2
Social Organization
The purpose of this part is to decribe and analyse some features of Matawai social organization. We will particularly focus on kinship, descent, marriage, residence and fosterage.
Our emphasis will be on empirical events and social processes in their relation to structural principles. We consider structural changes to be generated by individual recurrent behaviour chanelled by economic and ecological constraints (see Barth 1967). Our analyses are primarily based on observations in the upriver area; however, quantitative data collected for the whole Matawai area provided data to compare up- and downriver patterns. The data revealed significant variations within the small Matawai society. These variations can be partly explained by the resettlement of segments from the upriver area to the downriver area and by the migration to the coast which has been a more important factor in the downriver villages.
Recruitment in social groups is based on the principle of matriliny. Matrilineal descent organization only flourishes in a restricted number of ecological and economic circumstances. Societies with matrilineal descent tend to be horticultural with women playing an important role in the production process. They tend to be egalitarian and occur where there is no scarcity of land (see Aberle 1961; Douglas 1969). The importance of matrilineal descent groups tends to decline when a society becomes involved in a market economy or when the matrilineal ideology is directly threatened by a concurrent ideology such as Christianity (see Poewe 1978; 1980).
We will pay special attention to the two factors that have dominated
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