ABSTRACT
This chapter considers whether, when simple filiation is a condition for inclusion in a group, it is possible for relations of descent to have jural or structural values in intra- or intergroup relations. The openness of a ramage to everyone who appears in its cognatic descent category is not generally taken literally, and it is often no more than a way of talking about kinship and its duties and obligations. However, many ramages have become entirely defunct or exist only as cognatic descent categories merged with one or more other local groups and off their own lands. If there were any descent groups in Choiseul society they were the ram-ages, the sinangge kapakapa or sets of co-resident descendants of the founding ancestor of a cognatic descent category. For inclusion in such a set, descent from that ancestor is a necessary condition, but it is necessary only in a derivative fashion.
