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STUDIES IN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
Edited by the HON. W. PEMBER REEVES
Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science
No. 36 in the Series of Monographs by Writers connectedwith the London School of Economics and Political Science.
KINSHIP AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION
By
W. H. R. RIVERS, M.D., F.R.S.,
Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge
LONDON
CONSTABLE & CO LTD
1914
These lectures were delivered at the LondonSchool of Economics in May of the present year.They are largely based on experience gained in thework of the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition toMelanesia of 1908, and give a simplified record ofsocial conditions which will be described in detailin the full account of the work of that expedition.
A few small additions and modifications havebeen made since the lectures were given, some ofthese being due to suggestions made by ProfessorWestermarck and Dr. Malinowski in the discussionswhich followed the lectures. I am alsoindebted to Miss B. Freire-Marreco for allowingme to refer to unpublished material collectedduring her recent work among the Pueblo Indiansof North America.
W. H. R. Rivers.
St. John’s College,
Cambridge.
November 19th, 1913.
KINSHIP AND SOCIAL
ORGANISATION
The aim of these lectures is to demonstrate theclose connection which exists between methods ofdenoting relationship or kinship and forms of socialorganisation, including those based on differentvarieties of the institution of marriage. In otherwords, my aim will be to show that the terminologyof relationship has been rigorously determined bysocial conditions and that, if this position has beenestablished and accepted, systems of relationshipfurnish us with a most valuable instrument instudying the history of social institutions.
In the controversy of the present and of recenttimes, it is the special mode of denoting relationshipknown as the classificatory system w