Places, practices, and things: The articulation of Arrernte kinship with welfare and work

Abstract

In this article, I discuss problems of articulation that occur between kin‐based and market‐based societies. In particular, I address Western Arrernte (Aranda) people in central Australia and their struggles to articulate bilateral kinship networks with a welfare economy and state. I also consider the transitions involved as Arrernte people come to objectify kin relations more in terms of commodities and cash and less in detailed knowledge and experience of country. My discussion aims to underline the tensions and struggles in an Arrernte circumstance sometimes overlooked in recent anthropology, which has focused either on ritual descent groups or on issues of welfare and economics without relating them to kinship. I identify differing contexts of ethnography, along with their import both for analysis and a politics of difference. [Aborigines, Aranda, articulation, bilateral kinship, commodities, welfare, demand sharing, central Australia]