ABSTRACT
We have organised our description of Ponam kinship and exchange in this book to illuminate the distinction between structural and processual approaches to social organisation and practice. Our concern with these two approaches springs in part from two sources. It comes first from our dissatisfaction with the repeated failure of Melanesian ethnographers to move beyond a fairly simple, synchronic, structural approach to kinship and exchange. As well, it comes from the way that Ponams themselves appeared to approach their own lives and practices.
