Taking Sides. Marriage Networks and Dravidian Kinship in Lowland South America

Dual organization is a unifying concept underlying seemingly dissimilar alliance structures. We explore this idea with reference to lowland South America where dual organization is common. We have chosen, however, to place primary emphasis on the patterning of actual marriage networks. Our aim is to identify the invariant properties of such networks and, in the light of these findings, to reconsider the relationship between marriage network structure and other, categorical or jural features of social organization: kinship terminologies, descent principles, marriage rules, etc. As a means to this end, we develop the concept of matrimonial "sidedness". In doing so, we derive new results concerning dual organization and a new understanding of dravidianate systems. This analysis is based, on the one hand, on published genealogical data concerning the Makuna (Arhem 1981), the Pakaa-Nova (Vilaça 1992), the Yanomamö (Chagnon 1974), the Trio (Rivière 1969), the Parakana (Fausto 1990), the Waimiri-Artroari (Ferreira da Silva 1993), the Guahibo (Metzger 1968), the Shavante (Maybury-Lewis 1967) and the Suya (Seeger 1981), and on the other hand, on Hornborg's (1988) comparative study of 48 lowland South American societies.