ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on shifts from kinship's external system to the dynamics of its internal system— what Meyer Fortes calls the politico-jural domain of kinship. Moving from the material infrastructure to the moral interior of kinship, the chapter concentrates on the interaction between kin groups and the personal identities and group loyalties that are forged in the war between affines. In many preindustrial cultures kinship plays a dominant role in organizing society. In such societies a politically mediated set of kinship roles is the structural mechanism by which society's various institutional sectors are integrated. In such societies kinship derives its everyday content from the political, economic, and religious life of the society. The consequences of amalgamated identities go beyond the shaping of fragile conjugal identities. Their ramifications are felt at all levels of kinship, ranging from the concrete material exchanges and reciprocities that form the external system of kinship to the sentiments and moral dictates that order kinship's internal system.
