Close–Distant: An Essential Dichotomy in Australian Kinship

Abstract

This chapter looks at the evidence for the close-distant dichotomy in the kinship systems of Australian Aboriginal societies. The closedistant dichotomy operates on two levels. It is the distinction familiar to Westerners from their own culture between close and distant relatives: those we have frequent contact with as opposed to those we know about but rarely, or never, see. In Aboriginal societies, there is a further distinction: those with whom we share our quotidian existence, and those who live at some physical distance, with whom we feel a social and cultural commonality, but also a decided sense of difference. This chapter gathers a substantial body of evidence to indicate that distance, both physical and genealogical, is a conception intrinsic to the Indigenous understanding of the function and purpose of kinship systems. Having done so, it explores the implications of the close-distant dichotomy for the understanding of pre-European Aboriginal societies in general-in other words: if the dichotomy is a key factor in how Indigenes structure their society, what does it say about the limits and integrity of the societies that employ that kinship system? SKIN, KIN AND CLAN 364

How Crow-Omaha Skewing Spreads

“…Many Australian cases conform to Kronenfeld's overlay model (in Figure 2, crescents denote overlay skewing), in which skewing is mobilized only in certain discourse contexts to emphasize solidarity of descent lines, as when inheritance is at stake. For Gurindji of north-central Australia (among whom McConvell has worked since 1973), skewing applies to "close" MBC and MMBC with a presumption/assertion of unmarriageability with Ego (vs. marriageability for more "distant" representatives of these categories: on close vs. distant in Australian kinship, see Jefferies 2018). Under skewing, MBD5M, ruling out actual (first-cousin) MBD-FZS marriage, and forcing marriages with more distant groups.…”