Principal Features of the Socio-Familial System

Abstract

We have encountered the system of unilateral affinal relationships throughout a range of interconnected cultures in a large area stretching from Sumba and Flores in the west to the Kei Islands in the east, and including also the islands of Seran and Buru lying to the north. This island world comprises the whole of eastern Indonesia apart from Celebes and Halmahera. It is a remarkable fact that whenever we have at our disposal sources which are at all detailed and intensive, we find practically without exception that exclusive cross-cousin marriage and its associated type of social structure are reported. The gaps in our knowledge are nearly all the result of highly superficial descriptions or of sheer lack of data. For the chain of islands joining Timor and Tanimbar, for example, we possess no information which is of any real use for our purpose. It is beyond question that the fragmentary character of our material is to be ascribed in large part to this circumstance. The disintegration of the system, which appears everywhere to be already far advanced, if in varying extent, makes it difficult for our informants, nearly all of whom (particularly the missionaries and government officials) belong to the category of “casual ethnographers”, to disentangle the original relationships. Under the influence of western culture this disintegration proceeds at an ever-increasing rate.