Clans

The anthropological term clan comes from Gaelicclann and Old Irish clann or cland, denoting a group claiming descent from a common ancestor. The word was extended to refer to similar kinds of groups in other cultures at least from the early16th century, and by the 1860s it had entered into sociological and anthropological usage. Anthropologists have given a number of different labels to groups recruited by filiation or descent: for example, gens (plural gentes) by Morgan and sib by Lowie, who reserved gens for the patrilineal form and clan for [Page 517]the matrilineal form. Clan has become the preferred term, however.

In anthropological usage, a clan is a social group whose members share a doctrine of common ancestry but who do not necessarily trace descent from a common ancestor by known genealogical links. A clan may consist of more than one lineage whose members trace descent from a common ancestor by known (but possibly fictive) genealogical links. The group may be recruited by patrifiliation to form a patrilineal clan, by matrifiliation to form a matrilineal clan, or by a combination of these to form a cognatic clan. Adoptive links may be important. There may be a difference between the descent ideology and actual practice, as in parts of Papua New Guinea, where a matrifilial link becomes converted to a patrifilial one.

Clans may be exogamous; that is, a member ought to marry someone from a clan other than his or her own. Clan organization may articulate with other forms: Two or more clans may cluster into phratries; clans may be distributed between two moieties; or clans may be distributed between four semimoieties. A number of clans may form a larger entity, such as a phratry, tribe, or language group. This hierarchical structure of identities is most elaborate in models of segmentary lineage systems applied to societies of the southern Sudan.

Societies vary in the predominant lineality of clans; in some societies, patrilineal or patrifilial groups are predominant, while in others (though more rarely) matrilineal groups are the most common form. Some societies combine patrilineal and matrilineal clans in a system of double descent. Groups in Polynesian societies draw on ambilineal or cognatic descent to form groups in which an individual has potential claims in a number of groups, through both parents and four grandparents, although only one claim is likely to be activated.

Clans and other kinds of groups coexist with kinship, which is normally bilateral. The form of kin classification, however, may be strongly shaped to fit lineage and moiety identities. In the case of unilineal groups, each individual is often connected to the other parent's clan through complementary filiation, yielding rights that are not transmitted to the next generation.

In general, clan organization has been found in societies in which kinship and descent have provided the main bases for the organization of society, although it can be combined with hierarchical forms of organization. It has persisted in many areas with colonial and postcolonial state structures.