Abstract
DR. RIVERS has made a speciality of the adaptation of the genealogical method to the interpretation of social facts, to which he has devoted much knowledge and hard thinking. In the present collection of lectures delivered at the London School of Economics he uses his special studies of social life in Melanesia to a consideration of the classificatory system, the essential feature of which is the application of its terms, not to single individual persons, but to classes of relatives which may often be very large. The discovery of this system was the work of Lewis Morgan, who, diverting his attention from the facts at his disposal, attempted to formulate a condition of general promiscuity developing into group marriage, a view offensive to his readers and certain to meet vith active criticism. His first opponent was J. F. McLennan, who urged that the terms used formed merely a code of courtesies and forms of ceremonial address for social intercourse. Another theory, that of Prof. Kroeber, suggested that the use of these forms does not depend upon social causes, but that they were conditioned by causes purely linguistic and psychological.
Kinship and Social Organisation.
By Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. Pp. v + 96. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 2s. 6d. net.
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Kinship and Social Organisation . Nature 94, 88 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094088a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094088a0