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 connected with the London School of Economics and Political Science. KINSHIP AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 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 CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii. LECTURE I 1 LECTURE II 28 LECTURE III 60 INDEX 95 PREFACE. These lectures were delivered at the London School of Economics in May of the present year. They are largely based on experience gained in the work of the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Melanesia of 1908, and give a simplified record of social conditions which will be described in detail in the full account of the work of that expedition. A few small additions and modifications have been made since the lectures were given, some of these being due to suggestions made by Professor Westermarck and Dr. Malinowski in the discussions which followed the lectures. I am also indebted to Miss B. Freire-Marreco for allowing me to refer to unpublished material collected during her recent work among the Pueblo Indians of North America. W. H. R. RIVERS. St. John’s College, Cambridge. _November 19th, 1913._ KINSHIP AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION LECTURE I The aim of these lectures is to demonstrate the close connection which exists between methods of denoting relationship or kinship and forms of social organisation, including those based on different varieties of the institution of marriage. In other words, my aim will be to show that the terminology of relationship has been rigorously determined by social conditions and that, if this position has been established and accepted, systems of relationship furnish us with a most valuable instrument in studying the history of social institutions. In the controversy of the present and of recent times, it is the special mode of denoting relationship known as the classificatory system which has formed the chief subject of discussion. It is in connection with this system that there have arisen the various vexed questions which have so excited the interest--I might almost say the passions--of sociologists during the last quarter of a century.