A Problem in Malayo‐Polynesian Social Organization2

Abstract

DESPITE the wide differences in the social systems which now exist among Malayo-Polynesian societies, Murdock (1948; 1949:228-31, 34950) offers convincing evidence that they are derived from an original Hawaiian type of structure. The features characterizing this type include bilocal extended families, bilateral kindreds, the absence of unilinear kin groups, and Generation-Hawaiian kinship terminology. Not considered by Murdock, because it was beyond the scope of his immediate interests, is another feature characterizing the organization of a great many Malayo-Polynesian societies: the association of individual rights to land with membership in some kind of kin group. It is so widespread as to suggest that it may be an original Malayo-Polynesian pattern. If Murdock's reconstruction is correct, the only two kin groups with which land ownership could be associated were the bilateral kindred and the bilocal extended family. Now a person's kindred as defined by Murdock (1949:44, 56-62) includes roughly half of the members of his father's and mother's kindreds, respectively, coinciding with the kindreds of neither of them. This means that there is no continuity of kindred membership from one generation to the next. Kindreds, as so defined, cannot, therefore, function as land-owning bodies. Bilocal extended families could so function, but this would require that all out-marrying members of a family lose membership in the land-owning group while all in-marrying spouses acquire such membership. Yet the present-day Malayo-Polynesian land-owning groups stress consanguinity as the basis of membership, not residence alone. Since, moreover, consanguineal ties are the normal basis for the transmission of land rights, consanguineal groups are more effective instruments of collective land ownership than residential ones. I find it difficult, therefore, to accept the idea that the early Malayo-Polynesians associated ownership directly with the bilocal extended family. But what alternatives are there? The evidence for Murdock's reconstruction