[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

33

have the “same blood" but be “active”, would have children of Karirnarra section who would
have “warm blood” and temperaments that were “active”.

The aim here is neither to confirm nor to refute the thesis formulated by B denstein—
although I will allow myself a brief comment in the conc1usion—but to eliminate possible
confusions between the “substance of a section" Brandenstein’s humours or temperaments
and the “valeur of a section" as I use it." The latter is the underlying logic of the combination
of a section with others accompanying it during its drfiixsion, that is, its structural position.
This “logic " results from the internal coherence of the system, that is, the sequen e of
necessary events and causolities determined in concordance with those structural relations or
positions. The main assumption made here is that the four—section system diffused along with
the associated terminology, but that this terminology may vary, as when a new term replaces
one of the existing terms. Both terms, the new one and the replaced one, constitute part of the
same valeur of a section.

The notion, and therefore the subject of this study, is far less “substantial” than were
Brandenstein’s preoccupafions. It is not the essence of the terms that is of interest here, but
their existence and coexistence, that is, their phenomenological and structural aspects. The
logic and, hence, “t:ruth" sought, and the necessary verifications it will have to undergo, are
those formulated by Russel as being of “the fourth type”:

The correspondence theory of truth, according to which the truth of
basic propositions depends upon their relation to some occurrence, and the
truth of other propositions depends upon their syntactical relations to basic
propositions 19972289.

The valeur of a section, or of a category of sections, has, therefore, not much in common
with a section itself, and is a theoretical construction that is not temporal and that does not
imply one specific chronology of events, but is a hypothesis relating, for example, to how
and where a section term was elimina ‘ -‘ it was considered to be in a structural
position in the system identical to that of another section it encountered during its diflusion.
Redundant terms are, in this sense, part of the same valeur. The Western Desert, or parts of it,
is understood as a totality having one global and hypothetical section system in which, because
there are different section names, general equivalence rules between section names have and
had to be elaborated. To a certain degree at least, this general hypothesis is ethnographically
justified, as Western Desert groups were not isolated, and their interaction was reinforced by
the concentration of Aboriginal people in settlements from at least the 1930s onwards. The
sum of all valeurs reproduces what could be called a diasystemic map, in which each valeur is
the sum of its equivalence rules in relation to section names. The study of these valeurs, albeit
analysed , ‘ ' ", as a , an _y set of , , allows for describing the ditfusion

22 There is uuufier important distinction between the approach presented here and Brnndenstein's work. Indeed, the
latter progresses from a local or regional cultural phenomenon towards hypothesising a global pattern. My approach
will proceed inversely. It will progress from a description of a general feature or pattern towards regional and local
hypotheses.