An anthropology of bastardy?

Alan Macfarlane's reproach to his colleagues is not entirely unjustified. Notwithstanding several notable exceptions, anthropologists have been surprisingly silent on the subject, as compared to sociologists and, more recently, demographic historians. On the other hand, I wish to suggest that the relevance, both direct and indirect, of anthropology to the study of illegitimacy goes well beyond the “general study of kinship and paternity.”

The approach which has prevailed since Kingsley Davis' (1939) seminal paper on illegitimacy has been a normative one. Illegitimacy was to be understood as one type of deviant behavior. The epitome of such an approach is Goode's (1964:23) elaborate typology of types of illegitimacy, each defined by the precise type of norm which has been breached. Laslett (1980a: 1–2) has aptly criticized the somewhat naive functionalism of such writing. However, the problem is more deep-rooted. More recent attempts, by Laslett and others, to free themselves from this kind of functionalism have nevertheless, in important ways, retained the normative perspective. The problem lies with approaches which see illegitimacy as a direct function of sexual behavior.