This study aims to resolve the century-old debate about the nature of
Australian aboriginal societies and the comparability of their
structures with the structures of other tribal and kinship-based
societies. It begins with a critical evaluation and refutation of the
claims that Australians are 'ignorant of physical paternity' and
therefore cannot have systems of kin classification. Professor Scheffler
then demonstrates that systems of kin classification are a common
feature of Australian languages and that, contrary to the theory
proposed by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and others, variation in the rules of
interkin marriage does not account for variation in systems of kin
classification. This was the first monographic treatment of the subject
since Radcliffe-Brown's classic work, The Social Organization of the
Australian Tribes, published in 1931, and is much more comprehensive and
synthetic in its coverage of the range of variation in Australian
systems of kin classification. It applies the concepts and methods of
structural semantic analysis to a broad range of ethnographic and
linguistic data, and demonstrates how they resolve one of anthropology's
oldest and most perplexing theoretical puzzles.