Rights in nurturing : the social relations of child-bearing and rearing amongst the Kugu-Nganychara, western Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Abstract

The thesis examines the social relations of human reproduction amongst the Kugu-Nganychara Aboriginal people of western Cape York Peninsula, north Queensland, Australia. Recognizing the comparative dearth of detailed ethnographic information on the subject of human reproduction amongst Australian Aborigines, a major concern of the thesis is the presentation of a comprehensive description of the parameters of begetting, bearing and rearing children amongst the Kugu-Nganychara. The focus of the description is on the ordering of the social relations established during child-bearing and rearing. It is argued that the social ordering of human reproduction is centred on the idiom of nurturin9: that is, on the giving and receiving of care, nourishment, protection and support.- Contrary to western society where the responsibility for child-care and rearing usually falls on the mother and father alone, in Kugu-Nganychara society, participation in nurturing children is distributed among a much wider group of kinsmen. Three main modes of nurturing are examined: "finding babies"; "looking after" or rearing children; and "growing up" and "adoption" of children. The thesis establishes the nature of these three modes of nurturing; who participates and why; and what the consequences of such involvement are. It is shown that consistent involvement in nurturing interaction progressively establishes an extensive system of reciprocal responsibilities and rights that are crucial to an individual's social identity. In contrast to the emphasis in structural-functionalist analyses of western Cape York societies made by some researchers, which focus on the automatic transmission of rights through descent and as a consequence of well-defined regulating norms, it is shown here that an adult's rights in people and property are directly affected by relationships established from the moment of conception and expressed in the idiom of nurture. These relationships and the involvement in nurture are open to negotiation and management which introduce considerable flexibility into the social transmission of rights. It is a high degree of congruence between the process of human reproduction and that of social reproduction.