Land tenure

In the last chapter we formulated a brief and abstract definition of land tenure in the Trobriands. We know now that into it enters a system of native ideas, more precisely four native doctrines, which control the law of tenure and the rights of citizenship. They profoundly influence the natives' idea of the relationship between man and soil, thereby integrating human beings into a number of social units and transforming the soil from a merely physical into a culturally determined object.