Book review of "The Affinal Relationship System: a new approach to kinship and marriage among the Australian Aborigines at Port Keats" by Aslaug Falkenberg and Johannes Falkenberg, Oslo Studies in Social Anthropology No. 1. Ethnographic Museum, University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract

The Affinal Relationship System represents both a reworking and extended analysis of an earlier (1962), publication Kin & Totem based on anthropological fieldwork carried out by the authors at Port Keats (NT) in 1950. They make no excuses for their departure from some of their earlier claims made in Kin & Totem, openly admitting that so powerful was Radcliffe-Brown's influence in anthropology at that time, that they (albeit unwillingly) straightjacketed their data into this model of Aboriginal social organization. In this later publication, they argue that among the Murinbata at least, genealogical links do not form the basis of the kinship system as maintained by Radcliffe-Brown, but that rather it is the affinal relationship system which is the major organizing principle.