The Duality of Metric Concepts of Contemporary Indigenous Australian Lifeways: Kinship Categories and Numbers

The chapter makes an analogy between two quite different metrics that equally ‘have life’ in the organisations and institutions of both Indigenous and mainstream Australian lifeways. I juxtapose Indigenous systems of kin names, with modernity’s numbers. Of course, I recognise that the systems of kinship names that have life in Indigenous Australia are profoundly different than numbers. Yet here is a convincing argument that in several important senses they are alike: different but partially same. The chapter explores the reasons for recognising both the difference and the similarity