Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia | Page 4

we
may doubt whether it would be possible for a stranger to settle, without
any rite of adoption, in the midst of a hostile or even of an unknown
tribe; but this is clearly a matter of minor importance, if adoption is not,
as in North America, an invariable element of the change of tribe.
Although membership of a tribe is thus loosely determined, tribesmen
feel themselves bound by ties of some kind to their fellow-tribesmen,
as we shall see below, but in this they do not differ from the members
of any modern state.
But in Australia the importance of the tribe, save from an economic
point of view, as joint owner of the tribal land, is small compared with
the part played in the lives of its members by the intratribal associations,
whose influence is recognised without, as within the tribe. These
associations are of two kinds in the lowest strata of human society; in
each case membership is determined by birth and they may therefore be
distinguished as natal associations. In the one case, the kinship groups
such as totem kins, phratries, etc., an individual remains permanently in

the association into which he is born, special cases apart, in which by
adoption he passes out of it and joins another by means of a legal
fiction[2]. The other kind of association, to which the name
_age-grades_ is applied, is composed of a series of grades, through
which, concomitantly with the performance of the rites of initiation
obligatory on every male member of the community, each man passes
in succession, until he attains the highest. In the rare cases where an
individual fails to qualify for the grade into which his coevals pass, and
remains in the grade of "youth" or even lower grades, he is by birth a
member of one class and does not remain outside the age-grades
altogether.
In the element of voluntary action lies the distinction between
age-grades and secret societies, which are organised on identical or
similar lines but depend for membership on ceremonies of initiation,
alike in the lowest as in the highest grade. Such societies may be
termed voluntary. The differentia between the natal and the voluntary
association lies in the fact that in the former all are members of one or
other grade, in the latter only such as have taken steps to gain
admission, all others being simply non-members.
Although _primâ facie_ all these forms of association are equally
entitled to be classed as social organisations, the use of this term is
limited in practice, at any rate as regards Australia, and is the accepted
designation of the kinship form of natal associations only; for this
limitation there is so far justification, that though they perhaps play a
smaller part in the daily life of the people than the secret societies of
some areas, with their club-houses and other features which determine
the whole form of life, the kinship associations are normally regulative
of marriage and thus exercise an influence in a field of their own.
Marriage prohibitions in the various races of mankind show an almost
endless diversity of form; but all are based on considerations either of
consanguinity or kinship or on a combination of the two. The
distinction between consanguinity and kinship first demands attention;
the former depends on birth, the latter on the law or custom of the
community, and this distinction is all-important, especially in dealing

with primitive peoples. With ourselves the two usually coincide,
though even in civilised communities there are variations in this respect.
Thus, according to the law of England, the father of an illegitimate
child is not akin to it, though ex hypothesi there is a tie of blood
between them. In England nothing short of an Act of Parliament can
make them akin; but in Scotland the subsequent marriage of the father
with the mother of the child changes the legal status of the latter and
makes it of kin with its father. These two examples make it abundantly
evident that kinship is with us a matter of law.
Among primitive peoples kinship occupies a similar position but with
important differences. As with us, it is a sociological fact; custom,
which has among them far more power than law among us, determines
whether a man is of kin to his mother and her relatives alone, or to his
father and father's relatives, or whether both sets of relatives are alike
of kin to him. In the latter case, where parental kinship prevails, the
limits of the kin are often determined by the facts of consanguinity. In
the two former cases, where kinship is reckoned through males alone or
through females alone, consanguinity has little or nothing to do with
kinship, as will be shown more in detail below.
Kinship is sociological,