Alliance and Entailment in Australian Marriage

Underlying and Superficial Critical Structure

“…I should have imagined that a set of transformations so adduced would endear me to devotees of LCvi-Strauss. But Maddock has for over a decade nurtured a competing propositiona structurally simpler notion involving merely a parallel between female marital and male ritual life, both being controlled by maternal kin (Maddock 1969(Maddock , 1974a1974b). Hence he contends that the first half of my generalization is invalid, or valid only for those regions in which the 'owner'/'manager' distinction is absent.…”

“…This is first-semester philos- Maddock (1981 : 186) correctly aligns me with Hiatt (1967) in failing to distinguish between wife-bestowing and wifeyielding lodges in an affinal relationship. This distinction was first made in Maddock (1969), in an effort to rescue LCvi-Strauss ophy-(1969) from the materials adduced in Hiatt's seminal paper. Clearly it is a game to which Maddock is deeply attached, and there is some evidence that AboriginaI Australians enjoy it as well (see e.g.…”

Rights m Paintings and Rights in Women: A Consideration of some of the Basic Problems Posed by the Asymmetry of the ‘Murngin System’

“…The history of anthropological approaches to this problem has been a history of attempts to put symmetry back into the system. Until the mid 1961)s attempted solutions concerned the relationship between wife receiving and wife yielding groups, to use Maddock's (1969a and1969b) terminology . The assumption was that a man must have the right to bestow his own daughters, therefore the kind of exchange system that operates must concern primarily the relationship between ego's group and the group marrying female members of ego's clan (Livi-Strauss, 1969;Leach, 1961, etc.). With the publication of Hiatt's book Kinship and Conflict in 1965, the grounds for debate shifted.…”

“…Clans did not hold corporate rights in women. Hiatt's insight enabled Shapiro and Maddock to set up new kinds of formal symmetry, niece exchange in Maddock's ( 1969a : 23 ff.) case, and mother-in-law and ZDD exchange in Shapiro's (1968:349; 629) case; the analyses applying to the Dalabon and Yoliju respectively.…”

'Owner' and 'Managers': Ritual Cooperation and Mutual Dependence in the Maintenance of Rights to Land

“…The existence of two classes of person with interest in land was recognized long ago by Spencer andGillen (1968[1899]:277-8). The complementary nature of the constituent members of each class with respect to marriage and betrothal was discussed by Maddock (1969) and with respect to ritual and the resolution of conflict by Peterson (1969;1970).…”