Lets build a hypothetical culture. Let us further not start at the top, with political and economic organization, but at the bottom, with the family structure itself.. The goal of this artificial culture is to minimize future conflict and ensure genetic diversity in a small population of space colonists. It is to be hoped that family custom and mutual obligation and loyalty will replace as much Law and Government as possible.

Let me establish right now that I make no claims as to the superiority of this hypothetical culture, or even of its viability. As far as I know, nothing like this has arisen spontaneously on earth, although I have borrowed heavily on my dim memories of Cultural Anthropology 101 for some of the details.

A thousand colonists have landed on Planet Kabu, a world of roughly earthlike characteristics. They will be cut off from all contact with Earth, perhaps indefinitely, so the colonists have all solemly but voluntarily signed on to a cultural organization designed to keep the commuity stable as their technological civilization, isolated from the home world, inevitably deteriorates to a (hopefully) no earlier than 18th century level. The social engineers back home have bet that by the time the colony stabilizes, the society will be able to rebuild some form of technology and social philosophy using whatever information they have preserved from the ship’s library. Again, I make no claims that this can work, or even that its possible, much less desirable. This is just an exercise in fictional culture building, not a political tract.

The Kabukis, being young, highly trained and motivated, genetically diverse exceptional physical and mental specimens, will do what’s natural for young men and women and pair off. The culture has been designed to be monogamous, because that seems to have worked well in hominid history. Soon, the first wave of youngsters arrives, bringing joy and challenge to the colonists.

Every man/wife pair will form a House, that is, a nuclear family. So far, we’re in familiar territory here. As time passes, the children will grow up and seek mates of their own from the surrounding Houses. The social engineers back home, recognizing that the family is a vital part of human development and stable communities, determined that the female offspring should stay in the House, (rather than start their own) where the House will provide support reinforced by normal human affection for their own blood. The engineers further designed the society to be both matrilineal and matrilocal. Descent will be determined on the mother’s side. And young men will move in with their spouses in their wife’s House. The reasoning here is that young men of marriage age are more likely to be aggressive, territorial and violent than young women, and women are more likely to be interested in stability, family and cooperation with their neighbors. Moving in with his inlaws will immediately substitute his new House’s interests and prosperity for that of his birth House. At the same time, the social ties and affection that remain with his native House will temper any competition or conflict his new House may have with them.

Of course, by “House” I don’t necessarily mean a physical structure. Couples will be perfectly free to build their own quarters, but allegiance and loyalty will be transferred to the wife’s House. By the way, no effort is made in this scheme to determine which member of a marriage is “in charge”. Who wears the pants in these families will be worked out in each marriage, by the participants. Of course, the wife, surrounded and supported by her House, will have advantages her husband, a virtual stranger, will not. That’s how matrilocal societies work, and there are many examples in our own world.

Eventually, many of the surviving women in a House will have husbands and children of their own, which will form the next level in the family structure, the Clan, or extended family. A clan can be defined as a House where all the members can trace back their lineage to a single living grandmother, or perhaps even a great-grandmother. In those cases where the matriarch dies before her husband, he becomes the Clan patriarch. It is not inconceivable a Clan may be headed by an octogenarian, with several children in their sixties beneath her, each with several offspring of their own in their forties, each of them with several offspring in their twenties, and each of them with children coming up the ranks. If birthrates are high and mortality low, a Clan can become quite large, with many male offspring established in surrounding Clans, giving them great influence with their neighbors and in the community as a whole. Old, big Clans will tend to have influence, which is pretty Darwinian. They obviously have something going for them.

As in any form of family structure, problems can occur. For example, suppose grandpa dies and grandma remarries some young stud from a nearby House. And what happens if she then gives birth to a baby girl? Or what if grandpa is widowed and leaves the Clan to move in with a new wife? This is bound to cause problems as the siblings and cousins jockey for position and status in the family pecking order. But all families have their ups and downs and little scandals, right? They’ll work it out. There is family violence and power struggles too, but not as much as between strangers. And what about those who choose not to marry, or are childless, or homosexual. How will families deal with step-children and foster children, bastards, loyal and trusted retainers or even strangers who are outside the family hierarchy not related by blood? I submit new customs will arise to deal with situations not anticipated by the social engineers.

As Kabuki society settles into the new world, the oldest colonists will start dying off. A Clan deprived of its titular heads will simply vanish. The surviving offspring of the founding marriage will now become Clan patriarchs and matriarchs. In other words, Clans can die, and Houses can become Clans. This suggests the next level of organization. When members of a family can all trace their lineage back to a single (but now deceased) grandmother, you have a Tribe. Tribes are made up of Clans, and Clans are composed of individual Houses. Houses and Clans are temporary, but Tribes are forever. And in established societies, Tribes have all sorts of problems of their own.

Anybody care to follow up on this? Or to pick it apart?