ABSTRACT
The importance of kinship, consanguineal and simulated, in the instrumental activities of simpler peoples has long been recognized by ethnologists. In monographic studies like those of Malinowski (1935), Firth (1929, 1946), and Tax (1953), the role of kinship in technological performance, power relationships, and economic transactions has been described in detail. In recent research on non-Western societies which are undergoing industrialization, it has become evident that kinship and other forms of “pre-industrial” social organization are extremely important for organizing all types of economic and political activity. Comhaire (1956), Salz (1955), Nash (1956), and others have pointed out that kinship in the non-Western world is a tenacious systern which is not only crucial in determining the course of change, but which also may become an instrument by which economic and political change might be introduced.
