowry in
Eurasia and bridewealth in Africa to differences in agricul-
tural practices and modes of inheritance in these regions. In
(precolonial) Africa, subsistence agriculture was carried out
by shifting cultivation with a hoe or digging stick. Land was
abundant and corporately controlled by kinship or residen-
tial groups; rights of use to this land passed through these
groups over the generations. Other property was transmit-
ted “homogeneously”; that is, males inherited from males
and females from females. This system, to Goody, was found
in and highly compatible with societies not stratified into
socioeconomic classes. Bridewealth flowed between kin
groups (out with a son, in with a daughter) but, signifi-
cantly, did not accumulate over time inside any one group.
In Eurasia, by contrast, the development of plow agricul-
ture increased productivity, promoted population growth,
and drew agriculture into exchange production as well as
subsistence, all of which made land a more valuable but
less abundant commodity. Ultimately, land became private
property, and ownership of land became a basis of differen-
tial social status. Thus, plow agriculture was a major factor
325
American Ethnologist  Volume 37 Number 2 May 2010
in the development of socioeconomic classes throughout
Eurasia. For those groups at the top of this system, “it be-
came a strategy of upmost importance to preserve those
[socioeconomic] differences for one’s offspring, lest the
family and its fortunes decline over time” (Goody 1973:25).
Class endogamy was the mechanism by which this was ac-
complished, and dowry marriage was used to ensure class
endogamy. Although there were, and are, regional differ-
ences in how dowry transactions actually worked, in these
Eurasian systems both males and females became inheri-
tors of natal family wealth; sons were typically direct heirs
of land, and daughters inherited wealth in the form of mov-
able property and cash. To ensure class endogamy (and,
hence, the continued socioeconomic well-being or better-
ment of their offspring), parents sought a rough match in
the economic value of the dowries of prospective brides
and the inheritance of prospective grooms. Goody wrote
that it is this matching of wealth that lies behind the En-
glish expression of marriage “as a ‘match,’ a word that im-
plies the pairing of like to like” (1976:14). Because fam-
ily property and its transmission were at stake in dowry
marriages, parents strictly controlled the unions of their
offspring.
In this Eurasian context, then (and in contrast to sub-
Saharan Africa), patrilineal groups were concerned with
wealth and status and the preservation or, better yet, en-
hancement of both over time. Although Goody related the
bridewealth–dowry contrast to other contrasts in the soci-
eties of Eurasia and Africa, he had little to say about the im-
plications of his theory for gender. He did write of women
in Eurasian dowry systems that “it is a commentary on their
lot that where they are more propertied they are initially
less free as far as marital arrangements go” (Goody 1973:21).
Later, he suggested that one way to prevent women from
forming inappropriate relationships with males on their
own was to “place a high positive value on premarital vir-
ginity, for sex before marriage could diminish a girl’s honor,
and reduce her marriage chances” (Goody 1976:17). Other
writers, such as Alice Schlegel (1991), proposed that the use
of dowry to preserve and perpetuate socioecomonic classes
was interrelated with elements in Eurasian cultural values
centering on female purity and the notion that the honor of
a kin group rests on the sexual purity of its natal women. An
especially important point for Schlegel was that female vir-
ginity had to be guarded in the upper classes to prevent a
woman from being impregnated by a lower-class male who
might then make a claim to her property. But neither Goody
nor later writers drew out the implications of this same sys-
tem for men and cultural ideas of masculinity. How does a
class-stratified Eurasian patriliny affect men, whose mar-
riages, economic activities, and reproduction will be piv-
otal to the maintenance and transmission of identity, status,
and wealth over the generations? We turn to this question
below.
326
Masculinity, patriarchy, patriliny
“Masculinity” can be expressive, fluid, and dynamic.
Matthew Gutmann identifies broad definitions of mas-
culinity within anthropology—“anything that men think
and do,” “anything men think and do to be men,” and
“anything that women are not”—and he notes that “some
men are . . . ‘more manly’ than other men” (1997:386). Us-
ing a distillation of his definitions and drawing, as Gutmann
does, on Herzfeld’s (1985) now-classic emphasis on per-
formativity, we take masculinity to be expressions of male
identity and how it is conceptualized, described, and per-
formed. This adaptable and fluid set of defining concepts
links masculinity to the state of being a man. But this flu-
idity does not rule out assertions, such as ours here, that
patriliny can bring about shared features of masculinity
among different cultural groups. A social constructionist
approach need not overcorrect in downplaying social struc-
tures. In an important early article, Deniz Kandiyoti’s (1994)
reexamination of authoritarian expressions of masculinity
in the “segregated societies” of the Middle East led her to
assert that varying power positions between males were
more important in masculinity formation than she had pre-
viously argued. In his introduction to an edited volume on
masculinities in Islamic contexts, Lahoucine Ouzgane as-
serts that they “emerge as a set of distinctive practices de-
fined by men’s positionings within a variety of social struc-
tures” (2006:2). In these and the many other assertions in a
similar vein found across the literature, we find an opening
for our “lineal masculinity” model.
Moreover, significant numbers of ethnographers work-
ing in patrilineal societies have argued directly for linkages
between patriliny and particular expressions of masculin-
ity, with reference to contemporaneous groups of males as
well as individuals. Some of the authors in Ouzgane’s 2006
volume touch directly on patriliny and its concomitants,
especially Marcia C. Inhorn (2006), in whose work there
and elsewhere we find great support for our model. In ear-
lier work, Ouzgane identifies in patrilineal North African
culture a “prevailing . . . reduction of masculinity to viril-
ity” (1997:11). Herzfeld (2005:206) goes so far as to con-
flate patriliny and masculinity in describing a Greek po-
litical debate in which one man verbally attacks another
by accusing him of lacking a patriline. Within patriliny in
Pakistan, the father is “the role model for his sons. He is
the one who trains them in lineage pride, in the proper
attributes of manliness, in the etiquette of relationships”
(Lindholm 1981:515). Gilbert H. Herdt has described a ritu-
alized male homosexuality cult among the Sambia of New
Guinea that takes masculinity within patriliny to a novel
end within a social order that heavily privileges the male
over the female and in which men fantasize that “men,
alone, created all that is human” (1994:270). Suad Joseph
argues in a memoir of settling her Lebanese father’s estate

that “Lebanese patrilineal, patriarchal culture . . . channels
personages through masculinized genealogies” (1996:54).
On the basis of our own fieldwork and that of others we
cite here, our model is an assertion that masculinity can be
lent greater force by characteristics that often co-occur with
patriliny. These include patrilocality; relatively high fertil-
ity, or son preference, or both; and patrogenesis (the idea
that a fetus is created by a man and deposited in a woman;
a synonym is monogenesis). David G. Gilmore (2001) cites
examples from diverse cultures in which he sees patriliny
and associated features such as patrilocality as contribut-
ing to misogyny and misogynistic values. Given the ongoing
saliency of these and other features of patriliny, this article
is an invitation to reexamine the institution with attention
to masculinity, a concept on which anthropologists infre-
quently elaborated when most of the scholarship on kin sys-
tems was written. Indeed, we suggest that the persistence of
patriliny in areas where it is found is in large part due to its
strong connection with attendant ideas of masculinity. In
our model, a patriline is not only a line of fathers and sons
through time but it is also a “mascu-line” that enhances and
gives form to masculinity.
Time and lineal masculinity
Meyer Fortes, one of the most prolific writers on patriliny
during the mid-20th century, describes the concept of
“naam” recognized by Mole-Dagmane–speaking peoples in
West Africa: “Naam, fluid-like, is all-pervasive; it comes
from the hero founders of the Mamprussi stock and body
politic who first created it. By the lineage principle all the
patrilineal descendants, recognized or putative, of the hero
founders, wherever they may have wandered, have a stake
in it” (1967:12). The hero founders’ memory is sustained
through reference to a fluid, a semen analogy, coursing
through the generations.
Masculinity that is lineal is not merely present oriented;
by definition, its referent is the past that was, or the future
that can be, or both. Patriliny bequeaths not only name,
kinship status, family wealth, and so on, but also specifi-
cally male identity, a quality of masculinity that applies to
individuals and to groups of patrilineally related persons.
In the Middle East, where King carries out research, this
male identity becomes sustainable over time, and through
successive patrilineal generations, when it is expressed in a
man’s achievement—his doing of something memorable—
and when the collective memory of that man’s achieve-
ments is kept alive through oral tradition. Such achieve-
ment includes a limited number of activities—success in
battle or politically; religious conversion or instrumental-
ity, such as becoming a Sufi leader or mullah; and becom-
ing wealthy—on which men capitalize to become leaders.
The region is a place where fathers live on—fathers of sons
(Borneman 2007:11), fathers of nations (Özyürek 2006:94).
Lineal masculinity  American Ethnologist
In Nepal, where Stone carried out research from the 1970s
through 1990s, lineages place less emphasis on collective
memory of individual males’ achievements, but they are
still defined through continuity of male descent and typi-
cally originated with the arrival of the lineage founder to a
new location.
We emphasize that our model of lineal masculinity ac-
counts for a longer time period than two generations, which
distinguishes it from the vast amount of scholarship, be-
ginning mainly with Sigmund Freud but stretching back to
the classics, on masculinity vis-à-vis father–son relation-
ships. Certainly father–son dyads represent extremely im-
portant nodes in every patrilineage, but our model is based
on lineages representing three or more generations. Ahmad
Beydoun (2000), for example, poignantly contextualizes his
relationship to his Lebanese father as part of the larger
process of the making of a patriline. Some patrilineages
within civilizations with a strong written tradition, such as
the Islamic and Chinese, may trace themselves back to a
founder who lived hundreds of years ago. Ideal men in pa-
trilineal societies are fathers who impart to their descen-
dants a masculine legacy, but their own offspring are just
the start of that legacy, not its culmination.
Past-focused lineal masculinity
History is an important component of the lineal mas-
culinity model because achievements by individuals take
place in social, political, and temporal contexts. Lineal mas-
culinity offers a new model for lineage segmentation, a
topic that occupied anthropologists in vigorous debate for
several decades in the 20th century (e.g., Evans-Pritchard
1969; Fortes 1945, 1949, 1953, 1967). One problem with
the study of so-called segmentary lineages had to do with
how lineages worked as a basis for political processes. They
were seen as mechanisms for ensuring “balanced opposi-
tion” in stateless societies and so functioning to ensure so-
cial stability (Holy 1996; Parkin 1997). Thus, interpersonal
and intergroup conflicts were addressed and confronted
as different segments in the hierarchical kinship structure
massed together according to their respective levels in the
descent system. In the classic case of the Nuer (Evans-
Pritchard 1969), “while segments of lineages may have dis-
putes among themselves, they combine when faced with
the hostility of another lineage; similarly, different lineages
will temporarily postpone their own conflicts when the clan
of which they are all a part is threatened by another clan”
(Parkin 1997:151). Thus, conflict is expressed but overall so-
cial order and stability is maintained.
Anthropologists soon realized that actual political be-
havior in these societies was far “messier” (Carsten 2004:12)
than their models of segmentary lineages would suggest.
Just how “messy” was well demonstrated by Paul Dresch
(1986) in his analysis of the influence of events on tribal
327
American Ethnologist  Volume 37 Number 2 May 2010
segmentation in Yemen and Morocco. For decades, numer-
ous anthropological analyses and debates focused on the
problem of how segmentary lineages worked in terms of
political processes and how closely or not the anthropolo-
gists’ models fit the natives’ own perceptions of their own
societies.
A related problem in segmentary lineage discussions
had to do with how lineages split off from one another
over time as they became too large to handle their af-
fairs. As Ladislav Holy describes it, “Segmentation gen-
erally takes place along the cleavages or lines of fission
implicit in the lineage itself. For example, a patrilineal lin-
eage is most likely to split into two parts in terms of de-
scent from one or the other of its founders’ sons” (1996:76).
As with their models for political actions and loyalties, this
one relied on anthropologists’ focus on kinship charts and
graphs (and logical points of breakage) rather than on prac-
tice, and so the playing out of the models again began to
look “messy.”
In a lineal masculinity model, how lineages split and
form new lineages over time is straightforward: A new lin-
eage is created when a man’s patrilineal descendants be-
yond his sons recognize him as their founder. Eventually, a
lineage is recognized as a new freestanding entity that con-
tains men who keep its lineal masculinity going through
time. A lineal masculinity model takes the stress off kin-
ship charts and graphs and ahistorical theoretical mod-
els and simply puts it on autonomous men taking ac-
tion and on memory making through male descent lines.
Collective memory is masculinized and codified as male
achievement transmitted through patrilines. “In social sys-
tems based on idealized agnatic bonds,” writes John Carmi
Parsons for medieval Europe, “masculinity/superiority is
associated with autonomy and femaleness/inferiority with
dependence, connections that conform to and strengthen
prevailing social structures” (1999:284).
Lineal masculinity can be expressed through culturally
specific and pervasive ideas of “honor,” a value or set of val-
ues that is upheld by both men and women but has forms
of expression specific to the respective genders. The em-
phasis we place on male achievement as essential to shared
and transmissible kinship identity has been captured by
Michael E. Meeker’s discussion of “clan sharaf” (clan honor)
in Turkey. Again, the emphasis is on deeds by a man (or
men), remembered:
A man’s ascendants may be known for their heroic ex-
ploits in local wars, further back they may have taken
part in the victorious Ottoman expansion into Europe,
and even further back they may have participated in
the conquest of Asia Minor by the Muslims. Pious acts
on the part of ascendants also become part of the
clan sharaf. . . . But the sharaf of a clan should not be
viewed as consisting of any set of piecemeal accom-
328
plishments. The sharaf of a clan is a totality of signif-
icance derived from acts accomplished by its ascen-
dants. [Meeker 1976:246]
A man’s possibilities for being remembered for his
achievements will be especially enhanced by an erasure
of the memory of his own patrilineal forebears or by his
achievements so trumping those of his forebears that, with
the passage of time, their memory no longer seems worthy
of sustenance. In Iraqi Kurdistan, King identified two main
circumstances that could lead to this: a cataclysmic change
in identity, such as a religious conversion, or migration (or
both).
Many stories of lineage founders begin with a reference
to the founder arriving in the interviewee’s present location.
Collective memory begins with his arrival, followed by his
achievements or ways in which he had distinguished him-
self. Kurdish interlocutors confirmed to King that they did
not think it possible for a lineage to have within it adherents
of different religions. By default, then, a male convert who
has male offspring begins a new lineage, and his new reli-
gious identity is transmitted down the patriline. One inter-
viewee recounted the story of the man who had bequeathed
her his patronym. He had been Jewish but had converted to
Islam after killing a man in an effort to avoid prosecution
under Jewish religious law. His brother had done the same
but had reverted and later emigrated with his family to the
(then) new state of Israel. For the interviewee and her fam-
ily, the descendants of the convert’s brother are of great in-
terest, and she expressed a strong desire to meet them, but
they are technically no longer considered to be a part of the
same lineage.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, one of King’s regular host house-
holds was composed of an elderly woman, until her death
in 2005, as well as several of her eight adult children, now
in their forties and fifties—married sons with their spouses
and children and unmarried daughters. The family belongs
to a strongly defined lineage, with a founder whose name, it
was said when King first met some of its members in the late
1990s, was perpetuated by at least 600 living men. Many of
the male lineage members who are currently living have had
trouble finding meaningful employment or making a satis-
factory living from farming. A few, however, have achieved
very high standing in business, politics, and academia, both
inside and outside Iraq.
During the 12-year period that King visited members
of this lineage, she heard constant talk of male achievement
or lack thereof. People talked about men outside the house-
hold and lineage who have become leaders. They talked
about men of the household and lineage who have not be-
come prominent enough and compared them with other
men. One of the men had a running joke with King, in which
he complained melodramatically about his various busi-
ness ventures or failures and expressed dissatisfaction with

his current employment or latest business failure. These
conversations were often contextualized within narratives
about past lineage members’ high achievements. The men
of this household, and their close female relatives, seemed
particularly distressed that their achievements were no
match for their father’s, their father’s father’s, and those of
other patrilineal forebears.
In these same conversations, the lineage members also
mentioned their lineage founder, a man who had started
the lineage on its way to acquiring the large amounts of
land that made them very wealthy. In arguing that their
rightful social place was in a high-income bracket stem-
ming from a respectable line of business or employment,
the men invoked their ancestor. They also invoked his sons,
and his sons’ sons, who had achieved highly. One had
been a high government official in Baghdad several decades
earlier. Several of these men achieved great wealth from
agriculture and other ventures. Some were tribal leaders,
and this led to their becoming heads of militias that re-
ceived a generous stipend from the state to fight the Kur-
dish resistance movement. As the descendants of these
noteworthy men, they said, it was their right to continue
to bring honor (sharaf ) to the lineage, through their own
contributions.
Present and future-focused lineal masculinity
Having described how lineal masculinity works with regard
to the past, we now turn to the present and future and,
specifically, to individual men as actors within patrilineal
systems.
As the above example illustrates, lineal masculinity re-
ceived from earlier generations can put pressure on men. A
man may feel that he should equal or better the standard of
achievement set so far in his lineage, and if it is high, this
may prove difficult. Kurdish men’s frustration at the high
levels of unemployment in Iraqi Kurdistan during the 1990s
contributed to high rates of out-migration (King 2005). The
sense of failure felt by men who failed to fulfill the expec-
tations engendered by membership in a respected lineage
could be all the more distressing.
In a strongly patrilineal society, virtually everyone
(other than a foundling or the child of a woman known to
have multiple sex partners, such as a prostitute) is seen as
belonging to a patrilineage. A potential new lineage is cre-
ated, in a technical sense, when a man fathers his first son,
but, as we have emphasized, the lineage achieves sustain-
ability and recognition when a man’s patrilineal descen-
dants beyond his children recognize and refer to him as
their founder.
Whether or not a male comes into life and adulthood
as a member of a recognized lineage, his lineal masculinity
finds its ultimate expression in the founding of a new lin-
Lineal masculinity  American Ethnologist
eage. All men in patrilineal societies are, in theory, able to
start a significant new lineage, whether or not they already
belong to one. To be recognized later as a lineage founder,
a man lacking a pedigree may have to work harder or come
into greater fortune (whether entirely of his own making or
not) than a man with a strong masculine legacy received
from his patriline. At the same time, he may enjoy greater
possibilities for lineage foundership because he does not
have any forebears whose reputations he must trump to be
seen as a lineage originator.
Oftentimes, perhaps the majority of the time, the
recognition of a particular man as founder of a lineage
comes after he dies. Many lineage founders probably never
knew that they had founded a sustainable lineage. How
many of these men had tried, consciously, to achieve the
status of lineage founder? This is, of course, an unanswer-
able question, but it is possible for both men in patri-
lineages and anthropologists to deduce from past lineage
founders’ reputations what would be needed in the present
and future to begin a lineage. If successive generations
are to keep a man’s legacy alive through such practices as
everyday casual references, storytelling, ancestor worship,
shrines, and legal entities encompassing lineage members,
then charismatic leadership ability, a heroic narrative about
his individual past, and wealth in the present would all be
very helpful.
Would-be lineage founders represent a social type that
Gary Hamilton (1978) calls “the adventurer.” The adven-
turer, to Hamilton, is one who takes considerable risks to
attain specific goals of wealth and fame. Hamilton refers
to European explorers during the Age of Discovery and
describes California gold rushers of the 19th century as
examples. Hamilton shows that this kind of adventuris-
tic behavior is encouraged by a particular type of social
structure, namely, one whereby one’s membership in a
group is given and secure (ascribed) but one’s standing in
the group has to be achieved. Far from being the reck-
less marginals of popular imagination, California gold rush-
ers, as Hamilton points out, were middle- and upper-class
men who were fully integrated within their home societies
and classes but who needed wealth to enhance their stand-
ing within these groups. Membership in one’s patrilineage
of origin is secure, but the enhancement of lineal mas-
culinity, and, ultimately, the potential for founding an en-
tirely new lineage, is a matter of individual achievement.
Interestingly, Hamilton refers to the South Chinese parti-
lineage as exemplifying a social structure that encourages
“adventurism.” Indeed, many California gold rushers were
from South China. Hamilton argues that the most impor-
tant thing South Chinese gold rushers could do with new
gold wealth was to become founders of new lineages, each
with “its own corporate property holdings, ancestral shrine,
and burial plot” (1978:1483).
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Patriliny and masculine identity conferral
We recognize that expressions of masculinity can be (al-
though they certainly do not have to be) hegemonic
(Connell 2005). In patriliny, males alone possess the ability
to bequeath to their offspring certain identity categories, or
what might be called “social ontology,” such as membership
in a family, tribe, or religious, ethnic, or other group. Patri-
lines and their associated categories are, in many cases, rec-
ognized as extending back multiple generations. As Fuad I.
Khuri (1975) demonstrated for members of Lebanese fami-
lies, identity is often linked to male achievement retained in
collective memory along agnatic descent lines. For exam-
ple, King’s interviewees in Iraqi Kurdistan who were ques-
tioned about their ancestors were highly likely to know the
name as well as some distinguishing features of their fa-
ther’s father’s father but unlikely to know corresponding de-
tails about their other seven (or fewer, if kin had married
each other) ancestors of the same generation. That same
man, or one of his forebears in the patriline, was in many
cases the source of the interviewee’s socially (and, often,
legally) recognized patronym. Some interviewees could re-
call many more than four names in their patriline, often
reciting them with delight that King had thought to ask.
We are hard pressed to think of any ability more poten-
tially hegemonic than that of putting one’s stamp of iden-
tity on the next generation and multiple generations into
the future.
Beshara Doumani (1995) discusses how the well-
known Palestinian lineage of Arafat (no relation to the po-
litical leader Yasir) was founded by Arafat al-Shahid in the
1720s through his engineering of a leap in his family’s for-
tunes. This man then had four successful sons who “built
on the family’s tradition by combining wealth with high
religious and social status. All four came to be called in
the Islamic court registers the ‘sons of Arafat’” (Doumani
1995:65). In taking the father’s first name as their patronym,
the set of brothers followed normal practice. But the next
generations of descendants, the sons and grandsons of
these brothers, consciously chose to maintain the patronym
of Arafat rather than use their own fathers’ first names.
By so doing, they signaled the introduction into the
larger community of a new family in the larger mean-
ing of the word; that is, not just a kinship unit but
also an economic, political and social one. This was
also an act of exclusion: by maintaining the family
name Arafat, they signaled their successful branching
off from the other descendants of the sons of Arafat al-
Shahid. [Doumani 1995:65]
In this way, Arafat Al-Shahid started a new lineage named
after himself.
Among Muslim cultures in the MENA region, official
given names are rather straightforward in that they are as-
330
signed to infants and generally do not change over time (al-
though nicknames are common, so the name by which a
person is known may change even though his or her of-
ficial name remains constant). However, patronyms have
been much more fluid. A father’s given name often fulfills
a similar function to that of a surname in the West, but a
“family name” might be used just as often. In addition, both
men and women often come to be known by a teknonym af-
ter the birth of their first child. The ideal teknonym is male
and worn with pride because the birth of a son represents
the first step toward ensuring continuity of the lineage.
(If a couple’s first child is female, the teknonym changes
once her first brother is born.) Although the use of state-
issued identity cards has reduced much of the prior fluid-
ity in naming (a process that, as James C. Scott [1998:64–71]
points out, is part of modern state making), it is still theo-
retically possible for a man to found a lineage that remem-
bers him in its oral history if not in official documentation.
For example, many Kurdish patronyms are given names or
designators (such as occupation or nickname) of a recog-
nized lineage founder, and most prominent patrilineages
replicate some type of honorific category originating with
the lineage founder, and this successively serves as a tag for
all of his patrilineal descendants. These honorifics include
agha (feudal lord), sheikh (Sufi leader), and Sayyid (descen-
dant of the Prophet Mohammed).
In Hindu South Asia, lineal masculinity is largely ex-
pressed through culturally specific and pervasive ideas
about purity and pollution. Here, along with concern for
continuity through progeny, purity of descent is of ut-
most importance to the patrilineage. Throughout India and
Nepal, patrilineages affiliate with a particular gotra (ag-
natic, exogamous descent category). Gotras were founded
by rishi, who in Hindu mythology were male ascetic for-
est dwellers dedicated to spiritual pursuits. Through go-
tra affiliation, each patriline traces symbolic descent from
one of the rishi ascetics. In Hindu thought, and, as is ev-
ident is many ritual practices, particularly male initiation
ceremonies, the rishi represent an ideal of male purity that
stresses withdrawal from life, asceticism, and abstinence.
Threatening male purity is female sexuality (a source of pol-
lution; Bennett 1983). J. Gabriel Campbell (1976:140–145)
wrote of the Kangra Rajputs that a patriline’s ideal self-
image would be a pure line of continuity through celibate
men, in which sons are born over the generations through
miracles rather than sexual intercourse, as found also in
Hindu mythology. Of course, it is through women and sex-
ual intercourse that a patriline actually continues. Thus, as
Lynn Bennett wrote in reference to Brahmans and Chetris
of Nepal,
On the biological level total abstinence is incompati-
ble with the continued existence of the patriline. Since
absolute ascetic purity is impossible for the patriline

as a social institution, purity of descent becomes its
structural equivalent. Sexuality is legitimate if it is disci-
plined by rules of gotra exogamy and caste endogamy,
so that the “right women” are obtained in marriage.
Thus the patriline’s concern with female sexuality as
a threat to the legitimacy of the descent line is, on
a deeper level, a concern for its own spiritual purity.
[1983:126–127]
This concern with patrilineal purity persists and is ex-
pressed in many ways among Brahmans in Nepal to the
present time (Stone 2010). In this context, a man receives
a legacy of purity along with his membership in an agnatic
descent group. It is his duty to maintain or enhance this
purity through numerous religious observances and ritu-
als, meticulous worship of lineage gods, a proper marriage,
and production of “pure” children. In Nepal, the commu-
nal worship of lineage gods (kul devta), the central portions
from which all women are excluded, is, in our terms, a cele-
bration of lineal masculinity.
When a new lineage is founded, it is particularly im-
portant that it claim and, over time, maintain assertions of
purity of descent. In Nepal, lineages split through quarrels,
migrations, or both. But the process of lineage founding is
essentially the same as in the Middle East and elsewhere in
Asia. An individual man (the eldest male of the splintering
unit) will serve as head and founder on the new lineage. The
lineage may not be named after this man but may, rather,
take a place-name reflecting the new location of the group.
But sometimes a lineage will adopt the personal name
of an illustrious or particularly noteworthy member who
founds it.
Lineal masculinity and procreation
Procreative cultural theories that privilege the male role in
reproduction are strongly correlated with patriliny in the
ethnographic record. They are certainly not found in all
patrilineal settings, but we regard them as lending special
force to the logic of lineal masculinity as it is transmitted
through a patriline. The linealized expression of masculin-
ity may be at the heart of one of the world’s most salient de-
mographic trends, the decrease in female births relative to
male births in many parts of Asia, brought on through sex-
selective abortion (which has replaced infanticide in recent
decades) by parents who prefer sons over daughters. The
authors contributing to the volume edited by Isabele Attané
and Christophe Z. Guilmoto (2007) repeatedly point to pa-
trilineage continuity as a core value influencing son pref-
erence in their diverse research sites across South and East
Asia. In areas where son preference is (or has been) acted
on, patrogenesis is usually accompanied by a womb-as-soil
and semen-as-seed metaphor. (Indeed, the Latin word for
“seed” is semen.) Seed is the substance of kinship that is
Lineal masculinity  American Ethnologist
passed from a father to his children, from his sons to their
children, and so on. As Delaney writes, “It is men who give
life, women merely give birth” (1987:39). She finds patro-
genesis to be a salient theme in both Turkish village cul-
ture and the Bible (Delaney 1991). Leela Dube (1997) has
elaborated on this theme extensively for South Asia. Other
examples from patrilineal cultures abound. Kurdish people
described reproduction to King as a process involving male
“seed” and female “soil.” Inhorn (1994, 1996, 2006) has doc-
umented similar beliefs in Egypt, Rhoda Kanaaneh (2002)
among Palestinians, and Janice Boddy (1982) in Sudan.
Peter Loizos (1994:81 n. 11) cites a Greek Cypriot intervie-
wee who described himself as having “put” his children in
the womb. Jennifer Robertson describes a “patrilineal or-
thodoxy” in Tokugawa Japan in which “the female body
serves as a vessel to contain the active life-producing agent
supplied by the male alone” (2008:343). Dube writes that
the seed–soil metaphor for procreation is found “almost
all over patrilineal India. . . . The seed is contained in se-
men, which is believed to come from blood; hence, a child
shares its father’s bloodline. . . . Males are the transmitters
of the blood of a patriline. The mother’s role is to nourish
and augment what her womb has received” (1997:76). The
patrogenetic cognitive model renders men as life creators
and women as, at most, nurturers and containers but not
cogenerators–genitors of life. “Women are the end of the
house, the terminus of the line,” writes Delaney (1991:150),
in a wonderful description of the logic of patriliny. More-
over, she sees a causal relationship between patrogenesis
and efforts to verify paternity that, in the Middle East, “have
ranged from infibulation and clitoridectomy, harem and eu-
nuchs, veiling and seclusion, early marriage, and even mur-
der” (Delaney 1991:40).
Some related procreation theories assign a greater role
to the woman but still privilege the male role in the procre-
ative process. In her classic analysis of U.S. scientific text-
books, Emily Martin (1991) found that the authors’ descrip-
tions of the sperm and egg add up to a kind of scientific
fairy tale involving “active” sperm and “passive” eggs. Holy
(1991) describes several elements of Sudanese Berti cos-
mology that fit very well with the components that com-
pose our model of lineal masculinity. First, he draws con-
nections between the Berti’s model of male dominance and
female subordination, their patrilineal ideology, and their
theory that “kin related through men are seen as closer than
the genealogically equidistant kin related through women”
(Holy 1991:47). Second, he couples the Berti’s belief that
“the bones and sinews of the child are created from the
sperm and the child’s flesh from the woman’s blood” with
a clear ideology of “the primacy of bones over flesh” (Holy
1991:48). From the Berti’s theory of procreation comes their
“association between bones and masculinity and flesh and
femininity” (Holy 1991:48). For the Berti, masculinity is
331
American Ethnologist  Volume 37 Number 2 May 2010
transmitted down the patriline through the mechanism of
procreation.
The patrilineage has corporate control over the sexu-
ality and fertility of its female members, its reproductive
“soil.” Kandiyoti (1987, 1988), following John C. Caldwell
(1978), considers Middle Eastern and South and East Asian
societies as variations on “classic patriarchy.” In contrast
to the sub-Saharan African pattern, in which patriarchy is
tempered by more autonomous mother–child units, clas-
sic patriarchy operates through a more corporate, male-
headed, patrilocal extended family. Here, “the patrilineage
totally appropriates both women’s labor and progeny and
renders their work and contribution to production invis-
ible” (Kandiyoti 1988:7). Only marriage can legitimately
transfer control over a woman’s sexuality and fertility to an-
other lineage or make legitimate use of this fertility within
the lineage should a woman marry within it. Either way,
woman-as-soil is, by definition, a potential threat to the
patrilineage because, through a woman’s sexual transgres-
sions (sex before marriage or sex after marriage with any
man other than her husband), children may be produced,
ostensibly for the husband–lineage but by the “seed” of
other men. The female hymen, then, is both a symbolic and
real border to membership in the group, a border or gate
that must be strongly guarded by male protectors and by fe-
males themselves (King 2010). If this border is transgressed,
it is a grave affront to the patrilineage’s honor (in Kurdish
and several neighboring languages, the term usually trans-
lated into English as honor is namus) and may result in
the killing of the woman and any fetus (outsider) she may
be nurturing. Usually, the killing is done by her father or
brother, natal lineage members.
Again, both similarities and contrasts can be observed
among regions. Among the Kurds and other peoples of the
Middle East, a woman’s sexual transgressions dishonor her
natal and affinal patrilines because children may be pro-
duced “by the seed of other men,” that is, men to whom
rights to the woman’s fertility have not been legitimately
transferred. In Nepal, a woman’s sexuality is also guarded
and protected and for the same reason: “It is obvious that if
a woman’s sexuality is not guarded, the offspring of other
men, from other lineages and even other castes, may be
mistakenly incorporated” (Bennett 1983:125; see also Stone
2010). But, in Nepal, such potential sexual transgressions
of women are expressed not only as shameful but also,
more fundamentally, as threatening the purity of descent
of the woman’s affinal patriline. Any sexual transgression
effectively and permanently pollutes the woman’s womb
(Stone 2010) so that she is no longer able to produce chil-
dren who will continue the patriline’s purity of descent. In
the extremely rare cases in which a woman is murdered by
her agnatic kin, when, say, she becomes pregnant before
marriage, one might better refer to the incidents as “purity
killings” rather than “honor killings” as such.
332
But what about men and their connection with repro-
duction? Let us now take a closer look at “seed” in this con-
text. One sees in this region a strong notion of kinship-as-
substance, namely, semen; kinship is directly transmitted
from a man to his children through his semen. As a part of
this kinship, lineal masculinity is a symbolic attribute that
is tied to the substance of semen. Neither kinship nor lin-
eage membership nor lineal masculinity can be transmit-
ted in any other way. To be sure, there is in the Middle East
and some other regions with strong Islamic influence a sec-
ondary substance, breast milk, that has a kinship-bestowing
property: Infants who feed at the same breast (regardless of
their connections to the same or different semen) are sub-
ject to an incest taboo. However, breast milk is clearly sec-
ondary, imparting a kind of “kinship lite” without the heavy,
definitive ontological properties of semen.
A man, but not a woman, lives on through reproduc-
tion, through the transmission of his semen. This cultural
concern recalls the views of Daniel Craig, who wrote that
“kinship [aside from its social-structural and jural aspects]
is also an ontological system that provides people a way of
overcoming life’s greatest enigma: death” (1979:95). Craig
saw in kinship the simultaneous vertical transmission of
both vital substance (variously defined in different cultures)
and a “symbolic estate,” which he saw as “the morals and
values” that make people what they are. Lineal masculinity
can be seen as part of a man’s “symbolic estate.” Lineal mas-
culinity is, in many ways, about overcoming death because
it too allows a man to live on. When a man of high achieve-
ment and enhanced lineal masculinity dies, he knows those
in his patriline may honor him later by naming themselves
after him.
Living on, passing on one’s semen and transmitting
one’s collective and individual lineal masculinity are con-
siderable inducements for men to reproduce, especially to
reproduce sons, indeed, many of them. Having many chil-
dren, especially sons, itself counts as a plus in a man’s en-
hancement of the lineal masculinity he receives from his
ancestors. The ideal is to both stem from and contribute to
a lineage full of noteworthy men. Every son is a receiver of
a man’s own masculine worth and a potential high achiever
on his own.
For Egypt, Inhorn (1996, 2006) has shown how patrilin-
eal kinship can be associated with pronatalism, and men
who are deficient in this area may experience a great threat
to their masculinity and go to great lengths to hide their in-
fertility. In a region in which masculinity “is largely a ho-
mosocial enactment performed before and evaluated by
other men” (Inhorn 2006:230), masculinity rests heavily on
the ability to monogenetically create the next generation.
As Wade C. Mackey and Ronald S. Immerman (2002) have
pointed out, even as female education rates have risen, high
fertility across the southern Mediterranean and the Middle
East persists, which is contrary to trends elsewhere in the

world. Although most people in this area are Muslims, most
scholars argue that it is not Islam, as such, that is promot-
ing this higher fertility, even though, as in many other re-
ligions, it can express pronatalism (e.g., Jennifer Johnson-
Hanks [2006], writing on West Africa).5
Caldwell (1982), arguing against Demographic Transi-
tion Theory, held that reproductive behavior is economi-
cally rational. Caldwell explained different fertility regimes
in terms of net intergenerational wealth flows. His “wealth
flows” theory posited that people will have more children
when wealth flows from children to parents and fewer
children when the reverse is the case. Hence, in rural
economies, children are economically valuable for their la-
bor contributions and other services, whereas, in urban in-
dustrial contexts, children bring in little to no “wealth” and
are relatively expensive to raise. Caldwell defined “wealth”
broadly to include not only direct economic benefits but
also prestige and the development of advantageous social
networks. In contrast to most other demographers, Caldwell
drew attention to the importance of kinship and family
structure as determinants of fertility, describing how an ex-
tended family structure fosters wealth flows from children
to parents, whereas a nuclear family structure dramatically
shifts the flow from parents to children. An “extended” fam-
ily need not imply coresidence but, rather, refers to a net-
work of kin-based socioeconomic obligations, exchanges,
distribution, and use of resources.
Caldwell (1978), focusing on Muslim populations,
noted that fertility levels were relatively high in a “patriar-
chal belt” from Morocco to Bangladesh. Although fertility
has been declining in the MENA region since Caldwell made
his assertions, rates are still high. The region’s population
“increased from around 100 million in 1950 to around 380
million in 2000” and “is expected to nearly double in the
next 50 years” (Roudi-Fahimi and Kent 2008). Caldwell ex-
plained the relatively high fertility rates in this area as due to
the persistence of a rural-like home-based economy. Even
in urban areas, he claimed, many people maintained an ex-
tended family-based economy and did not participate in
a more anonymous, merit-based capitalist economy. This
kind of economy can still be found in many parts of the
Middle East despite unprecedented urban growth and an
increase in economic prosperity in some oil-rich states.
We suggest that lineal masculinity plays an important
role in the web of these other socioeconomic factors behind
high fertility in the Middle East. With lineal masculinity,
“wealth” continues to flow from children to parents (specif-
ically fathers) and so, along with numerous other factors
outlined by Caldwell, fosters higher levels of fertility. Lin-
eal masculinity is transmitted from fathers (and preceding
them, male ancestors) to children, but at the same time
these children (especially sons) bring wealth back to par-
ents, as they themselves constitute an enhancement of lin-
eal masculinity, and, potentially, through their own achieve-
Lineal masculinity  American Ethnologist
ments later in life, they can enhance it even more for the
collectivity of patrilineally related persons.
Conclusion
In this article, we have developed the concept of “lineal
masculinity,” which we suggest is a fundamental feature
of patriliny in many societies. We offer the model of lineal
masculinity within patriliny as an alternative to the current
position of strong relativism in kinship studies. This rela-
tivist position links kinship and gender but only through the
shared error that previous anthropologists have made with
both concepts, namely, a failure to sever them from West-
ern notions of biology and reproduction. This position also
stresses that kinship and gender are best understood within
each culture separately, such that cross-cultural compar-
isons are undermined. We, instead, offer lineal masculinity
as a tool for cross-cultural analysis.
Lineal masculinity is an ontological essence that flows
exclusively to and through men over the generations. In-
dividual men receive a communal masculinity from their
male ascendants; through their own behavior and their
achievements, or lack thereof, they may enhance or detract
from this masculine quality as they pass it to the next gener-
ation. Lineal masculinity is expressed and performed some-
what differently in various cultural settings. In the MENA re-
gion, for example, it is often expressed through an idiom of
honor; in Hindu South Asia, by contrast, it is expressed and
performed around ideas of purity and pollution. In some
cultural settings, most notably throughout the Middle East
but also elsewhere, the ultimate achievement in lineal mas-
culinity is, through particularly noteworthy feats, to found a
new lineage. This mode of lineage formation carries impli-
cations for lineage segmentation. Finally, we have used the
concept of “lineal masculinity” to discuss male reproduc-
tive roles in the region from Morocco to Pakistan.
Notes
Acknowledgments. The authors are grateful to their anonymous
reviewers and to Carol Delaney, who provided useful comments
and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. Diane E. King
would like to thank the University of Kentucky and the George A.
and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation for the funding of recent re-
search and writing, as well as her many generous field interlocu-
tors. Linda Stone would like to thank the Social Science Research
Council for its support for her research in Nepal.
1. The Kalasha ethnic group in Pakistan is matrilineal (Maggi
2001). To move east across this part of Asia is to encounter far more
diversity in kin group reckoning than to the west.
2. In other locations, kin systems seem to be undergoing more
profound changes. For example, some African matrilineal cultures
are in the process of becoming patrilineal (e.g., Vubo 2005), often as
a consequence of Islamization, and in capitalism and late capital-
ism, many formerly patrilineal cultures are shifting to an emphasis
on the nuclear family and essentially becoming bilateral.
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3. King observed between 2000 and 2006 that activists in
Lebanon were working to raise awareness of this situation, with the
goal of eventually bringing about a change in the legal system to
allow women to pass on citizenship, but this has not yet come to
fruition.
4. Although the literature makes much more mention of pa-
triliny in Europe, Asia, and Africa than in the rest of the world, it
is, of course, found far from there as well, sometimes in the patriar-
chal form more familiar in Asia. For example, for the Vaupés region
of the northern Amazon, “many have shown how the local variants
of patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence help to assure the
political subordination of women” (Jackson 1992:2).
5. However, S. Philip Morgan et al. (2002), using data from India,
Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, found higher fertility rates
among Muslims in 14 comparisons of otherwise similar Muslim
and non-Muslim communities. Further research is needed on the
ways in which Islam promotes or does not promote lineal mas-
culinity and patriliny.
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