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Abstract

The aim of the research project outlined in this article, is the investigation of the organization of family and domestic groups among the Terena Indians of southern Mato Grosso, Brazil. More specifically, the investigation will be concentrated upon the urbanized Terena poppulation, originating in the villages, but now in the process of integration into Brazilian society, that is, into a national, urban order and class system. The principal problem suggested by this article for investigation has reference to the consequences of urbanization in the composition of domestic groups, to the change occuring to family structure, (if it occurs) and to the role played by the network of kinship relations (which transcends the family group).

The treatment of the following themes represents the framework of the project: 

1. From village to city. An historical sketch of the migrations, attempting to identify the "key" individuals in the mobility of family groups, by the means of a comparative analysis of the groups. A differentiation of the various roles played by different kinship categories in the process of dislocation from village to city, when the unit involved is an extended family or a group of families related by marriage. 

2. Installation of family groups in an urban, class society. A survey of occupations, in terms of the past (successive occupations), of the present, and of occupational probabilities for those responsible for the subsistence of the domestic group. An analysis of contact situations which evidence class and race distinctions. A consideration of variations in race and social class as two basic elements, each influencing the other, in the accomodation of the Terena to Brazilian society, urban and suburban.

Such contact situations may include all dimensions of the Terena social system. This means that the research will bring into Íocus all forms of conduct (economic, recreative, political, religious, etc.) that can be explained or understood in terms of family groups, domestic groups, and other organisational groupings, and in terms of institutions such as marriage and kinship. In the last analysis, it means the examination of the behavior of family groups in their new circumstance as a minority group, or ethnic minority, in a "hostile" class-stratified society.

3. Characterization of domestic groups. An analysis of the residence, from the viewpoint both of its material resources and of its composition, i. e., the classification of the residents in terms of actual or of artificial (compadre, adoption) kin relationships, consanguineous or affinal . An examination of formational mechanisms of the domestic group, such as marriage, inheritance, succession, etc., and the contribution of these mechanisms towards its weakening (the dividing of domestic groups). Activities linked with economic production will be considered on one hand, while on the other those related to the conservation of group solidarity. An identification, at this level, of the mechanisms of differentiation and assignment of roles within the internal system of the domestic group.

4. Analysis oÍ the family. A focalization of the research on the elementary family, considering it initially as an agent of sexual reproduction, and then as an agent of socializâtion; with regard to this second aspect, an emphasis upon the participation of the domestic group as an agent of "social reproduction" (along with the orientation family). A study, by means of intensive investigation, of elementary families of differing magnitudes, of differing distribution of ages (relative), and of varying association modes, i.e., two or more elementary families composing the domestic group and varying number of generations. 

5. Extrafamilial relationships among relatives. The isolation or integration of the elementary family in the kinship system. A study of all relationships outside the domestic group in which relatives are involved, regardless of age, sex, status, etc. A search for information about the extent of knowledge of the kin group (a listing of names of relatives by the informants) relating this to the actual conduct of the group. A verification of the functioning of the kinship system in regulating conduct, distinguishing the obligatory (or prescribed) relationships (kinship) from simply permissible ones; the substitution of tribal order by national order, reflected in the transferal of regulation of extrafamilial conduct (but among relatives) from the kinship system to the politicolegal system of Brazilian society.