This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Reprints and Permissions Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Denham, W. W. Articles by White, D. R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Multiple Measures of Alyawarra Kinship

Alice Lloyd College

Douglas R. White

University of California, Irvine

A field experiment conducted in Central Australia in 1971–1972 explored differences between what Aborigines actually did andw hat they said they did when anthropologists interviewed them. Fieldwork entailed observing behavior and recording it in numerically coded forms; analysis entails extracting patterns computationally that would not appear in traditional ethnographic data. This article focuses on discrepancies between expected and observed with regard to descent, marriage, and kinship. First, it examines field methods and the dataset, then reviews analytical methods used to interpret the data. The alternative analytical methods serve to test "competing hypotheses" about the nature and operation of Alyawarra descent, marriage, and kinship. The cumulative result of using these diverse methods has been increasingly complex and subtle understandings of previously unknown aspects of Central Australian social organization. The data continue to repay increasingly sophisticated analyses thirty years after they were recorded, thus attesting to the success of the field experiment.

Key Words: genealogy • marriage • kinship • Australian Aborigines • sections • subsections • network analysis • helical models • cohesion models • regular equivalence analysis • role • motif • axioms

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?