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rise and decline of lineages and villages, of their alliances and rivalry, and of the domination of some over others". In the process of reconstructing that political history, it evolved eventually into an essay **on the social milieu out of which territorial arrangements were created and maintained over several centuries" (emphasis mine). By the end of the introduction, however, this goal of writing a political history of the New Territories is made even more modest; as he says, "the historical account is meant in the first place, to serve as an empirical test of the general conception of the lineage suggested by Freedman and which is modified here”, (p. 11) A tall order, I would say, for such modest ambitions.
Ironically, almost everything about the book suggests that this is not your typical case study in social history. Rather than placing his case analysis within an historical or geographical framework as appears to be the normal practice in local historiography, the contents of the book read more like your typical ethnography. The first chapter entitled Theoretical Considerations attempts to define his basis units of analysis, namely the village and lineage, primarily in light of Freedman's theory. The second chapter is a brief ethnohistorical background to the New Territories. Chapters 3-6 spell out the sequential building blocks of "lineage society in the New Territories, citing examples from throughout the territory to illustrate his points. In Chapter 3, he discusses the nature of rights of settlement which, according to him, are the basis upon which membership into a village is constituted and through which the **naturalization” of outsiders of pre-existing lineage communities is negotiated. Chapter 4 focuses on the varieties of "lineage-building" in the New Territories. Chapter 5 emphasizes the role of religion in the symbolic representation of village communities. Chapter 6 deals with the various kinds of territorial arrangements that underlie the constitution of villages and village clusters in the New Territories. Chapter 7 pursues focal territorial organization at a higher level by describing the various kinds of regional alliances found in the New Territories. Chapter 8 discusses the importance of government and gentry in relation to the lineage, and this is followed by a discussion in Chapter 9 of the overlapping of greater and smaller traditions within the domains of local religion and ancestor worship. The Making of Lineage Society in Chapter 10 outlines in political historical terms the rise and fall of "The Five Great Clans" of the New Territories as the precursor for the development