A Cross-Cultural Test of the Proximity Hypothesis1

This paper tests the proximity hypothesis, which asserts that residential propinquity influences the possession by a society of certain kin avoidance and kin terminological practices. The hypothesis is shown to be invalid, and the results for classical theories of kinship organization are sketched. Briefly these are that Murdock’s theoretical claims in Social Structure (1949) are called into question, as is "Main Sequence " kinship theory, which postu-lates that residence, descent, and kinship terminology form a typical devel-opmental sequence. [Accepted for publication: May 1972.] The proximity hypothesis asserts that residential propinquity influences a society’s kin avoidance and kin terminological prac-tices. It was first proposed by Tylor (1889) to account for asso-ciations between unilocal residence and parent-in-law avoid-ance, and was extended by Murdock (1949) to include various kin terminological practices. Thus both Tylor and Murdock argue that the residential closeness of certain relatives to Ego increases the likelihood that they will be avoided or termino-logically merged. Their underlying assumption is that kin term categories and institutionalized avoidance customs reflect the aggregation and separation of kinsmen by residence. As Murdock puts it:. matrilocal residence, by bringing Mo and hToSi together as close neighbors or even actual housemates, operates as a social equalizer to make more likely their designation by a single clas-sificatory term, and by separating FaSi spatially from both of them operates as a social differential to favor the application of a special kinship term to her [1949: 136]. Stanley Witkowski (Ph.D., 1971, University of Iowa) is interested in both ethnosemantics and cross-cultural research and has conducted fiel