Modes of Production, Kinship, and Demographic Structures

This chapter ¹ is intended to present with as much clarity and brevity as possible some theoretical considerations of the problem on the relationship between mode of production, kinship relations, family organization, and demographic structures. The aim is above all methodological, and its basic source is the recent work of Aram Yengoyan (1968a, b; 1970; 1972a, b) concerning the section and subsection systems of the Australian Aborigines. A complete analysis of these societies is not attempted here, still less a comparison, statistical or otherwise, of the various forms of economic and social organization found among hunting and gathering peoples about which we have valid information. What is attempted is a contribution to the study of the problem of the ‘structural causality’ of the economy: the effect of relations of production at a given level of development of the productive forces, that is to say the mode of production, on other levels of social organization (see Godelier 1973: foreword and Ch. 1).