Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

age. Classification of Types. H

h they are personally familiar; and this familiarity is shared by those who form the audience, or the reading public, of these investigators, who may thus count on making themselves understood. Even should they find the already existing terminology

they describe, who have failed to define to themselves what they are endeavouring to make clear to others, and who make use of a terminology created for an entire

is far different. The force of custom may and usually does in such cases far exceed the force of law in civilised communities. In the lower stages of culture there is far more reluctance to overstep the traditional lines of behaviour than is felt by the ordinary member of a European state, and this though there are penalties in the latter which do not necessarily exist in the former case. But law, in the sense of a rule of conduct, promulgated by a legislator and enforced by penalties inflicted by law courts and carried out by the agents of the state, does not necessarily exist, and, at most, exists only in a very inchoate state. If therefore we read of marriage among such a people, we are left in complete uncertainty whether it is a union corresponding to marriage in civilised lands, or whether it belongs to a different categor

his case there will be no customary ceremonial to mark for the benefit of the observer the exact moment of the transition

status of a union in which the parties are more or less permanently associated, but which confers no rights as against aggressors? If by native custom the union is not of such a nature as to confer on the male party to it any rights over

suitable terminology for dealing with the unions of the sexes in the lower stages of culture.

erm is extended to embrace (1) polygyny, in which one male is associated with two or more females, (2) polyandry, in which one female is similarly associated with more than one male, and (3) the condition which I propose to term polygamy, in which both these conditions are found. In a

erm marriage in this connection at all. By group marriage is meant a condition only removed from absolute promiscuity by the existence of age-classes or of two or more exogamous classes in the community; it demands no special ceremonies pr

gy is apt to go hand in hand with confusion in ideas. As will be shown later, this seems to be particularly true of investigations into the history of marriage and se

marriage in general. Dr Westermarck has defined it from the point of view of natural history as a more or less durabl

in Dr Westermarck's sense, but it seems desirable to make use of some other term for them and reserve marriage for the unions sanctioned by legal forms. Or take the union of two people, each of whom has prior matrimonial engagements. Such a union may, as the records of the divorce court show, be anything but impermanent; but it does not make for clearness to call such an union marriage. Let us take a third example-a New Hebridean girl purchased, or in Upa stolen, for the use of the young men, who, of course, reside in their club-house. If any of the bachelors there resident chooses to recognise her children, they are regarded as his children; if not, they are supported by the whole of the r

stitute gamé or gamic union, to express all kinds of sexual relati

custom, which imposes duties and confers ri

promiscuity where marriage does not exist or is temporarily in abeyance: (b) free love, the relationships of the unmarried: (c i.) temporary polyandry or polygyny of married people, where the unions a

ties have other ties, which renders them liab

elationship actually found or assumed

OMISC

e been the rule rather than the exception. But if this be so, the only distinction between Morgan's promiscuity and the ordinary state of things in an Australian tribe is constituted, intermarrying rules apart, by the fact that the Australian husband is at liberty to reclaim his wife, if he can, without fear of blood feud if perchance he slays his successor in the affections, or perhaps rather

tulated for Australia before the introduction of individual marriage; and (b) secondary regulated promiscuity,

ARRI

polygamy; and the latter may be (i) unilateral or (ii) bilateral, according as either the males or females, or both males and females, are brothers and sisters. A further sub-division is constituted by the relations o

age postulated by Mr Atkinson in Primal Law, we may take "patriarchal polygyny," meaning thereby the state in which (a) in the earlier stage all the females

e have VI

terminants "regulated" and "unregulated," "tempora

riage; Robertson Smith has proposed to call the third type ba'al marriage, and to include both beena and mot'a marriages under the general name of ?adīca. This terminology is unnecessarily obscure and has the further disadvantage of connoting the domination or subjection of the husband, a feature not necessa

-potestal, (b) matri-potestal; the latter may be further subdivided according as the authority is in the han

but this is no proof that primitive group marria

e distinguished from promiscuity, save that the number of them is limited.

Cyclopean family. Har

. not l