Review by Choice Review
The concern of this academic treatise is the few hundred Lardil people living on Mornington Island off the northern coast of Australia. McKnight's interest is that most standard of all social anthropological topics--kinship and marriage--among an equally classical people--the Australian Aborigines. The text's first two sections deal with patrilineal descent principles, maternal relationships, kinship terminology, territory, and totemism. The third section, with an extended case study of a single union, considers marriage with a concern for how the locals themselves have perceived of changes in their complicated exchange system over time. These are not novel issues, so McKnight (London School of Economics), who has worked with this group for over four decades and has already published extensively on them, neither raises nor resolves any outstanding matters. However, he does offer up some detailed ethnography and analysis before concluding with a brief but trenchant essay on the history of kinship studies in anthropology over the past century. Specialists on the area and subject matter will be impressed, but not those with broader interests. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Graduate students and faculty. W. Arens SUNY at Stony Brook
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
