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Kinship (Anthropology)

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  1. Introduction
  2. Kinship has traditionally been one of the key topics in social and cultural anthropology. There are two principal reasons for this: First, although not all human groups are constituted on the basis of kinship, all humans have kinship as individuals and are related to other individuals through it. Second, for the sorts of “tribal,” classless, economically unspecialized societies that anthropologists have mostly—though no longer exclusively—studied, kinship has appeared to be the main or even sole form of social organization. As a result, many theoretical approaches, especially the schools of functionalism and structuralism within social anthropology, have focused on how social groups are formed, how individuals are related to one another through kinship, and the mutual rights and duties they have as a result. Cultural anthropologists, by contrast, have chosen to focus more on the symbolic aspects of kinship, such as the meanings attached to being a particular sort of relative, as well as how symbols of and perspectives on personhood, the body, and gender inform kinship ideas and practices. In broad terms, this latter approach has predominated in America since around 1900 but has been reinvigorated periodically and become more influential in world anthropology, especially in the poststructuralist phase starting in the 1970s. The domain of kinship can be divided into descent (that is, relations between generations), marriage, and siblingship, though there are not nearly as many studies on the last category as there are on the first two. Early work (especially from the functionalist school) tended to see kinship as a matter of descent only, which produced the phrase “kinship and marriage”; later work, starting with structuralism, has tended to include marriage within the overarching rubric of kinship, adding to it the notion of affinal alliance. Among other things, this reflects the heavy concentration in functionalism on genealogical reckoning in analyzing kinship systems. Structuralism, by contrast, moved away from this in favor of a focus on kin categories rather than genealogical positions, and poststructuralism moved away from both genealogy and the notion of kinship systems to focus more on meaning, practice, and agency. Both earlier schools had an interest in kinship terminology, or the terms used for relatives and the different patterns they make when seen as whole systems, but whereas functionalism tended to view the terminology in terms of descent, structuralism connected it with marriage, especially affinal alliance involving marriage to various classes of cousins, from which came the terms, respective to the schools, of descent theoryand alliance theory. There have also been numerous studies of the family, less influential theoretically than very recent studies of the new reproductive technologies and their implications for what we mean by kinship.
  3. General Overviews
  4. The overviews and accounts of kinship in the texts in this section are from various periods, covering functionalism (Malinowski 1930), structuralism (Needham 1971), approaches invoking culture and practice (Peletz 1995), key thinkers (Barnes 1971), and recent attempts to bring social and evolutionary biological approaches together (Stone 2001).
  5. Barnes, John Arundel. 1971. Three styles in the study of kinship. London: Tavistock.
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  7. Discusses approaches of three key thinkers of importance to kinship: the structural-functionalist Meyer Fortes, the structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and George Murdock, creator of the Human Relations Area Files database.
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  9. Malinowski, Bronisław. 1930. Kinship. Man 30:19–29.
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  11. An early critique of the more formal and systemic studies of kinship, by one of anthropology’s founding fathers. Notable for Malinowski’s alternative stress on practice and indigenous ideas and his rejection of prior evolutionary perspectives in favor of a functionalist approach focusing on the nature of kinship rather than its origins, and for the extensionist theory of kinship that treats parent-child relations within the nuclear family as prior to all others.
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  13. Needham, Rodney, ed. 1971. Rethinking kinship and marriage. London: Tavistock.
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  15. A collection of articles consolidating the move away from functionalism to structuralism in British social anthropology. Includes a lengthy introduction on the editors’ personal debates with others, as well as a banner article that advocates a focus on types of kin ties and their variable incidences in societies rather than drawing up typologies of whole systems. The latter article reflects the influence of Wittgenstein’s polythetic classification.
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  17. Peletz, Michael. 1995. Kinship studies in late twentieth century anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:343–372.
  18. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.002015Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. A comprehensive review of new studies in anthropology since the 1970s, with a focus on new methodological and theoretical perspectives. In particular, it covers Marxist, feminist, and historical approaches; lesbian and gay kinship; and the new reproductive technologies, with special attention to the issues of ambiguity, politics, and the power these give rise to. Available online for purchase.
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  21. Stone, Linda, ed. 2001. New directions in anthropological kinship. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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  23. A recent collection of articles that combine sociocultural with biological and psychological approaches to kinship, including the new reproductive technologies, gay relationships, multiple parenthood through divorce and remarriage, and kinship and the state.
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  25. Textbooks
  26. All of the works in this section seek to provide careful explanations of key concepts used in kinship for students. Key texts include Fox 1967, Dumont 2006, Barnard and Good 1984 (especially for research students), Holý 1996, Stone 2000, and Parkin 1997.
  27. Barnard, Alan, and Anthony Good. 1984. Research practices in the study of kinship. London and Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
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  29. Written especially as a guide to field research in kinship, it is also useful for general ideas and concepts and some aspects of theory on the subject.
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  31. Dumont, Louis. 2006. An introduction to two theories of social anthropology: Descent groups and marriage alliance. Oxford: Berghahn.
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  33. Originally published in 1972, this book focuses especially on the differences between descent theory and alliance theory and between functionalism and structuralism in both Britain and France. A balanced account despite the author’s personal adherence to structuralism.
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  35. Fox, Robin. 1967. Kinship and marriage: An anthropological perspective. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
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  37. Offers a clear and easy-to-read introduction to basic concepts and ideas, covering descent and the different forms of affinal alliance and discussing the differences between biological and cultural approaches to kinship.
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  39. Holý, Ladislav. 1996. Anthropological perspectives on kinship. London and Chicago: Pluto.
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  41. The poststructuralist perspective offered in this book focuses greatly on practice—in general more on descent and kin groups than on marriage or affinal alliance—and does not discuss kinship terminology.
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  43. Parkin, Robert. 1997. Kinship: An introduction to the basic concepts. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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  45. Describes basic concepts separately from examples, with a particular focus on kinship terminology and affinal alliance, and also pays attention to descent, family, the new reproductive technologies, and cultural approaches to kinship.
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  47. Stone, Linda. 2000. Kinship and gender: An introduction. 2d ed. Boulder, CO, and Oxford: Westview.
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  49. Combines a focus on traditional topics such as descent and marriage with an explication of how gender can inform understandings of kinship. Includes some studies of kinship in certain historical periods.
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  51. Anthologies
  52. The collections featured in Bohannan and Middleton 1968a, Bohannan and Middleton 1968b, andGoody 1971 focus on earlier writings related to kinship, whereas as Parkin and Stone 2004 features writings up to about 2000.
  53. Bohannan, Paul, and John Middleton. 1968a. Kinship and social organization. American Museum Sourcebooks in Anthropology Series. New York: Natural History Press.
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  55. Representative collection of key texts in the anthropology of kinship up to the late 1960s. Focuses mainly on kinship terminology, both unilineal and nonunilineal descent, the kindred, and the problems posed by Native Australian marriage systems.
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  57. Bohannan, Paul, and John Middleton. 1968b. Marriage, family and residence. American Museum Sourcebooks in Anthropology Series. New York: Natural History Press.
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  59. Representative collection of key texts in the anthropology of marriage and the family up to the late 1960s. Focuses mainly on incest, definitions and forms of marriage, family organization, and modes of residence. Omits consideration of cross-cousin marriage or prescriptive alliance, which can be found in Bohannan and Middleton 1968a.
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  61. Goody, Jack. 1971. Kinship: Selected readings. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
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  63. A collection of readings by kinship experts covering, among other things, the family, incest, marriage, plural marriages, marriage as alliance between kin groups, divorce, and ritual kinship.
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  65. Parkin, Robert, and Linda Stone. 2004. Kinship and family: An anthropological reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
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  67. Brings together key texts from the history of anthropology to about 2000. Divided into two parts: “Kinship as Social Structure: Descent and Alliance” and “Kinship as Culture, Process and Agency.”
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  69. Kinship as Biological and as Social
  70. Although there is a vast corpus of studies of kinship from the biological (mostly evolutionary) point of view, and a lesser number from within the field of psychology, these are not reviewed here. However, debates over whether kinship can be explained by such approaches rather than by the perspectives of social and cultural anthropology are relevant. This is also a debate over whether there are universals in kinship, as the human biologists tend to suggest, or whether the concepts and meanings attached to kinship at the popular level differ, as the fields of social and (especially) cultural anthropology tend to argue. The key debates can be found by comparing Gellner 1957 andNeedham 1960, Wilson 1975 and Sahlins 1977, and Homans and Schneider 1955 and Needham 1962.
  71. Gellner, Ernest. 1957. Ideal language and social structure. Philosophy of Science 24:235–242.
  72. DOI: 10.1086/287539Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  73. Reviews a debate started by the philosopher-anthropologist Gellner claiming that kinship has a universal basis in biology despite the cultural differences between societies.
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  75. Homans, George Caspar, and David Murray Schneider. 1955. Marriage, authority and final causes: A study of unilateral cross-cousin marriage. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
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  77. Study by a sociologist and a cultural anthropologist aiming to account for particular forms of cousin marriage (especially matrilateral cross-cousin marriage) in terms of the psychological feelings of specific relatives to one another and the transference of these feelings between them.
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  79. Needham, Rodney. 1960. Descent systems and ideal language. Philosophy of Science 27.1: 96–101.
  80. DOI: 10.1086/287716Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  81. Reply to Gellner by Needham, a social anthropologist of the structuralist school, putting forward a more relativist approach focusing on cultural difference and dismissing the biological angle as irrelevant. Available online for purchase.
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  83. Needham, Rodney. 1962. Structure and sentiment: A test case in social anthropology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  85. A rejection of Homans and Schneider’s theory of cousin marriage based on an approach stressing the formal aspects of affinal alliance as a social system from a social-anthropological point of view. Also contains an exemplary analysis of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage in Chapter 4.
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  87. Sahlins, Marshall David. 1977. The use and abuse of biology: An anthropological critique of sociobiology. London: Tavistock.
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  89. A trenchant rejection of sociobiology from the viewpoint of a leading sociocultural anthropologist. The author sees sociobiology as a falsely economizing view of society that is undermined by social variation and the very different socially determined treatment of kin who are related to ego at identical genetic distances.
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  91. Wilson, Edward O. 1975. Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
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  93. This canonical text introduces sociobiology as an attempt to combine the insights of human biology and social anthropology to explain human kinship. Known in particular for its modifications of Darwinian theory (e.g., its replacements of individual selection with kin selection and genetic fitness with inclusive fitness), connected with the notion of altruism.
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  95. Family, Residence, and the Kindred
  96. Families may be universal, but their forms differ, both when directly compared and in respect of how individual families change over time. Postmarital residence too varies considerably, though for both topics it is possible to reduce the range of variation to a series of types. The controversies between the two topics are minor, where they exist at all, but both topics are important in their own right, as they affect all of humanity.
  97. Adam, Leonhard. 1948. Virilocal and uxorilocal. American Anthropologist 49.4 (October–December): 678.
  98. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1947.49.4.02a00220Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. Brief paper suggesting substituting the terms “virilocal” and “uxorilocal” for “patrilocal” and “matrilocal,” respectively, as terms for modes of marital residence. Available online for purchase.
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  101. Carsten, Janet, and Steven Hugh-Jones. 1995. About the house: Lévi-Strauss and beyond. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  103. A collection of international ethnographies or case studies of so-called “house societies,” a concept derived from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s suggestion that aristocratic houses and similar domestic units with long-term identity and continuity over time should be recognized as a distinct type of social organization.
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  105. Freeman, J. D. 1961. On the concept of the kindred. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 91.2 (July–December): 192–220.
  106. DOI: 10.2307/2844413Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. Draws attention to the concept of the ego-centered kindred as a form of social organization in its own right, different from the ancestor-focused lineage or clan. Discusses its range, functions (especially in the regulation of marriage), and optative aspect, seeing it as mainly bilateral. Available online for purchase.
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  109. Goody, Jack, ed. 1958. The developmental cycle in domestic groups. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge.
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  111. A collection that contains a number of papers stressing both the variation in family forms and the changes in form that any particular family is likely to undergo as a result of births and deaths within it and its marriage alliances with other families.
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  113. Goody, Jack. 1976. Production and reproduction: A comparative study of the domestic domain. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 17. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  115. An early statement of the author’s thesis that family organization, modes of inheritance and succession, and the nature of social stratification differ in broad terms between Africa on the one hand and Eurasia on the other. The author traces these differences ultimately to different modes of agricultural production, that is, the subsistence of hoe cultivation in Africa as opposed to the agricultural surpluses generated by more-efficient plough cultivation in Eurasia.
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  117. Goody, Jack. 1983. The development of the family and marriage in Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  119. A thesis that suggests that in early medieval Europe under the influence of the Christian church and its desire to increase its wealth through legacies, families decreased in size as the pool of potential heirs was reduced.
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  121. Smith, Raymond T. 1973. The matrifocal family. In The character of kinship. Edited by Jack Goody, 121–144. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  123. Assesses the significance of matrifocal, or woman-centered forms of family organization, as a partial critique of Meyer Fortes’s insistence on the universality of patrifiliation as a charter for legitimacy and of bilateral kinship as the universal focus of family organization. Arguments make reference to material from the Caribbean.
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  125. Descent and Inheritance
  126. Descent refers to the nature of relations between generations, which differ considerably in detail from society to society, though very many societies exhibit patrilineal, matrilineal, or cognatic features. Inheritance refers more specifically to the transfer of property between generations. Key controversies have revolved around the depth or shallowness of descent in particular cases and whether it is always the only mode of recruitment to local groups (rather than, for instance, territory or political affiliation). For the social or cultural anthropologist, descent is social and not to be confused with the genetic record of the human biologist.
  127. General
  128. All of the texts in this section are critical of early constructions of descent, which were based on the idea of deep groups (clans or lineages) with specific roles as such. The objections of Barnes 1962,Holý 1979, and Kuper 1982 are ethnographic, based on the use of the model in Africa specifically and (in Barnes’s case) its application elsewhere; Scheffler 2001 is a more general, theoretical critique.
  129. Barnes, J. A. 1962. African models in the New Guinea Highlands. Man 62 (January): 5–9.
  130. DOI: 10.2307/2795819Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  131. Article tentatively rejecting the so-called “African” model of deep unilineal descent as not suitable for parts of Papua New Guinea. Suggests that many social groups instead consist of a shallow agnatic core around which other members are recruited through marriage, descent through women, or political affiliation. Available online for purchase.
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  133. Holý, Ladislav, ed. 1979. Segmentary lineage systems reconsidered. Papers in Social Anthropology 4. Belfast: Queen’s Univ. of Belfast
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  135. A collection of papers on the “African lineage model,” partly based on African material. Contains a defense of the model by one of its progenitors, Meyer Fortes.
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  137. Kuper, Adam. 1982. Lineage theory: A critical retrospect. Annual Review of Anthropology11:71–95.
  138. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.an.11.100182.000443Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. Critical and historical account of the rise, fall, rise, and recurring fall of the lineage model. The first rise and fall formed part of the Boasian rejection of Morgan’s evolutionism. The second was related especially to the revival of the model for Africa by functionalist Africanists, which was found to be less useful elsewhere and eventually even for Africa itself. Available online for purchase.
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  141. Scheffler, Harold W. 2001. Filiation and affiliation. Boulder, CO: Westview.
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  143. Most recent statement of the author’s deconstruction of deep descent systems in favor of a focus on filiation or relations between parents and children alone. Sees greater cross-cultural regularity in modes of filiation than is usually admitted. Also prefers to treat descent as a matter of categories rather than groups acting together.
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  145. Genealogical Thinking
  146. Many debates have arisen within anthropology concerning whether genealogy is a mode of thought that is common to all humanity and how extensive it is in particular societies. An alternative view is that it is just the preferred method of tracing relationships for the anthropologist, suggesting that this way of thinking is not necessarily, or even very often, that of the people under study. Most modern objections to genealogy condemn such representations as basically reflecting Western thought and therefore as ethnocentric. Schneider 1972, Bouquet 1996, and Bamford and Leach 2009 are all ultimately reacting to Rivers 1910.
  147. Bamford, Sandra C., and James Leach. 2009. Kinship and beyond: The genealogical model reconsidered. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
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  149. Collection of papers critiquing the predominance of genealogical thinking found in Rivers’s position. Includes papers on the genealogical assumptions underlying animal breeding, the genome mapping of Iceland’s entire population, and more generally the circumstances under which people use and do not use genealogical reckoning.
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  151. Bouquet, Mary. 1996. Family trees and their affinities: The visual imperative of the genealogical diagram. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2.1 (March): 43–66.
  152. DOI: 10.2307/3034632Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  153. A reaction to the Rivers tradition, this article stresses the visual power of the genealogical diagram and deplores the lack of theoretical scrutiny it has received. Charts the genesis of the “tree” as an image for genealogical representation in both religious texts and Darwinian evolutionism. Availableonline for purchase.
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  155. Rivers, W. H. R. 1910. The genealogical method of anthropological enquiry. Sociological Review 3:1–12.
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  157. In this article Rivers demonstrates the use of genealogy to collect data about kinship as both a more scientific way of collecting such data and of identifying sociocultural features that are not due to Western influence.
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  159. Schneider, David. 1972. What is kinship all about? In Kinship studies in the Morgan centennial year. Edited by Priscilla Reining. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.
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  161. Rejects earlier (especially evolutionist and functionalist) approaches to kinship that rely excessively on genealogical methods. Instead advocates a relativist approach focused on symbolic meanings, the establishment of norms through a focus on actual practice, and the placing of kinship in a cultural rather than the sociological sphere. Schneider’s relativism led him to deny that kinship has any specific meaning cross-culturally.
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  163. Patrilineal Descent
  164. Patrilineal descent refers to ties between generations traced through males, especially those related as father and son. Tends to be treated in anthropological theory as the limit case or the default mode of descent, despite the significance of other forms. Feil 1984, Shipton 1984, and Freedman 1966 are all good, uncontroversial ethnographic accounts from various parts of the world.
  165. Feil, D. K. 1984. Beyond patriliny in the New Guinea Highlands. Man 19.1 (March): 50–76.
  166. DOI: 10.2307/2803224Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. Compares modes of patrilineal descent in Papua New Guinea, with some societies having fairly deep and stable lineages and others having more fluid and shallower structures. The latter tend to have more extensive exchange relations with other groups, in relation to whom they are typically less suspicious and hostile. The difference is partly linked to the extensiveness of agricultural production (especially of pigs, used in exchange). Available online. for purchase
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  169. Freedman, Maurice. 1966. Chinese lineage and society: Fukien and Kwangtung. Monographs on Social Anthropology 33. London: Athlone.
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  171. A comprehensive study of patrilineages and both their structural and symbolic aspects in southern China, published at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Partly historical and partly based on the ethnography of Hong Kong, then still a British colony. Covers the internal structure and external relations of the lineage, its connections with ancestor worship, and the contexts of both the family and the state.
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  173. Shipton, Parker. 1984. Lineage and locality as antithetical principles in East African systems of land tenure. Ethnology 23.2 (April): 117–131.
  174. DOI: 10.2307/3773697Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  175. In anthropology, kinship and territory have long been seen as antithetical in the constitution of local groups. This article compares the Nyamwezi and Luo peoples of East Africa. The former have a social organization constituted on the basis of territory and chiefdoms, permitting flexible residence patterns, while the latter have a segmentary lineage structure that restricts residential choice. Available online for purchase.
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  177. Matrilineal Descent
  178. Matrilineal descent refers to links between generations through women, not only mother to daughter but also mother’s brother to sister’s son, for instance, especially where power and property are concerned. Issues include why such systems should exist at all, what else they are correlated with, whether they give more freedom to women than patrilineal systems do, and why they tend to cluster geographically. Schneider and Gough 1961 and Douglas 1969 provide general discussions and overviews, and the rest, including Nongbri 2010, are more ethnographically specific. Moore 1985 can be read in part as a reaction to Fuller 1976.
  179. Douglas, Mary. 1969. Is matriliny doomed in Africa? In Man in Africa. Edited by Mary Douglas and Phyllis Mary Kaberry, 121–135. London and New York: Tavistock.
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  181. Discusses the situation of matrilineal descent in Africa and concludes that it is less under threat than commonly supposed. Sees matriliny as adaptive in economic terms and therefore as subject to change but not wholesale disappearance.
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  183. Fuller, Christopher J. 1976. The Nayars today. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  185. This comprehensive historical and contemporary account of the social organization of the Nayar, a caste in South India, is of long-term interest to the field of anthropology because of the description of the caste’s highly developed matrilineal institutions coupled with their lack of a clear institution of marriage. Author also accounts for the disintegration of the system in modern times.
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  187. Moore, Melinda A. 1985. A new look at the Nayar taravad. Man 20.3 (September): 523–541.
  188. DOI: 10.2307/2802444Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  189. Seeks to revise earlier work on Nayar taravads, or extended families (reviewed in Fuller 1976), claiming they are territorially based house societies rather than matrilineal descent groups. Also stresses, as hadn’t been done in earlier material, the significance of paternity and the taravad ritual. Available online for purchase.
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  191. Nongbri, Tiplut. 2010. Family, gender and identity: A comparative analysis of trans-Himalayan matrilineal structures. Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s. 44:155–178.
  192. DOI: 10.1177/006996671004400208Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  193. Compares matriliny among the Mosuo of Southwest China and the Khasi of Northeast India, showing that whereas matriliny survives in the former case, supported by tourism, in the latter it is coming under pressure from attempts to convert the society to patriliny. Available online for purchase.
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  195. Schneider, David Murray, and Kathleen Gough, eds. 1961. Matrilineal kinship. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  197. A collection of articles from around the world discussing the current state of knowledge concerning matrilineal societies in the 1960s, a century after the appearance of Bachofen’s book Das Mutterrecht. The various authors not only discuss matrilineality in terms of its inherent structures and features but also try to connect it with different modes of livelihood and changes in them that might bear on the evolution of kinship systems.
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  199. Cognatic or Bilateral Descent
  200. Cognatic or bilateral descent refers to ties between generations that are indifferent to gender. In practice, there is a certain tendency for positions of power, especially, to devolve patrilineally in such societies. The early tendency was to neglect the study of cognatic or bilateral descent and even to dismiss it, reflecting a refusal by several authors to treat descent in this mode as a proper form of descent. All the early texts in this section accept the validity of bilateral descent and explain its characteristics from various points of view. There is a bias in the literature here toward Southeast Asia (e.g., Davenport 1959, Murdock 1960, Firth 1963, Kemp 1978, Leach 1961), but Caplan 1969focuses on an Islamic community in Africa and Rivière 1993 on Amazonia.
  201. Caplan, Patricia. 1969. Cognatic descent groups on Mafia Island, Tanzania. Man, 4.3: 419–431.
  202. DOI: 10.2307/2798116Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. Discusses cognatic descent on Mafia Island, Tanzania, from the point of view of the choices people make in claiming ties with particular descent groups, partly based on the prestige of local mosques linked to the latter and partly on land types. Shows in particular how membership in different groups can be manipulated for personal advantage, treating cognatic descent as “unrestricted,” unlike earlier contributions. Available online for purchase.
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  205. Davenport, William. 1959. Nonunilineal descent and descent groups. American Anthropologist 61.4: 557–572.
  206. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1959.61.4.02a00010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  207. Early attempt to establish cognatic or bilateral descent (the author refers to it as “nonunilineal descent”) as a separate mode of descent with its own characteristics, rather than treating it as merely a residual category of descent that is less formal than unilineal descent, as had hitherto been done. Also briefly compares this mode of ancestor-focused descent with the egocentric kindred (seeFreeman 1961, cited under Family, Residence, and the Kindred).
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  209. Firth, Raymond. 1963. Bilateral descent groups: An operational viewpoint. In Studies in kinship and marriage: Dedicated to Brenda Z. Seligman on her 80th birthday. Edited by Brenda Z. Seligman, Isaac Shapera, and Edward Evans-Pritchard, 22–37. Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional Papers 16. London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
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  211. Discusses cognatic or bilateral descent as a mode of descent in its own right with its own characteristics, distinguishing it from unilineal descent. The main ethnographic example is the Maori people, who use bilateral descent in a normative sense but have patrilineal tendencies in the transmission of office and leadership.
  212. Find this resource:
  213. Kemp, Jeremy H. 1978. Cognatic descent and the generation of social stratification in South-East Asia. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 134: 63–83.
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  215. Traces the links between cognatic descent; marriage, and, in some cases, its avoidance; state formation; and social stratification with special reference to the history of Siam. The author’s demonstration of a reluctance to enter into affinal alliance counters Lévi-Strauss’s arguments concerning the universality of such alliances. Available online for purchase.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Leach, Edmund Ronald. 1961. Pul Eliya, a village in Ceylon: A study in land tenure and kinship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  219. In this longitudinal historical and ethnographic study of a village in Sri Lanka, the main argument is that it is ultimately not kin ties but rather economic interests in land and its produce that are key in the formation of local communities. Kinship merely provides ideological justification for the economic choices that are made. A controversial attack on structural–functional approaches from a more interest-based, practice-oriented perspective drawn ultimately from Malinowski.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Murdock, George Peter, ed. 1960. Social structure in Southeast Asia. Papers presented at the 9th Pacific Science Congress, Bangkok, Thailand, 1957. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
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  223. A collection of papers mostly on cognatic forms of social organization and mostly from the island states of Southeast Asia. Editor’s introduction focuses especially on cognatic case studies.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Rivière, Peter. 1993. The Amerindianization of descent and affinity. L’Homme 33.126–128: 507–516.
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  227. A brief review of the problem of descent in the Amazon Basin that shows how many descent systems in the region that were initially thought to be unilineal had to be redefined as cognatic.
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  229. Inheritance
  230. Inheritance refers to the transmission of property between generations, whether tangible or intangible, movable or immovable (including office), premortem or postmortem. Marriage payments are sometimes seen as premortem inheritance, especially a daughter’s dowry (see Marriage Payments). Rarely controversial, except insofar as it has been consumed by arguments over descent, the key issues of inheritance include what is transmitted to whom by whom. Most texts in this section are by Jack Goody, a leading authority on the issue, who has extensively refined the relevant conceptual apparatus (Goody 1959, Goody 1961, Goody 1990). Bloch and Sperber 2002builds on Goody’s work on the avunculate.
  231. Bloch, Maurice, and Dan Sperber. 2002. Kinship and evolved psychological dispositions: The mother’s brother controversy reconsidered. Current Anthropology 43.5 (December): 723–734.
  232. DOI: 10.1086/341654Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  233. Builds on Goody 1959 and similar work to argue that while there is cultural variation and no biological or psychological determinism involved, practices like the avunculate (a special relationship frequently found between a mother’s brother and his sister’s son) can be connected to evolved psychological dispositions that we all have. However, other factors also influence the spread of such practices through an “epidemiology” of shared culture.
  234. Find this resource:
  235. Goody, Jack. 1959. The mother’s brother and the sister’s son in West Africa. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 89.1 (January–June): 61–88.
  236. DOI: 10.2307/2844437Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  237. Rejects both Radcliffe-Brown’s “extension of sentiments” theory and Lévi-Strauss’s “affinal alliance” theory on the basis that they are explanations for the avunculate. Prefers an argument in favor of the exercise of residual rights to property in one’s mother’s family or lineage, especially where a man may “snatch” the property of his maternal uncle. Available online for purchase.
  238. Find this resource:
  239. Goody, Jack. 1961. The classification of double descent systems. Current Anthropology 2:1 (February): 3–25.
  240. DOI: 10.1086/200156Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  241. Early attempt to establish double unilineal descent, or the co-occurrence of both patrilineal and matrilineal descent in the same society, as a mode of descent in its own right. The key feature that the author claims for double unilineal descent is the differential inheritance of different types of property by the two modes of descent. Available online for purchase.
  242. Find this resource:
  243. Goody, Jack. 1990. The oriental, the ancient and the primitive: Systems of marriage and family in the pre-industrial societies of Eurasia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  244. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511621703Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  245. Builds on Goody’s earlier work to discuss modes of inheritance and their relation to types of family and marriage. Claims that premodern Eurasia is very similar to preindustrial Europe in this regard. Partly historical, discussing Greece and Rome as well as the Middle East, India, and China.
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  247. Marriage
  248. Marriage can be distinguished from mating by the rules that surround it, the ceremonial aspects, and so forth. While marriage seems universal in human societies, there is considerable variation as to whom one may and may not marry, including expectations regarding marriage to specific kin types (usually a cousin of some sort), whether plural marriages are allowed, the type of property transfers made at marriage, and the degree of ceremony involved. Especially key in structuralist thought is the notion of marriage as the basis of an alliance (which has produced the term “affinal alliance”) between whole kin groups, not just individuals. Marriage is often contrasted with incest, or the practice of sexual relations with members of one’s own kin group however defined, not of other kin groups.
  249. General
  250. Whereas Mair 1971 is a general survey, Dumont 1983 and Simpson 1998 are linked more to specific ethnographic areas, and Moore 1964 and Brown 1964 examine specific issues surrounding marriage.
  251. Brown, Paula. 1964. Enemies and affines. Ethnology 3.4 (October): 335–356.
  252. DOI: 10.2307/3772836Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  253. Draws attention to the frequent cases in which marriage between groups is seen as a form of hostility to them and may even accompany it. An implicit counterargument to that of Lévi-Strauss, which suggests that affinal alliance is typically productive of basic social solidarity. Discussion draws mostly on New Guinea material. Available online for purchase.
  254. Find this resource:
  255. Dumont, Louis. 1983. Affinity as a value: Marriage alliance in South India, with comparative essays on Australia. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  257. A collection of papers by a leading structuralist expert on both India and kinship. Stresses the affinal alliance aspects of kinship in South India and Australia in opposition to earlier functionalist approaches that attempt to interpret such systems through notions of descent. Also contains a paper justifying the unusual Nayar system of marriage in terms of pan-Indian practices.
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  259. Mair, Lucy Phillip. 1971. Marriage. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
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  261. A useful introduction to marriage for students, covering incest, prescribed marriage, marriage payments, plural marriages, ritual, and divorce.
  262. Find this resource:
  263. Moore, Sally Falk. 1964. Descent and symbolic filiation. American Anthropologist 66.1 (December): 1308–1320.
  264. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1964.66.6.02a00060Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  265. Despite the title, this is actually a study of cases of symbolic incest, especially between brothers and sisters, in the origin myths of lineages and whole societies. Also discusses the significance of sisters for brothers in the latter’s perpetuation of the lineage, such as the “cattle-linked sister” in Africa, through whom a man obtains bridewealth in order to marry and have legitimate children himself. Available online for purchase.
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  267. Simpson, Bob. 1998. Changing families: An ethnographic approach to divorce and separation. Oxford and New York: Berg.
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  269. Based on British material, discusses the circumstances, reasons for, and meanings of divorce. Also stresses that, for both spouses and their children, divorce may refocus the relationships created through the marriage rather than end them entirely.
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  271. Incest and Incest Taboos
  272. Incest is often seen as the reverse of marriage, in that it involves sexual relations with one’s own people rather than with others. Marriage is accordingly often seen as mirroring incest prohibitions and taboos, though the range of prohibitions in the two cases does not always fit entirely. Perspectives can be reduced to the biological, psychological, and social/cultural and have been subject to constant revision (e.g., Fox 1980). (See also Lévi-Strauss 1969, cited in Structuralism).
  273. Fox, Robin. 1980. The red lamp of incest. New York: Dutton.
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  275. Proposes an evolutionary view of incest with the aid of a consideration of practice among nonhuman primates. Rejects Lévi-Strauss’s notion that the incest taboo represents the transition from nature to human culture in favor of a neo-Freudian approach that sees incest taboos as adaptive in evolutionary terms while recognizing their cultural variation.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Goody, Jack. 1956. A comparative approach to incest and adultery. British Journal of Sociology 7.4 (December): 286–305.
  278. DOI: 10.2307/586694Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. Advocates approaching incest and incest taboos not in isolation, as is so often done, but as one of a class of sexual offences, the other main one being adultery. Whereas adultery has been neglected in anthropology and requires more attention, the incest taboo has several possible foundations, but its conventional association with exogamy has been exaggerated. Available online for purchase.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Héritier, Françoise. 1999. Two sisters and their mother: The anthropology of incest. New York: Zone Books.
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  283. A partly historical study focusing on incest prohibitions that ban an individual from sexual relations with an opposite-sex pair who are themselves close blood relations (e.g., mother and daughter). Makes the further claim that incest taboos as ordinarily understood may have evolved from this type of situation.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. White, Leslie. 1948. The definition and prohibition of incest. American Anthropologist 50.3: 416–435.
  286. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1948.50.3.02a00020Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. A critical review of the biological, psychological, and earlier anthropological views of incest, which dismisses them in favor of an argument referring to the adaptive advantages of out-marriage as an alternative to incest. In part anticipates Lévi-Strauss’s similar but slightly later argument.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Marriage Payments
  290. In respect of transfers of goods, money, and/or property at marriage, there is a key distinction between dowry (in which goods and the bride all go in the groom’s direction) and bride-price or bridewealth (in which goods are exchanged by the groom for the bride). In some cases, payment may be substituted for labor (“brideservice”). Marriage payments are not very subject to controversy. The texts in this section are therefore both descriptive and interpretive.
  291. Comaroff, John L. 1980. The meaning of marriage payments. Studies in Anthropology 7. London: Academic Press.
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  293. A collection of articles on a variety of forms of marriage payment, mostly on bridewealth, though there is an article on both dowry and on a society where property is exchanged, or goes in both directions within the marriage transaction.
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  295. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1931. An alternative term for “bride-price.” Man 31 (March): 36–39.
  296. DOI: 10.2307/2789533Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  297. Introduces the term “bride-wealth” as an alternative for “bride-price” to refer to the wealth transferred upon the marriage from the groom’s family or kin group to that of the bride. “Bride-wealth” is thought to be more expressive of the social as well as economic implications of the practice, and it is less implicative of the objectionable idea that brides are bought and sold like a commodity. Discussion draws especially on African material. Available online for purchase.
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  299. Goody, Jack, and Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah. 1973. Bridewealth and dowry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  301. Consists of two chapters that both reject the distinction between bridewealth and dowry as too concrete. The chapter by Goody discusses the operation of bridewealth in Africa and compares it with dowry in Eurasia. The second chapter, by Tambiah, looks at dowry in law and practice in South Asia, focusing on historical texts as well as present-day ethnography.
  302. Find this resource:
  303. Vatuk, Sylvia. 1975. Gifts and affines in North India. Contributions to Indian Sociology 9.2 (July): 155–196.
  304. DOI: 10.1177/006996677500900202Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  305. A comprehensive account of affinal alliance in North India seen through property transfers, in a situation in which everything is supposed to only go from the bride’s family to the groom’s, not only before and at the wedding but continuously afterward as well. Available online for purchase.
  306. Find this resource:
  307. Regional Studies
  308. All the texts in this section are collections of descriptions of marriage practices and systems from specific world regions: in regard to the Amazon, Kensinger 1984 and Maybury-Lewis 1979; in regard to New Guinea, Glasse and Meggitt 1969; in regard to southern Africa, Kuper 1982; in regard to China, Baker 1979; in regard to eastern Indonesia, Fox 1980; in regard to India, Parry 1979.
  309. Baker, Hugh D. R. 1979. Chinese family and kinship. London: Macmillan.
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  311. A survey of kinship and marriage in rural China, covering the family and the place of the individual within it, descent groups and ancestor worship, the role of the state, fictive kinship, and 20th-century developments. The author stresses the continuities in kinship that have survived the coming of communism despite other changes.
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  313. Fox, James J., ed. 1980. The flow of life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia. Harvard Studies in Cultural Anthropology 2. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  315. A collection of articles from eastern Indonesia, Part 1 of which deals with affinal alliance and kinship terminology from a generally structuralist perspective. Some attention given to comparative issues, especially in Needham’s article on Sumba.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Glasse, Robert M., and Mervyn J. Meggitt, eds. 1969. Pigs, pearlshells, and women: Marriage in the New Guinea Highlands; a symposium. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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  319. A collection of articles on the connections between marriage, gift exchange, and the mutual suspicion and even hostility between both different kin groups and men and women in these societies. Exchanges of gifts take place at other life crisis rites too, such as birth, initiation and death.
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  321. Kensinger, Kenneth M., ed. 1984. Marriage practices in lowland South America. Illinois Studies in Anthropology 14. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
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  323. A collection of articles on marriage rules, practices, and their coherence throughout Amazonia. Includes paper on speech group exogamy in western Amazonia.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Kuper, Adam. 1982. Wives for cattle: Bridewealth and marriage in Southern Africa. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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  327. Combines an interpretation of the operation of bridewealth in southern Africa with case studies of marriage in the area, an assessment of changes as a consequence of colonialism and after, and a consideration of the ritual aspects of marriage.
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  329. Maybury-Lewis, David, ed. 1979. Dialectical societies: The Gê and Bororo of central Brazil. Harvard Studies in Cultural Anthropology 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  331. A collection of papers on kinship, residence, affinal alliance, and kinship terminology from central Brazil, adopting a basically structuralist perspective.
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  333. Parry, Jonathan P. 1979. Caste and kinship in Kangra. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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  335. A study of the interface between caste and marriage practices in a Rajput caste in Northwest India. Describes how marriage both articulates hierarchy between kin groups within the caste and is used to counter it in a cyclical process in which this hierarchy is interspersed with periods of a stress on equality between such groups.
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  337. Trautmann, Thomas R. 1981. Dravidian kinship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  339. A comprehensive discussion of the nature, variation, and incidence of cross-cousin marriage (“Dravidian kinship”) in South India, coupled with a partly historical review of the north of the country, where cousin marriage always seems to have been disparaged as a practice, insofar as it occurred at all. An important survey and discussion of this significant geographical contrast in attitudes to marriage in India.
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  341. Plural Marriages or Polygamy
  342. The two basic types of plural marriages, polyandry and polygyny, represent the marriage of one individual to more than one spouse, who are sometimes themselves siblings. There are few general studies in the area, especially of polygyny.
  343. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark. 1963. A study of polyandry. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
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  345. A large general study of polyandry in South India and Tibet (including Tibetans in Nepal). The theoretical section tends to see polyandry as a way of ensuring effective resource distribution in harsh climates.
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  347. Levine, Nancy E. 1988. The dynamics of polyandry: Kinship, domesticity, and population on the Tibetan border. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  349. An account of fraternal polyandry among the Nyinba people, the ethnic Tibetans living in Nepal. Levine rejects interpretations that are based solely on economic or demographic reasons and stresses the interplay of these factors with ideas and practices of paternity, descent, community, hierarchy between landholders and former slaves, and the consequent endogamy. She sees demography and economy as a consequence of ideas about kinship as much as a cause.
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  351. Affinal Alliance
  352. Cross cousins are related to ego when the respective parents are opposite-sex siblings to one another. There are three main types of cross-cousin marriage: bilateral (found in pockets worldwide), matrilateral (found in pockets mainly in Southeast Asia, as described in chapter 4 of Needham 1962, cited in Kinship as Biological and as Social), and patrilateral (of doubtful validity as a separate type; see Needham 1958). Some of the most intense controversies in the anthropology of kinship have revolved around the interpretation and meaning of such systems. In the selections below, for instance, Schneider 1965 is out of step with the other interpretations, which are basically structuralist (e.g., Leach 1951, Maybury-Lewis 1965, Rivière 1969, Good 1980, Good 1981). Radcliffe-Brown 1931 is an early attempt to get to grips with Australian material. Studies of such systems often incorporate a study of the associated kinship terminology. Lévi-Strauss calls these systems “elementary structures,” as they can be expressed in terms of a simple marriage rule, as opposed to “complex structures,” which are random regarding categorical choice of spouse.
  353. Good, Anthony. 1980. Elder sister’s daughter marriage in South Asia. Journal of Anthropological Research 36.4 (Winter): 474–500.
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  355. Review of the practice of marriage between a man and his sister’s daughter, which has been reported from South India and parts of Sri Lanka, as well as in the Amazon. Both are areas that practice bilateral cross-cousin marriage as well. Whereas the bilateral form can be interpreted as a mother’s brother taking his sister’s daughter in marriage for his son, in marriage to sister’s daughter he takes her for himself. Available online for purchase.
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  357. Good, Anthony. 1981. Prescription, preference and practice: Marriage patterns among the Kondaiyankottai Maravar of South India. Man 16.1 (March): 108–129.
  358. DOI: 10.2307/2801978Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. A study of marriage and kinship terminology among a South Indian caste that has both patrilineal and matrilineal clans. Takes the position that terminology, marriage rule, and behavior (i.e., the actual statistics of marriage) should be examined separately before any synthesis is attempted and applies it to an actual case study. Available online for purchase.
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  361. Leach, Edmund. 1951. The structural implications of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage.Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 81.1–2:23–55.
  362. DOI: 10.2307/2844015Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. Classic study describing and accounting for matrilateral cross-cousin marriage through a comparison of key Southeast Asian examples. Available online by subscription.
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  365. Maybury-Lewis, David H. P. 1965. Prescriptive marriage systems. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 21.3 (Autumn): 207–230.
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  367. A useful account of prescriptive alliance or cross-cousin marriage, describing the chief forms (especially bilateral and matrilateral cross-cousin marriage—that is, symmetric and asymmetric exchange, respectively). Emphasizes the importance of seeing prospective spouses as members of multimember kin categories rather than as isolated genealogical positions. Discusses the distinction between (mere) preference and (more absolute) prescription in circumstances when marriage to a particular kin type is a social expectation. Available online for purchase.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Needham, Rodney. 1958. The formal analysis of prescriptive patrilateral cross-cousin marriage. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 14.2 (Summer): 199–219.
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  371. A comparative and theoretical study that dismisses the status of patrilateral cross-cousin marriage as a type in its own right: Suggests that it does not exist in fact and cannot exist in theory, as it would involve a reversal of the direction of alliance between groups with every generation, which would be impossible to effect. In reality, Needham states, there are only bilateral (direct) exchange and matrilateral as types of affinal alliance. Available online for purchase.
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  373. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald. 1931. The social organization of Australian tribes. Oceania Monographs 1. Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan.
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  375. A classic study interpreting complex systems of marriage and kinship terminology among Australian aborigines from a basically structural-functionalist perspective.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Rivière, Peter. 1969. Marriage among the Trio: A principle of social organisation. Oxford: Clarendon.
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  379. A classic study of affinal alliance based on bilateral cross-cousin marriage in the Amazon. Considers especially the criteria of social classification and how they are applied in action, as well as modes of residence and how the affinal alliance system actually works. Supported by extensive genealogical tables showing how the whole population is interrelated.
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  381. Schneider, David. 1965. Some muddles in the models: Or, how the system really works. In The relevance of models for social anthropology. Edited by Michael Banton, 25–85. London: Tavistock.
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  383. A paper critical of Needham’s model of prescriptive alliance. Alleges that Needham’s interpretations of ethnographic examples falsely distinguish prescriptive from preferential systems and that the basic explanation is tautological, stating that in these societies, men marry whom they are permitted to marry.
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  385. Patrilateral Parallel-Cousin Marriage
  386. Patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage is a form of marriage of a man to his father’s brother’s daughter, involving lineage endogamy, rather than the norm of exogamy with cross-cousin marriage. This type of marriage is found especially in Islamic societies from Pakistan across the Middle East to North Africa, though its actual incidence may be modest. The selections in this section contain a number of different interpretations, especially keeping land together and recruiting support in a feud, but no controversy of wider significance. Holý 1989 is the most general text, and Barth 1954, Murphy and Kasdan 1959, and Donnan 1988 are more ethnographic in focus.
  387. Barth, Fredrik. 1954. Father’s brother’s daughter’s marriage in Kurdistan. Journal of Anthropological Research 42.3 (Autumn): 164–171.
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  389. Describes the practice of marriage between the children of a father’s brothers in Kurdistan from the point of view of political alliances and strategies. Available online for purchase.
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  391. Donnan, Hastings. 1988. Marriage among Muslims: Preference and choice in Northern Pakistan. Delhi: Hindustan.
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  393. An ethnographic account of marriage choices in a village in northwest Punjab, Pakistan. Deals with this case study partly as a foil to studies of prescriptive alliance, as only the opposed notion of preference is relevant here. Also considers the implications of land ownership, community membership, and parent-child relations for such choices.
  394. Find this resource:
  395. Holý, Ladislav. 1989. Kinship, honour and solidarity: Cousin marriage in the Middle East. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester Univ. Press.
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  397. Review of practices of patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, stressing its importance not only politically and as a means of recruiting support in feud and in other forms but also as an expression of patrilineal solidarity and as a means of perpetuating that solidarity.
  398. Find this resource:
  399. Murphy, Robert F., and Leonard Kasdan. 1959. The structure of parallel cousin marriage.American Anthropologist 61.1 (February): 17–29.
  400. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1959.61.1.02a00040Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  401. Rejects interpretations of marriage between a father’s brother’s children based on personal motivations in favor of a theory of the integration of patrilineal communities through descent rather than alliance, as in cases in which exogamy occurs. Available online for purchase.
  402. Find this resource:
  403. Kin Terms and Kinship Terminology
  404. Kinship terminology (often called relationship terminology by structuralists) refers to the pattern formed by the inventory of words for relatives in a particular society and language, the words’ meanings, and how they are related. Indigenous classifications of the terminology may distinguish kin types that are united in the Western system and vice versa, which produces the considerable range of types. Controversy has surrounded the significance of kinship terminologies throughout much of the history of anthropology, especially whether or not they reflect aspects of social structure and practice (in particular, cross-cousin marriage) or are simply categories without further significance. Dumont 1953, Leach 1958, Needham 1973, and Parkin 1996 support the former point of view, and Goodenough 1954 and Lounsbury 1965 support the latter. Bloch 1971 considers tactical uses of kin terms. Godelier, et al. 1998 considers changes in kinship terminologies, a theme going back to Morgan in the 19th century. Jones and Milicic 2011 mostly uses perspectives drawn from linguistics to study kinship terminology.
  405. Bloch, Maurice. 1971. The moral and tactical meaning of kinship terms. Man 6.1 (March): 79–87.
  406. DOI: 10.2307/2798429Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407. Short article stressing the way in which kin terms may be used strategically as markers of the inclusion and exclusion of particular individuals as kin and nonkin, respectively. Bloch shows how this is made possible because of the ambiguity of meaning of certain multimember categories and their terms. Argued in relation to material from Madagascar. Available online for purchase.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Dumont, Louis. 1953. The Dravidian kinship terminology as an expression of marriage. Man53 (March): 34–39.
  410. DOI: 10.2307/2794868Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. Demonstrates the relationship between the kinship terminology and cross-cousin marriage as parallel systems of meaning and practice in South India. The article is opposed to functionalist explanations of kinship terminology in terms of descent and filiation, at least for this area. Availableonline for purchase.
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  413. Godelier, Maurice, Thomas R. Trautmann, and Franklin Edmund Tjon Sie Fat, eds. 1998.Transformations of kinship. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution.
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  415. A collection of papers from around the world on change in kinship systems, especially in kinship terminologies. Continues a tradition that goes right back to Morgan’s pioneering work on kinship terminology in the 19th century with a particular focus on the Iroquois type, whose significance Morgan did not fully understand.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Goodenough, Ward H. 1954. Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Language 32.1 (January–March): 195–216.
  418. DOI: 10.2307/410665Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. Discusses the applicability of the formal analysis of words and their meanings in Bloomfieldian linguistics to the study of kinship terminologies and, ultimately, for a prospective science of meaning that can also cover other areas of analysis. The ethnographic basis for the study is the island of Truk in Micronesia. Available online for purchase.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Jones, Doug, and Bojka Milicic, eds. 2011. Kinship, language, and prehistory: Per Hage and the renaissance in kinship studies. Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press.
  422. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. A collection of studies, involving linguists as well as anthropologists, mostly focusing on kin terms and terminological systems viewed both synchronically and diachronically, and with special (although not exclusive) reference to perspectives drawn from linguistics.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Leach, Edmund Ronald. 1958. Concerning Trobriand clans and the kinship category “tabu.” In The developmental cycle in domestic groups. Edited by Jack Goody, 120–145. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  426. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. An analysis of Trobriand kinship terminology using Malinowski’s data and emphasizing the terminology as a set of categories—a basically structuralist approach.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Lounsbury, Floyd G. 1965. Another view of the Trobriand kinship categories. American Anthropologist 67.5 (October): 142–185.
  430. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00770Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. Presents alternative analysis of Trobriand kinship terminology to Leach’s from the point of view of formal semantic analysis. Available online for purchase.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Needham, Rodney. 1973. Prescription. Oceania 43.3 (March): 166–181.
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  435. Argues that the notion of prescription should be applied to kinship terminologies that express cross-cousin marriage, not to marriage rules, suggesting that this will avoid the controversy over whether particular systems are prescriptive in the latter sense, or merely preferential. This study was part of a wider debate with Lévi-Strauss over the interpretation of what the latter called “elementary structures.” Available online for purchase.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Parkin, Robert J. 1996. Genealogy and category: An operational view. L’Homme 36.139: 87–108.
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  439. Argues that genealogy and category are not sufficient to identify particular types of society (respectively for the West and the rest of the world) but that they co-occur in some form in all societies. Argued with reference to a comparison between Scheffler (pro-genealogy) and Dumont (pro-category) on kinship in South India.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Crow-Omaha
  442. Named after two North American peoples, Crow and Omaha are terminologies known for the vertical extensions they make between generations in either the matriline or patriline, respectively. They are often associated with prohibitions on specific kin types as marriage partners, from which comes Lévi-Strauss’s term “semicomplex structures,” though they may also occur with renewals of alliances after a gap of one or more generations. There has been a range of controversy over their significance, as to whether they can be associated with other sociological features and so forth. Of the works in this section, generally Barnes 1984 and Bowden 1983 are more skeptical than McKinley 1971 andHéritier 1981.
  443. Barnes, R. H. 1984. Two Crows denies it: A history of controversy in Omaha sociology. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
  444. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  445. Examines the case of Omaha kinship from the point of view of an actual ethnography of the Omaha people, showing that not even the actual Omaha practice the theoretical model of “Omaha” kinship.
  446. Find this resource:
  447. Bowden, Ross. 1983. Kwoma terminology and marriage alliance: The “Omaha” problem revisited. Man 18.4 (December): 745–765.
  448. DOI: 10.2307/2801906Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  449. Ethnographic study of the significance of an Omaha terminology for enduring marriage alliances between kin groups in a New Guinea society in the absence of a rule of cross-cousin marriage. Available online for purchase.
  450. Find this resource:
  451. Héritier, Françoise. 1981. L’exercice de la parenté. Paris: Gallimard.
  452. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  453. Study of a “semi-complex structure” among the Samo people of West Africa by a follower of Lévi-Strauss. Demonstrates strategic choices in making affinal alliances between local groups, using computer-generated modeling and analysis of data.
  454. Find this resource:
  455. McKinley, Robert. 1971. A critique of the reflectionist theory of kinship terminology: The Crow/Omaha case. Man 6.2 (June): 228–247.
  456. DOI: 10.2307/2798264Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  457. Useful review of interpretations of Crow-Omaha systems that seek to associate them with other sociological features, most of which the author rejects in favor of a sociology of knowledge approach. Available online for purchase.
  458. Find this resource:
  459. New Reproductive Technologies
  460. New reproductive technologies are a major theme in the anthropology of kinship in recent years, despite the very limited numbers of people directly taking advantage of them. The main issue is how they have altered ideas about kinship and kin ties in society generally, as well as how they have muddied the distinction between biological and cultural notions of kinship. Most of the studies in this section are focused on Western societies, but Clarke 2008 examines the topic with respect to the Middle East, namely Lebanon.
  461. Clarke, Morgan. 2008. New kinship, Islam and the liberal tradition: Sexual morality and new reproductive technology in Lebanon. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14:153–169.
  462. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00483.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463. Ethnographic study of the reception and practice of new reproductive technologies among Christians and Muslims in Lebanon. Linked to ideas of sexual morality and fertility. Shows that the Muslim authorities do not dismiss such technologies, despite suspicion of Western influences, but are prepared to give advice on their morally proper use. Available online for purchase.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Edwards, Jeanette. 2000. Born and bred: Idioms of kinship and new reproductive technologies in England. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  466. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. A study of how the new reproductive technologies are challenging and changing ordinary people’s notions of place and kinship in a northern English town, most of whom are not necessarily themselves directly affected by these technologies.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Edwards, Jeanette, Sarah Franklin, Eric Hirsch, Frances Price, and Marilyn Strathern. 1999.Technologies of procreation: Kinship in the age of assisted conception. 2d ed. London and New York: Routledge.
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  471. Examines the significance of the new reproductive technologies in the United Kingdom for how they may challenge and redefine relationships between individuals, notions of parenthood, and so forth. Discusses clinical practice and law, and also changes views on kinship more generally.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Edwards, Jeanette, and Carles Salazar. 2009. European kinship in the age of biotechnology. Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality 14. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
  474. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. Recent collection of articles from around Europe discussing how the new reproductive technologies are altering popular and scientific ideas of kinship but also perpetuating them in some cases. Critically examines the idea that social life is becoming “geneticized” and asks whether there is now an equivalence between blood and genes in the thinking about kinship and how persons are related.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Franklin, Sarah, and Helena Ragoné, eds. 1998. Reproducing reproduction: Kinship, power, technological innovation. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. A collection of articles on the challenges to, and political implications of, concepts of reproduction posed by the new technologies, not only in relation to humans but also to animals and plants. Covers, among other topics, abortion, assisted conception, adoption, and prenatal screening.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Ginsburg, Faye, and Rayna Rapp. 1991. The politics of reproduction. Annual Review of Anthropology 20:311–324.
  482. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.an.20.100191.001523Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  483. A comprehensive review of earlier work on the new reproductive technologies, much of it informed by feminist perspectives on reproduction and nurturance. Covers the politics and marketization of reproduction but is less concerned than later work with how notions of kin and relationships generally are changing as a result of the new technologies. Available online for purchase.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Adoption and Fostering
  486. The two institutions of adoption and fostering have clear similarities, but anthropology tends to distinguish them. Adoption is often treated as a “strategy of heirship” in cases in which a normal heir (e.g., a son) is absent and therefore represents a permanent change in status. Fostering, by contrast, is generally seen as a mode of social relationship in which children are transferred between families for part of their upbringing but not necessarily permanently. Little theoretical controversy, but more recent work (Bowie 2004, Howell 2006), stresses the contemporary trend toward international adoption. Goody 1982 is about fostering, and Goody 1969 is about adoption.
  487. Bowie, Fiona, ed. 2004. Cross-cultural approaches to adoption. London and New York: Routledge.
  488. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  489. A collection of studies of adoption practices from around the world, including the increasing practice of international adoption. Concerned with demonstrating the variation in the meaning, practice, and aims of adoption worldwide.
  490. Find this resource:
  491. Goody, Esther N. 1982. Parenthood and social reproduction: Fostering and occupational roles in West Africa. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 35. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  492. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  493. A study of fostering in West Africa, where it is common in many societies for children to grow up with relatives other than their parents, while retaining ties to the latter. Describes fostering being practiced for educational reasons and to acquire greater opportunities, as well as being a marker of relations between kin groups.
  494. Find this resource:
  495. Goody, Jack. 1969. Adoption in cross-cultural perspective. Comparative Studies in Society and History 11.1 (January): 55–78.
  496. DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500005156Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  497. Cross-cultural study arguing that, unlike fostering, adoption as a strategy of heirship is less common in Africa, where brothers and nephews may inherit children, than in Eurasia, where there is a greater focus on inheritance in the direct line. This encourages adoption of sons where there is no heir of one’s own body. Available online for purchase.
  498. Find this resource:
  499. Howell, Signe. 2006. The kinning of foreigners: Transnational adoption in a global perspective. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
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  501. A study of contemporary transnational adoption focused on Norway. Discusses the roles of bureaucracies, policy makers, and expert knowledge, as well as the implications of this practice for perceptions of the relationship between biology and sociality.
  502. Find this resource:
  503. Kinship and Social Theory
  504. Kinship has entered into the formation of more general theory in anthropology since the latter’s inception as a discipline. In this section, the focus varies between the origins and evolutionary development of kinship systems, social organization seen as the composition of social groups through kinship, the roles of these groups, their internal and external relationships, and the place of individuals within them.
  505. Evolutionism
  506. The concentration in this section is on the origin of human kinship systems and how they have changed over time. This is still a current topic in biological anthropology but received early criticism from within sociocultural anthropology by the school of Franz Boas, a set of criticisms that have tended to dominate discussion. Morgan 1870 and Maine 1861 should be seen in opposition to one another in several respects. Rivers 1924 and White 1958 defend Morgan, and Allen 1986 and Allen, et al. 2008 in some senses continue his trajectory, though the latter also includes biological and other perspectives.
  507. Allen, Nicholas J. 1986. Tetradic theory: An approach to kinship. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 17.2: 87–109.
  508. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  509. This article proposes an increasingly cited argument that the original form of kinship system was a variant of bilateral cross-cousin marriage, requiring only four categories and therefore four terms partly by virtue of the identification of alternate generations as sets (e.g., the set formed by grandparents and grandchildren). This variant is accordingly termed “tetradic society,” from which it is claimed that all other kinship systems have derived.
  510. Find this resource:
  511. Allen, Nicholas J., Hilary Callan, Robin Dunbar, and Wendy James, eds. 2008. Early human kinship: From sex to social reproduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
  512. DOI: 10.1002/9781444302714Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  513. A collection of articles that draw on social and biological anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology in order to revisit Darwinian theories of human evolution. Starting from the evolutionary link between increased brain size and increased population size, the article discusses the possible organization of prehistoric human populations in ways that can be linked to contemporary ideas and practices of kinship.
  514. Find this resource:
  515. Maine, Henry Sumner. 1861. Ancient Law. London: John Murray.
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  517. Sir Henry Sumner Maine is the only major 19th-century evolutionist to prioritize patrilineal over matrilineal descent in evolutionary terms. Also distinguishes “status,” especially kin ties, into which one is largely born, from “contract,” relations which do not typically involve kinship and have to be negotiated.
  518. Find this resource:
  519. Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1870. Systems of consanguinity and affinity of the human family. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
  520. DOI: 10.5962/bhl.title.29577Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  521. A 19th-century pioneer of the study of kinship who produced the first valid typologies of kinship terminologies based on extensive comparisons. Morgan’s controversial distinction between classificatory and descriptive terminologies, the former historically preceding the other, is just one example of the sort of evolutionary sequences he indulged in. Among many in the 19th century who saw matrilineal descent as prior to patrilineal.
  522. Find this resource:
  523. Rivers, William Halse Rivers. 1924. Social organization. New York: Kegan Paul.
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  525. More of a diffusionist than an evolutionist in the strict sense, Rivers nonetheless built on Morgan’s work to suggest that a terminological pattern could have survived from an earlier practice of cross-cousin marriage. Also established clear definitions of such topics as descent, inheritance, and succession and the differences between them.
  526. Find this resource:
  527. White, Leslie. 1958. What is a classificatory kinship term? Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 14.4 (Winter): 378–385.
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  529. An evolutionist like Morgan, White defends Morgan against Kroeber by showing that his distinction between classificatory and descriptive kin terms is valid. White charges that Kroeber and later writers have misunderstood or distorted Morgan’s definition of classificatory kin terms in particular, thereby emptying the definition of all meaning. Available online for purchase.
  530. Find this resource:
  531. Boasian Critics of Evolutionism
  532. Kroeber 1909 and Lowie 1950 both reject 19th-century evolutionist theories of kinship in favor of a more synchronic approach emphasizing role, function, organization, and especially culture.
  533. Kroeber, Alfred L. 1909. Classificatory systems of relationship. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 39 (January–June): 77–84.
  534. DOI: 10.2307/2843284Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. Early rejection of Lewis Henry Morgan’s view that kin terms reflect actual biological relations, and, by extension, that they should be treated as denoting a series of individual genealogical positions. Kroeber suggests that kin terms instead compose potentially multimember categories, reflecting side of family, generation, gender, and so forth. He thereby renders Morgan’s distinction between classificatory and descriptive kin terms (see Evolutionism) redundant, as he does in his attempt to relate kin terms to forms of social organization. Available online for purchase.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Lowie, Robert Harry. 1950. Social organisation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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  539. Opposed to Morgan’s evolutionism, Lowie argues, among other things, that kinship terminologies are not simply expressive of actual biological relations, that genealogical reckoning is not the only way of tracing kin ties, and that there is no evidence of evolutionary progressions in any society from matrilineal to patrilineal descent, as many 19th-century evolutionists claimed.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Functionalism
  542. Functionalism represents a largely ahistorical focus on social organization; for instance, it looks at how social groups are constituted and different individuals related through kinship, as well as the social roles that are informed (and, for Malinowski 1929, served) by kinship. Malinowski’s functionalism, linked to his doctrine of human needs, is distinct from the structural-functionalist approach taken by the other authors in this section, namely Radcliffe-Brown 1952, Radcliffe-Brown and Forde 1950, Evans-Pritchard 1940, Fortes 1953, Fortes 1959, and Fortes 1969.
  543. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. The Nuer: A description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people. Oxford: Clarendon.
  544. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  545. A classic study, possibly the most debated in anthropology, demonstrating the political significance of an extensive tribal and lineage system among the Nuer of southern Sudan. Shows how both patrilineal descent groups and tribal segments emerge differently according to different contexts of feuding. They are thus relative and not fixed, being subject to processes of fusion and fission.
  546. Find this resource:
  547. Fortes, Meyer. 1953. The structure of unilineal descent groups. American Anthropologist 55.1: 17–41.
  548. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1953.55.1.02a00030Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  549. Useful article setting out the fundamentals and implications of African lineage theory within the various strands of functionalist thinking, focusing especially on the author’s own work, as well as that of Malinowski (his doctrine of human needs) and of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard (their focus on function within social organization).
  550. Find this resource:
  551. Fortes, Meyer. 1959. Descent, filiation and affinity: A rejoinder to Dr Leach Part I. Man 59 (November): 193–197.
  552. DOI: 10.2307/2798060Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  553. Fortes’s contribution to his debate with Leach over whether the relations a man has with his mother’s brother should be seen as a matter of descent through the mother (as suggested by his theory of functionalism) or as reflecting affinal ties in the previous generation, such as the link between ego’s father and ego’s mother’s brother (i.e., ego’s father’s wife’s brother) (as suggested by Leach’s theory of structuralism). Available online for purchase.
  554. Find this resource:
  555. Fortes, Meyer. 1969. Kinship and the social order: The legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  556. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  557. Although announced as a structuralist text, Fortes’s essentially functionalist account of kinship stresses the continuities with Morgan’s pioneering work, while showing how Morgan’s ideas have been misunderstood by later writers. Also sets out Fortes’s own perspective on kinship, which suggests that it fundamentally consists of a complementarity between the politico-jural domain of the lineage and the domestic domain of the bilateral family.
  558. Find this resource:
  559. Malinowski, Bronisław 1929. The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia: An ethnographic account of courtship, marriage, and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea. New York: Liveright.
  560. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  561. A classic study of kinship and marriage in the Trobriand Islands, New Guinea, treated as a society fulfilling basic human needs, by Malinowski, a pioneer of both ethnographic fieldwork and functionalist theory. Discusses sexual relations in and outside marriage, courtship, and the negotiation of marriage alliances, pregnancy, divorce, incest beliefs, and the place of women in Trobriand society.
  562. Find this resource:
  563. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald. 1952. Structure and function in primitive society, essays and addresses. London: Cohen & West.
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  565. A collection of Radcliffe-Brown’s articles on descent and marriage, and the ritual aspects of both, such as joking relationships. It also puts forward the functionalist method as the basis of a scientific study of society, with laws akin to the natural sciences. Functionalism in this sense is often called “structural-functionalism” because it involves the study of social systems, rather than how society satisfies basic human needs.
  566. Find this resource:
  567. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald, and Cyril Daryll Forde, eds. 1950. African systems of kinship and marriage. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  569. A collection of studies of kinship and marriage in a range of African societies by leading (mainly functionalist) experts; mostly memorable for Radcliffe-Brown’s lengthy introduction setting out the functionalist method. The impact of colonialism proclaimed to be the context of these studies, which some of them pursue in detail.
  570. Find this resource:
  571. Structuralism
  572. Unlike (structural-) functionalism, structuralism focuses on relations between groups more than their internal composition or social functions. The concentration is therefore more on marriage and affinal alliance than on descent and its correlates. Lévi-Strauss 1969 is the key text here, though Leach (Leach 1970, Leach 1962) anticipated him in some respects, while remaining somewhat distant from his influence. Barnes 1974 is an ethnographic study of a domain in eastern Indonesia.
  573. Barnes, Robert Harrison. 1974. Kédang: A study of the collective thought of an eastern Indonesian people. Oxford: Clarendon.
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  575. A structuralist study of a domain in eastern Indonesia demonstrating how the principles of nonreversability underlying the local system of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage can also be found in other aspects of the society, including the use of space and house construction.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Leach, Edmund. 1962. On certain unconsidered aspects of double descent systems. Man 62 (September): 130–134.
  578. DOI: 10.2307/2796878Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579. Leach’s contributions to his debate with Fortes over whether the relations a man has with his mother’s brother should be seen as a matter of descent through the mother (as suggested in Fortes’s view of functionalism) or as reflecting affinal ties in the previous generation, such as the link between ego’s father and ego’s mother’s brother (i.e., ego’s father’s wife’s brother) (as suggested in Leach’s view of structuralism). Leach also discusses whether it makes sense to interpret this as a matter of double unilineal descent. Available online for purchase.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Leach, Edmund Ronald. 1970. Political systems of highland Burma. London: Athlone.
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  583. Though somewhat caught between functionalism and structuralism, this famous and much-discussed study demonstrates the political implications of systems of affinal alliance among the Kachin of Upper Burma and their lowland neighbors, the Shan. The account revolves around the contradictions that emerge between these two systems when Kachin chiefs try to marry in Shan ways.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The elementary structures of kinship. Boston: Beacon.
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  587. Originally published in 1949, this is a comprehensive study of systems of cross-cousin marriage from around the world. The systems are called “elementary structures” because they can be reduced to the operation of a simple marriage rule. This book launched the structural approach to the study of kinship by emphasizing affinal alliances as opposed to descent systems and focusing on relations between groups rather than their internal composition or roles.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Cultural Approaches
  590. Cultural approaches to kinship abandoned previous approaches for being too rooted in analytical concepts derived from Western thinking, especially genealogy, and also abandoned the whole notion of kinship as a series of systems. It replaced these perspectives with a focus on “culture” in the sense of indigenous meanings of kinship, referring to the idealized roles of particular kin types, gender, the body, bodily substances, and personhood. It introduced David Schneider (Schneider 1980, Schneider 1984) as the chief voice in this context, who combined the cultural relativism of Boasian (and American) cultural anthropology with the functionalist sociology of Talcott Parsons. Most of the later texts in this section were produced in Schneider’s shadow, but Carsten 2000 andSchweitzer 2000, in particular, have sought to take matters further in the direction of reconciling his interpretation with the earlier approaches Schneider rejected. Östör, et al. 1992 links kinship to personhood, Collier and Yanagisako 1987 links it to gender, and Busby 1997 links it to the body and gender. Strathern 1992 focuses on Western kinship, whereas David 1973 is a cultural account of kinship terminology.
  591. Busby, Cecilia. 1997. Permeable and partible persons: A comparative analysis of gender and body in South India and Melanesia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3.2 (June): 261–278.
  592. DOI: 10.2307/3035019Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  593. Links indigenous notions of kinship in South India and New Guinea with ideas about the body, bodily substances, and personhood, showing also how they vary with gender. Whereas in South India, gender identity is unambiguous, in New Guinea it tends to be conditioned by the nature of exchange relations between groups and individuals. Available online for purchase.
  594. Find this resource:
  595. Carsten, Janet, ed. 2000. Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  596. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  597. A collection of studies building on the Schneiderian turn toward culture in the study of kinship, as well as the stress on gender by Yanagisako and Collier. Introduces the notion of “relatedness” to encompass this shift, referring in particular to the extent to which kinship can be used to include and exclude others, regardless of recognized genealogical connections.
  598. Find this resource:
  599. Collier, Jane Fishburne, and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, eds. 1987. Gender and kinship: Essays toward a unified analysis. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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  601. The authors stress the need to link gender to kinship, not merely to represent the woman’s point of view but also because the ways in which kin ties tend to be viewed are themselves potentially informed by notions of the gender contrast. This leads the authors to reject the distinction between gender as cultural and sex as biological, suggesting that they are both cultural.
  602. Find this resource:
  603. David, Kenneth. 1973. Until marriage do us part: A cultural account of Jaffna Tamil categories for kinsmen. Man 8.4 (December): 521–535.
  604. DOI: 10.2307/2800737Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  605. Interprets the Tamil kinship terminology and its categories in terms of cultural notions of the body, gender, and personhood. Available online for purchase.
  606. Find this resource:
  607. Östör, Ákos, Lina Fruzzetti, and Steve Barnett, eds. 1992. Concepts of person: Kinship, caste, and marriage in India. Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.
  608. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  609. Originally published in 1982, this collection of papers demonstrates the applicability of new approaches from culture and personhood to indigenous ideas and practices of kinship in India. Covers ideological links between kinship and the body, widowhood, forms of address, and ideas surrounding the role of the householder.
  610. Find this resource:
  611. Schneider, David Murray. 1980. American kinship: A cultural account. 2d ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  612. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  613. Originally published in 1968, this study of cultural ideas about kinship in America rejects earlier approaches to kinship that focused excessively on Western (including American) genealogical thinking. Even in American kinship, the earlier approaches are found to be less significant from an ethnographic perspective than they are from a cultural one. Suggests that even biology can be reduced to culture in both symbolic and cognitive terms.
  614. Find this resource:
  615. Schneider, David. 1984. A Critique of the study of kinship. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
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  617. A critique of the excessive use of genealogical ideas in kinship studies, based largely on a rejection of the author’s earlier work focusing on Yap, Micronesia, which was informed by conventional notions of lineage and genealogical connection. The author suggests that coresidence, joint labor, and mutual feeding are more important in forming social relations than are genealogical ideas.
  618. Find this resource:
  619. Schweitzer, Peter P., ed. 2000. Dividends of kinship: Meanings and uses of social relatedness. London and New York: Routledge.
  620. DOI: 10.4324/9780203449752Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  621. A collection of articles reintroducing notions of function into studies of kinship by emphasizing its strategic uses in including and excluding other people and in creating political alliances and pursuing economic interests. One paper also describes idioms and meanings of kinship in utopian communes.
  622. Find this resource:
  623. Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. After nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  624. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  625. Written at an early stage in the development of new reproductive technologies, Strathern discusses middle-class English ideas about kinship, arguing that they should be treated as part of English culture rather than as separate from it, as is usually the case in the anthropology of Europe. She also demonstrates both the fragmented nature of these ideas and the convergence between contemporary folk models and anthropological theories of kinship that they are based on.
  626. Find this resource:
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