Australian cultures have often been used to illustrate the complexities and the formalized nature that human social organization can reach through approaches that underline social symmetry and boundedness. This lecture will show that the latter are at the most an indigenous meta-discourse describing the ideal of reciprocity as the fundamental value of the moral order. Far from being limited by their own systemic framework, Aboriginal people stress asymmetry and openness as the conditions for social reproduction.

This lecture has been given by Prof Laurent Dousset at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Hamburg University