Discuss how the rules of descent contradict the principles of residence in matrilineal society, mentioning suitable examples?

The mismatch

• Descent in a matrilineal system makes a child a member of the mother’s clan. Property and office may pass to the sister’s son, as Malinowski recorded for Trobriand chiefs.
• Residence after marriage may be avunculocal, duolocal, or even patrilocal. The husband then lives among his own or his wife’s people, while the heir belongs to another house.
• Audrey Richards called this the matrilineal puzzle: men hold authority in the sister’s group but live as husbands elsewhere.

Cases

• Nayar of Kerala, in the older taravad described by Kathleen Gough, had visiting husbands. Children belonged to the mother’s house; genitor and pater were split.
• Khasi of Meghalaya are matrilineal and often uxorilocal. The youngest daughter keeps the house, yet men still seek political voice outside the hearth, which is why Nongbri and others stress gender politics inside matriliny.
• Minangkabau of Sumatra and Ashanti of Ghana show the same pull between the mother’s lineage and the husband’s compound.
• Garos and some Nairs after legal reform moved toward neolocal houses, which further splits descent from everyday residence.

What follows

• Contradiction does not mean chaos. Cross-cousin marriage, mother’s-brother authority, and visiting marriage are working repairs.
• Lévi-Strauss read alliance as another logic. The ethnographic point remains: matriliny is not matriarchy, and residence can undo what descent writes.