Generation Moieties in Australia: Structural, Social and Ritual Implications

“We”: conceptual semantics, linguistic typology and social cognition

“…Generally across Australia, constrained interactions tend to be expected between people from adjacent generations (cf. Scheffler 1978;White 1981). We hypothesise that pronouns designating constrained kin combinations contain additional semantic components, while those for the "freer" and less constrained combinations are semantically neutral.…”

Mutable things: colours as material practice in the northwest of South Australia

“…14 14 White mentions maru and piran(pa) as the names of the generational moities at Yalata. Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people here are related to people on the APY Lands but their families migrated south towards the railway line, Ooldea, and the coast from the 1920s onwards (White 1981: 9). In the context of the conceptualization of donkeys and their skins that I mention above, this is pertinent. …”

On the misinterpretation of the Aluridja kinship system type (Australian Western Desert)

“…As White (1981) 12 has shown, they are intensely important and omnipresent in Western Desert's everyday and ceremonial life, and they form the core of social organisation, jural obligations and behaviour, distributing tasks in rituals and defining the framework for expected normative behaviour in everyday life. In the case of the Ngaatjatjarra, as in many if not all Western Desert groups, the alternate generational divisions or moieties constitute the most important social distinctions.…”

“…Generational moieties, named sociocentrically Tjuntultukultul and Ngumpaluru among the Ngaatjatjarra, are the expression of the opposition between those who engender, and those who have been engendered, between the 'us' (nganatarka or nganarnitja) and 'them' (yinyurrpa), 11 between parents and children, and between parents-in-law and children-in-law. As White (1981) 12 has shown, they are intensely important and omnipresent in Western Desert's everyday and ceremonial life, and they form the core of social organisation, jural obligations and behaviour, distributing tasks in rituals and defining the framework for expected normative behaviour in everyday life.…”