ABSTRACT
The measure of aptness there is in this label refers to a frame of analysis that has grown primarily from the assimilation of RadclifFe-Brown’s ideas and theories into the body of British anthropological research. Criticism by Radcliffe-Brown led him to change his views and bring them nearer to Radcliffe-Brown’s. But Kroeber has always maintained that he is an historian, and evocation is more in his line than analysis. The essence of the hypothesis was stated in 1923. Kinship customs and usages form a system. The relations of mother’s brother and sister’s son among the Bathonga cannot be understood without taking into account the correlative relationship of father’s sister and brother’s son, as well as the fact that this is a society segmented into groups in which descent and succession pass in the patrilineal line. Most of the futile controversies about kinship turn on failure to make this distinction.
