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

79

It seems clear that the wide diffusion of these patterns was in part a direct
outcome of white contact. As Aborigines moved towards the centres of white
settlement they set in train social relations which were presumably much more
intense than had ever existed before. As groups met and mingled, they exchanged
ceremonies and women Groups which lacked the structural articulations of
those who gave ceremonies were motivated to grasp them, and to perpetuate
this through time by adopting the appropriate marriage practices which would
permit the continuation of these ritual links However sections and subsections
were obviously part of the scene in many parts of Australia before colonisation
Hamilton 1979356.

While the speed of the section system’s diffusion since colonisation of the Western Desert
area is without doubt the consequence of concentration and new means of communication
and transportation, I have also mentioned that the necessary networks through which such
diffusion occurred had previously existed, and that diffusion of the section system is an
historical element that does, in certain regions, precede colonisation see also Bemdt 1941.
This argument and, more importantly, the existence of networks will be further developed
below. Another point worth mentioning is that Hamilton is insinuating in the above quote
that marriage rules were subsequently adapted to the section system. This point has no direct
bearing on the present study; nevertheless, I feel it necessary to emphasise that I do not believe
this to have been the case in the Western Desert, where determination of the spouse category
was compatible with the section system well before its adoption see Dousset 2002a, 2003.

The benefits of adopting the section system have been explained in more than one place. I
have not yet, however, considered the concrete hanisms through which sections progress
from one group to another and how they are incorporated into social practices. The context
of such a progression must obviously be one of contact, either “traditional” through the
established social and economic networks, or partially an “innovation” as a consequence of
concentrations of groups within new communities. The consequence of such dilfusions is,
obviously again, the capacity of two groups to apprehend each other’s relationships by way
of section classification, whether this is done through the adoption of the system as is, or
whether some structural transformation and rearrangement has been undertaken. The social
consequences are largely identical.

What does, however, happen “in-between”? It is highly improbable that an entire group
instantly adopted the section system as a whole, that every person within a language group
or larger residential community knew at once in which section she or he belonged. Adoption
of the section system must be apprehended as a process, in which only some persons of
a community are classified in the first stage, following which, in the second step, the
classification is extrapolated to others and eventually to all members of a community, That
adoption and integration of the section system was, indeed, a process with some duration has
been illustrated earlier, when l -" ‘- the nu ‘ and rcall that occurred
in and north of the Mt. Davies area.