Kinship And The Social Order

One of the world's most eminent social anthropologists draws upon his many years of study and research in the field of kinship and social organization to review the development of anthropological theory and method from Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) to anthropologists of the 1960s. It is the central argument of this book that the structuralist theory and method developed by British and American anthropologists in the study of kinship and social organization is the direct descendant of Morgan's researches. The volume starts with a re-examination of Morgan's work. Professor Fortes demonstrates how a tradition of misinterpretation has disguised the true import of Morgan's discoveries. He follows with a detailed analysis of the work of Rivers and Radcliffe-Brown and the generation of anthropologists inspired by them. The author states his own point of view as it has developed in the framework of modern structuralist theory, with ethnographic examples examined in depth. He shows that the social relations and institutions conventionally grouped under the rubric of kinship and social organization belong simultaneously to two complementary domains of social structure, the familial and the political. Meyer Fortes' contribution to the field of anthropology can best be understood in the context of balance of forces between these domains of the personal and public. In the latter part of the book, he gives detailed attention to the principal conceptual issues that have confronted research and theory in the study of kinship and social organizations since Morgan's time. He shows that kinship institutions are autonomous, not mere by-products of economic requirements, and demonstrates the moral base of kinship in the rule of amity.

Aiming to reassert the importance of kinship, and of studying kinship within the framework of social anthropology, this text looks at its benefits and burdens across cultures.

American Kinship is the first attempt to deal systematically with kinship as a system of symbols and meanings, and not simply as a network of functionally interrelated familial roles. Schneider argues that the study of a highly differentiated society such as our own may be more revealing of the nature of kinship than the study of anthropologically more familiar, but less differentiated societies. He goes to the heart of the ideology of relations among relatives in America by locating the underlying features of the definition of kinship—nature vs. law, substance vs. code. One of the most significant features of American Kinship, then, is the explicit development of a theory of culture on which the analysis is based, a theory that has since proved valuable in the analysis of other cultures. For this Phoenix edition, Schneider has written a substantial new chapter, responding to his critics and recounting the charges in his thought since the book was first published in 1968.

The study of kinship is a fundamental part of the study and the practice of social anthropology. This volume examines the work of three distinguished anthropologists that bear on kinship and determines what theoretical models are implicit in their writings and assesses to what extent their claims have been validated. The anthropologists studied are from France, the UK and USA: Claude Levi-Strauss, Meyer Fortes and G.P. Murdock. First published in 1971.

Foreword David M. Schneider Preface 1: Kinship as a Cultural System 2: Mother and Child and the Nature of Kinship 3: Marriage and the Nature of Affinity 4: Father and Child 5: The Descent System 6: The Concepts of Sex, Generation, Sibling Order, and Distance 7: Kinship and Affinal Solidarity as Symbolized in the Enemyway 8: Social Organization in the Rough Rock-Black Mountain Area 9: Residence in the Subsistence Residential Unit 10: Subsistence in the Subsistence Residential Unit 11: Unity in the Subsistence Residential Unit 12: The Navajo Outfit as a Set of Related Subsistence Residential Units13: The Web of Affinity 14: The Social Universe of the Navajo Notes Bibliography Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Adoption is a controversial subject in the United States, particularly in the last 30 years. Why that is and how public attention affects the decisions made by those who arrange, legalise and experience adoption forms the subject of this book.

Beyond Kinship brings together ethnohistorians, archaeologists, and cultural anthropologists for the first time in a common discussion of the social model of house societies proposed by Claude Levi-Strauss. While kinship theory has been central to the study of social organization, an alternative approach has emerged—that of seeing the "house" both as a physical and symbolic structure and a principle of social organization. The house stands as a model social formation that is distinguished by its attention to a number of material domains (land, the dwelling, ritual and nonritual objects). As the essays in this volume make clear, the focus on material culture and on place contributes to the ongoing convergence of anthropology and history and helps erase the artificial distinctions between prehistory and history. Contributions to the volume offer significant new interpretations of primary data as well as reconsidering classic ethnographic material. Beyond Kinship crosses the boundaries within anthropology—not only between cultural anthropology and archaeology but between structural—symbolic and materialist approaches and between American and British schools of anthropology; it is intended to advance the fruitful dialogue now taking place within the field.