2 - Types and varieties

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This chapter reviews and critically evaluates A. R. Radcliffe-Brown's theory of the structures and the relations among the structures of Australian systems of kin classification. His is the most comprehensive and realistic theory so far advanced on the subject, and therefore the essential starting point for any attempt to further our comprehension of it. Although seriously defective in a number of ways, both semantically and sociologically, Radcliffe-Brown's theory cannot be faulted (at least not fairly and sensibly) for positing rules of terminological extension. As we saw in Chapter 1, there is ample evidence that polysemy by widening is a feature of Australian systems of kin classification. Serious questions may be raised, however, about the formal adequacy of specific extension rules posited in the theory, and therefore about the formal adequacy of the theory as a whole. Following a fairly detailed exposition of the theory (important parts of which have not, I think, been understood or appreciated by other critics), it is shown that the rules of kin-class definition and terminological extension posited by Radcliffe-Brown, especially his rules of interkin marriage, do not do what he claimed for them. They must be replaced by other more adequate rules, some of which must be common to a number of systems Radcliffe-Brown assigned to different typological categories. This raises further questions about the sociological adequacy of the theory.

RADCLIFFE-BROWN'S THEORY

In 1951 Radcliffe-Brown summarized the results of his more than four decades of study of Australian “kinship systems.”