Amitate

AMITATE

A type of kinship usage that relates father’s sister too closely with the children, is known as ‘amitate’. Ones father’s sister becomes prominent in matters of rights and authorities. She acts almost as the head of the household and exercises her supreme authority over her brother’s children. Radcliffe Brown and I Schapera considered this person as ‘female-father’. Amitate may be easily explicable in a patrilineal society; it has to be explained in the context of the matrilineal culture-complex of the Trobriand Islander. It would seem that, whereas avunculate in a matrilineal society and amitate in a patrilineal society may be the outcome of an obvious emphasis on one particular group of relatives, such emphasis expressed through avunculate in patrilineal society and amitate in a matrilineal society may be the social mechanism for preventing certain kinship bonds from falling into neglect. Or, to borrow once again the phraseology of Chapple and Coon, these usages are the way to keep up the rate of interaction between such kin among whom it may fall low due to their belonging to such groups which are not taken into account while reckoning descent.