The Family Among the Australian Aborigines: A Sociological Study

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Schocken Books, 1963 - Aboriginal Australians - 322 pages
First published 1913; Description of the different forms of the Australian family organization; Methods of obtaining wives - Kurnai, Gourditch-mara, Youin, Bangerang, Wotjobaluk, Parkengee, Euahlayi, Wiradjuri, Dieri, Arunta, Warramunga, Binbinga, Anula, Mara, Tjinjilli, Gnanji, Kuinmurbura, Wakelbura [and other places throughout Australia]; Husband and wife relationships - diversity of previous statements and contradictions; Sexual aspects of marriage, punishment for infidelity, discussion on the pirrauru relationship of the Dieri, jealousy; Review of statements made on local groups, property rights, camp arrangements, relationship of the family unit to the tribal and territorial organization; Kinship, conception beliefs, collective ideas which define parental kinship; Examples of kinship ideas suggested by folklore (Central and north Central Aust.); Parental control and childhood, infanticide, life of initiates; Economic life, sexual division of labour, sociological features; Brings together and discusses statements by other authors on foregoing subjects.

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Contents

EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM AND METHOD
1
Exposition of the problem and justification of the task pp 1 sqq
9
Method of dealing with the evidence pp 17 sqq
17
Copyright

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About the author (1963)

Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish-born British anthropologist, was a major force in transforming nineteenth-century speculative anthropology into an observation-based science of humanity. His major interest was in the study of culture as a universal phenomenon and in the development of fieldwork techniques that would both describe one culture adequately and, at the same, time make systematic cross-cultural comparisons possible. He is considered to be the founder of the functional approach in the social sciences which involves studying not just what a cultural trait appears to be, but what it actually does for the functioning of society. Although he carried out extensive fieldwork in a number of cultures, he is most famous for his research among the Trobrianders, who live on a small island off the coast of New Guinea.

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