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are general guides to kin-classification, and tools in the maintenance of relationships and
in the elaboration of social ties over large distances, and therefore exist in areas where the
carrying capacity is low, that is, in the central and more arid regions of the continent. Service,
however, distanced himself fI'om alliance theory. He emphasised that, while social categories
were institutional in maintaining social ties, they did not regulate alliance as such:

They exist, rather, because of a rule of marriage which creates two
intermarrying groups in the society; that is, marriage and moiety are two aspects
of the same thing. Individual marriages are arranged much more specifically with
particular relatives and are not atfected by the presence or the absence of named
moieties Service 19602424-525.

Yengoyan’s ideas elaborate on Service in conceiving the section system as a social
institution of “closeness” among geographically distant people and as engendering a
corporateness that would, without sections, be non-existent or not remembered in areas where
families and groups live at great distances from one another, such as in the arid regions.
In some ways, he believes sections replace genealogical memory in upholding social links
between groups, and create a sentiment of closeness or solidarity where other types of social
ties are missing. This corporative aspect of section systems is, according to Yengoyan 1 968a,
1968b, 1970, 1972, an existential necessity in an ecologically disadvantaged area such as
the Western Desert, guaranteeing mutual rights of access to resources, as well as maintaining
enduring networks of exchange. While Yengoyan accurately recognised the necessity for such
mechanisms and networks in the Western Desert, he was mistaken in attributing these to the
section system.7 Indeed, sections do not constitute corporate groups, do not regulate alliance,
and are absent or known only since very recently in those areas in which Yengoyan observed
and depicted their social importance.

The approaches adopted by Service, and to some degree by Strehlow, do not confiate
sections with the idea of corporate groups; nevertheless, they underline to some extent their
pragmatic advantage in ecologically unprivileged regions. This is of particular importance
for this study, because we must ask what motivated the section system’s diffusion throughout
large parts of the Western Desert: why was it adopted so rapidly and easily by groups living
at great distances from one another and hitherto using exclusively a social category system
based on alternate generational moieties?

Following Kroeber 1938, Service l960:422 suggests that these social category systems
have no important determinants “within a group’s internal order”, but have uses in the group’s
external relations:

More plausible would be an analysis which included as the basic components
of the class system those aspects of the kinship system which are most significant

7 See especially McKnight 1981 and a short critique in Layton 1986.