Kinship as logic of space

Abstract

The article studies kinship systems as topologies of social space. These topologies emerge as agents become contiguous through physical interaction and mutually substitutable through perspectival shifts. Social space is structured by the temporal asymmetry implicit in the concept of generation and by a gendered polarity of containing and being contained. The different ways this gendered polarity is incorporated into relations of contiguity and substitution result in diverse topologies that are manifest in architecture, residence, and mobility patterns no less than in genealogies and relationship terminologies. These variations are illustrated through comparison of the segmentary systems of West Africa, the dualist organizations of central Brazil, and the asymmetric alliance systems of eastern Indonesia.