Aranda and Alyawara kinship: a quantitative argument for a double helix model

Abstract

Quantitative analysis of descent and marriage practices and kinship term applications among the Alyawara tribe of Central Australia reveals that traditional Radcliffe‐Brownian models of Kariera and Aranda (section and subsection) systems fit the Alyawara in superficial ways but are entirely inappropriate in more fundamental ways. The problems that we encountered in analyzing the data suggest that the Radcliffe‐Brownian models contain basic and fatal flaws. The alternative model that we suggest for the Alyawara is a three‐dimensional structure that incorporates age relations as one of its principal features. Our proposed model is a double helix.

Multiple Measures of Alyawarra Kinship

“…Nevertheless, Alyawarra kinship terms closely resemble those reported by Spencer and Gillen (1927) for Aranda in the Alice Springs area at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the normative structure that underlies those terms closely resembles that built into the Kariera model used by Radcliffe-Brown (1930) and his intellectual heirs. Figure 2 is a normative model in the manner of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1930)-hence called the RB model-and was the first model that Denham, McDaniel, and Atkins (1979) tested against the Alyawarra data. They derived it by combining Denham's normative data with many published attempts to understand Central Australian kinship using a normative approach.…”

“…When Denham, McDaniel, and Atkins (1979) examined actual genealogical relationships and kinship term applications, they discovered that behavior often violated the rules built into the RB model. Some have argued that a logical model constitutes only part of what determines people's behavior and cannot be tested legitimately by examining the extent to which behavior complies with it.…”

“…Denham, McDaniel, and Atkins (1979) included a great deal of tabular data that clearly display exactly where the discrepancies lay.…”

“…These and other profound effects of the age bias, including a strong tendency toward asymmetric exchange between patrilineages, ramified throughout the structure and operation of the system. Thus, on the basis of their computational analyses, Denham, McDaniel, and Atkins (1979) concluded that a model of Alyawarra kinship, marriage, and descent that deals with pragmatics as well as norms must incorporate demographic realities.…”

more on the double‐helix kinship model

“…Since publication of our Alyawara kinship paper (Denham, McDaniel, and Atkins 1979). Scheffler (1980) has argued that we construed the concept of kinship too broadly; Turner (1980a) has argued that we construed it too narowly; Tjon Sie Fat (1981) has described our helical model as a viable generalization of elementary exchange structures; Martin (1981) has proposed an "agebias-erasure theory" as an antidote t o our findings; and Scheffler (1982) has attacked our work largely on methodological grounds.…”