Matrilineal Kinship

Matrilineal Kinship
Author: David Murray Schneider
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 792
Release: 1974
Genre:
ISBN:

Early Human Kinship

Early Human Kinship
Author: Nicholas J. Allen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-01-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1444338781

Early Human Kinship brings together original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics to provide a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society. A major new collaboration between specialists across the range of the human sciences including evolutionary biology and psychology; social/cultural anthropology; archaeology and linguistics Provides a ground-breaking set of original studies offering a new perspective on early human history Debates fundamental questions about early human society: Was there a connection between the beginnings of language and the beginnings of organized 'kinship and marriage'? How far did evolutionary selection favor gender and generation as principles for regulating social relations? Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in conjunction with the British Academy

Anthropological Perspectives On Kinship

Anthropological Perspectives On Kinship
Author: Ladislav Holy
Publisher: University of Alberta
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1996-10-20
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780745309170

This authoritative introductory text takes into account the changes in the conceptualisation of kinship brought about by new reproductive technologies and the growing interest in culturally specific notions of personhood and gender. Holy considers the extent to which Western assumptions have guided anthropological study of kinship in the past. In the process, he reveals a growing sensitivity on the part of anthropologists to individual ideas of personhood and gender, and encourages further critical reflection on cultural bias in approaches to the subject.

The Archaeology of Kinship

The Archaeology of Kinship
Author: Bradley E. Ensor
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816599262

Archaeology has been subjected to a wide range of misunderstandings of kinship theory and many of its central concepts. Demonstrating that kinship is the foundation for past societies’ social organization, particularly in non-state societies, Bradley E. Ensor offers a lucid presentation of kinship principles and theories accessible to a broad audience. He provides not only descriptions of what the principles entail but also an understanding of their relevance to past and present topics of interest to archaeologists. His overall goal is always clear: to illustrate how kinship analysis can advance archaeological interpretation and how archaeology can advance kinship theory. The Archaeology of Kinship supports Ensor’s objectives: to demonstrate the relevance of kinship to major archaeological questions, to describe archaeological methods for kinship analysis independent of ethnological interpretation, to illustrate the use of those techniques with a case study, and to provide specific examples of how diachronic analyses address broader theory. As Ensor shows, archaeological diachronic analyses of kinship are independently possible, necessary, and capable of providing new insights into past cultures and broader anthropological theory. Although it is an old subject in anthropology, The Archaeology of Kinship can offer new and exciting frontiers for inquiry. Kinship research in general—and prehistoric kinship in particular—is rapidly reemerging as a topical subject in anthropology. This book is a timely archaeological contribution to that growing literature otherwise dominated by ethnology.

Strategies and Norms in a Changing Matrilineal Society

Strategies and Norms in a Changing Matrilineal Society
Author: Ladislav Holý
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521303001

Analyzes the changes in the kinship patterns of the Toka of South Zambia as they shifted their form of production from hoe agriculture to ox-drawn plowing. Confronts several theoretical issues of current anthropology including the nature of descent, and the distinction and relationship between descent groups and categories.

Throughout Your Generations Forever

Throughout Your Generations Forever
Author: Nancy Jay
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1992-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780226395722

Why does sacrifice, more than any other major religious institution, depend on gender dichotomy? Why do so many societies oppose sacrifice to childbirth, and why are childbearing women so commonly excluded from sacrificial practices? In this feminist study of relations between sacrifice, gender, and social organization, Nancy Jay reveals sacrifice as a remedy for having been born of woman, and hence uniquely suited to establishing certain and enduring paternity. Drawing on examples of ancient and modern societies, Jay synthesizes sociology of religion, ethnography, biblical scholarship, church history, and classics to argue that sacrifice legitimates and maintains patriarchal structures that transcend men's dependence on women's reproductive powers.

African Systems of Kinship and Marriage

African Systems of Kinship and Marriage
Author: A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2015-06-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317406095

First published in 1950 and this edition in 1987, this book is one of the most wide-ranging and respected surveys on kinship and marriage in African social life. In his introduction, Radcliff-Brown provides a masterly analysis of the main features of African kinship systems and the theoretical problems arising from the study of them. The contributions range from examinations of kinship systems among the Swazi, the Tswana, the Zulu, the Nuer, and the Ashanti, to double descent among the Yakö and dual descent in the Nuba groups of the Sudan. The contributors themselves are still viewed as giants in their field: Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Max Gluckman, Hilda Kuper, Naderl, A. I. Richards, Schapera and Monica Wilson.

What Kinship Is-And Is Not

What Kinship Is-And Is Not
Author: Marshall Sahlins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2013-01-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226925137

In this pithy two-part essay, Marshall Sahlins reinvigorates the debates on what constitutes kinship, building on some of the best scholarship in the field to produce an original outlook on the deepest bond humans can have. Covering thinkers from Aristotle and Lévy- Bruhl to Émile Durkheim and David Schneider, and communities from the Maori and the English to the Korowai of New Guinea, he draws on a breadth of theory and a range of ethnographic examples to form an acute definition of kinship, what he calls the “mutuality of being.” Kinfolk are persons who are parts of one another to the extent that what happens to one is felt by the other. Meaningfully and emotionally, relatives live each other’s lives and die each other’s deaths. In the second part of his essay, Sahlins shows that mutuality of being is a symbolic notion of belonging, not a biological connection by “blood.” Quite apart from relations of birth, people may become kin in ways ranging from sharing the same name or the same food to helping each other survive the perils of the high seas. In a groundbreaking argument, he demonstrates that even where kinship is reckoned from births, it is because the wider kindred or the clan ancestors are already involved in procreation, so that the notion of birth is meaningfully dependent on kinship rather than kinship on birth. By formulating this reversal, Sahlins identifies what kinship truly is: not nature, but culture.

Kinship and Behavior in Primates

Kinship and Behavior in Primates
Author: Bernard Chapais
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2004-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0195348885

This book presents a series of review chapters on the various aspects of primate kinship and behavior, as a fundamental reference for students and professionals interested in primate behavior, ecology and evolution. The relatively new molecular data allow one to assess directly degrees of genetic relatedness and kinship relations between individuals, and a considerable body of data on intergroup variation, based on experimental studies in both free-ranging and captive groups has accumulated, allowing a rather full and satisfying reconsideration of this whole broad area of research. The book should be of considerable interest to students of social evolution and behavioral ecology.