Cognatic Kin Groups among the Molima of Fergusson Island

Marriage Exchanges: A Melanesian Comment

“…One would wish to distinguish such arrangements fr om those, usually involving small populations, where marriage with classificatory consanguines appears as a function not of "exchange" but of "endogamy" (e .g. 25,27). Ideologies with "cognatic" elements predictably stress closeness and distance rather than divergence in relationships (e .g.…”

“…7; see also 191); but we take for granted that it is aspects of a social persona being thus reconstituted. We do not imagine that such exchanges literally substitute for the child or the deceased in that donors and recipients could perform the same transactions with the bodies or the persons of these social entities as they do with the flows of wealth and objects making up the exchanges (but see 28) . In the case of marriage exchanges, however , exactly such literalist assumptions appear in our analyses.…”

“…51,146,157) or paternal kin, culminating in mortuary gifts. Mortuary gifts often finalize the series and thus "complete" the payments (28,29,158,191). This can open the way for the marriage to be repeated subsequently (119), which may or may not be associated with permanent alliance relations between the intermarrying groups over the intervening generations (cf 15, 55, 119).…”

The Kula Ring of Bronislaw Malinowski: Co-evolution of an Economic and Ceremonial Exchange System

“…It is only then that people can create, can satisfy their interests mutually and define them without recourse to arms " (1969: 80;see also Granovetter 1985: 488). Wars, looting and cannibalism are frequently mentioned in ethnographic literature and show that Hobbes' problem was quite real among the Melanesian tribal societies in the times before colonial powers and Christian missionaries appeared (Berde 1983;Chowning 1983;Dalton 1977Dalton , 1978Fortune 1989: Appendix VII;Landa 1983;Macintyre 1983bMacintyre , 1983cMalinowski 1966a: 321;Róheim 1954;Seligman 1910: chs. XLI-XLIII;Thune 1983;Young 1983).…”

Lakalai kinship

“…In Sengseng, with Hawaiian cousin terminology, spouses are usually "siblings", and they may often be so in Molima (cf. Chowning 1962).…”