Wife-givers as ancestors and ultimate values in the Kei Islands

Abstract

For more than fifty years now, Southeast Asian societies have served as illustrations for anthropologists interested in kinship studies, particularly in marriage rules. As early as 1935, the asymmetric connubium was recognized by F.A.E. van Wouden as one of the most important features of Eastern Indonesian social structures. Under different names circu lating connubium, unilateral cross-cousin marriage, asymmetrical al liance, alliance, prescriptive alliance, marriage alliance, and others this marriage system has since been scrutinized by a number of authors, including CI. L?vi-Strauss, J.P.B, de Josselin de Jong, E. Leach, RE. de Josselin de Jong, R. Needham and L. Dumont, to cite only the principal ones, and has raised critical theoretical problems. In the present paper, we wish to contribute to the discussion with certain additional facts observed in one Eastern Indonesian society, that of the Kei Islands, which Van Wouden also studied, and to test the appropriateness of an approach