ABSTRACT

T H E AUSTRALIAN TYPE OF KINSHIP POLITY EXHIBITS SHARPLY A NUMBER OF STRUCTURAL concomitants characteristic of so-called bilateral kinship systems in societies in which the familial domain and the politico-jural domain are minimally differentiated. A conspicuous feature is the absence, or the relatively peripheral emergence within a politico-jural community demarcated by kinship boundaries, of exclusive structural units defined by rules of kinship and descent, outside the range of the domestic family. In the Australian systems this is consistent with the rudimentary recognition of descent as a principle of structural alignment and the correlative absence, or at best inchoate form, of corporate groups within the normal field of collective social relations.