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On the misinterpretation of the Aluridja kinship system type (Australian Western Desert)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2003

Laurent Dousset
Laurent Dousset
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley WA 6009, Australiadousset@cyllene.nwa.edu.am
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Abstract

The Australian kinship system type has been a topic of much discussion and of considerable misinterpretation among scholars. It has been characterised as not distinguishing siblings from cross-cousins and as allowing marriage between classificatory siblings. Based on Elkin's work and on data gathered in a desert community and in Alice Springs, the aim of this paper is to propose a coherent interpretation of the Aluridja system, in which terminology has to be distinguished in accordance with the context of reference.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Anthropology , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 2003 , pp. 43 - 61
Copyright
© 2003 European Association of Social Anthropologists

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Footnotes

A much shorter version of this paper was presented at the AAS2000 conference in Perth. Many thanks to Fiona Powell, who delivered the paper in my absence. I am also much indebted to Maurice Godelier, Bob Tonkinson and John Laurence for their comments and assistance. Fieldwork was made possible thanks to a scholarship from the French Ministry of Research (DPSUP10) and a limited grant from AIATSIS (L95/4916).