Kinship Matters

Kinship Matters

Author: Fatemeh Ebtehaj

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2006-09-15

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1847312799

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This book is the fifth in the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group series and it concerns the evolving notions and practices of kinship in contemporary Britain and the interrelationship of kinship, law and social policy. Assembling contributions from scholars in a range of disciplines, it examines social, legal, cultural and psychological questions related to kinship. Rising rates of divorce and of alternative modes of partnership have raised questions about the care and well-being of children, while increasing longevity and mobility, together with lower birth rates and changes in our economic circumstances, have led to a reconsideration of duties and responsibilities towards the care of elderly people. In addition, globalisation trends and international flows of migrants and refugees have confronted us with alternative constructions of kinship and with the challenges of maintaining kinship ties transnationally. Finally, new developments in genetics research and the growing use of assisted reproductive technologies may raise questions about our notions of kinship and of kin rights and responsibilities. The book explores these changes from various perspectives and draws on theoretical and empirical data to describe practices of kinship in contemporary Britain.


Blood and Kinship

Blood and Kinship

Author: Christopher H. Johnson

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0857457500

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The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.


Kinship with All Life

Kinship with All Life

Author: J. Allen Boone

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1976-01-28

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 0060609125

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Is there a universal language of love, a "kinship with all life" that can open new horizons of experience? Example after example in this unique classic -- from "Strongheart" the actor-dog to "Freddie" the fly -- resounds with entertaining and inspiring proof that communication with animals is a wonderful, indisputable fact. All that is required is an attitude of openness, friendliness, humility, and a sense of humor to part the curtain and form bonds of real friendship. For anyone who loves animals, for all those who have ever experienced the special devotion only a pet can bring, Kinship With All Life is an unqualified delight. Sample these pages and you will never encounter "just a dog" again, but rather a fellow member of nature's own family.


Family Matters

Family Matters

Author: Trevor Burke

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2003-10-01

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0567516687

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Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians boasts a preponderance of fictive kinship terms (e.g. father, children, nursing mother, brother etc). In this book, Burke shows that Paul is drawing on the normal social expectations of family members in antiquity to regulate the affairs of the community. Family metaphors would have resonated immediately with Paul's readers and the author surveys a broad range of ancient texts to identify stock meanings of the father-child and brother-brother relations. These stereotypical attitudes are explored to understand Paul's paternal relations (2:10-12) with his Thessalonian children and in resolving sexual immorality (4:3-8) and the refusal by some brothers to work (4:9-12; 5:12-15). This study has implications for the structure of early Christian communities.


The Politics of Making Kinship

The Politics of Making Kinship

Author: Erdmute Alber

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1800737858

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The long tradition of Western political thought included kinship in models of public order, but the social sciences excised it from theories of the state, public sphere, and democratic order. Kinship has, however, neither completely disappeared from the political cultures of the West nor played the determining social and political role ascribed to it elsewhere. Exploring the issues that arise once the divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politics of Making Kinship demonstrates how political processes have shaped concepts of kinship over time and, conversely, how political projects have been shaped by specific understandings, idioms and uses of kinship. Taking vantage points from the post-Roman era to early modernity, and from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars place kinship centerstage and reintegrate it with political theory.


American Kinship

American Kinship

Author: David M. Schneider

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-06-01

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 022622709X

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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.


Kinship in Action

Kinship in Action

Author: Andrew Strathern

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1317346963

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For courses in Social Organization, Kinship, and Cultural Ecology. Kinship has made a come-back in Anthropology. Not only is there a line of noted, general, introductory works and readers in the topic, but theoretical discussions have been stimulated both by technological changes in mechanisms of reproduction and by reconsiderations of how to define kinship in the most productive ways for cross-cultural comparisons. In addition, kinship studies have moved away from the minutiae of kin terminological systems and the “kinship algebra” often associated with these, to the broader analysis of processes, historical changes and fundamental cultural meanings in which kin relationships are implicated. In this changed, and changing context both Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart -- both of the University of Pittsburgh -- bring together a number of interests and concerns, in order to provide pointers for students, as well as scholars, in this field of study. Taking an explicitly processual approach, the authors examine definitions of terms such as kinship itself, approach the topic in a way that is invariably ethnographic, and deploy materials from field areas where they themselves have worked.


The Metamorphoses of Kinship

The Metamorphoses of Kinship

Author: Maurice Godelier

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2012-03-03

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 184467746X

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With marriage in decline, divorce on the rise, the demise of the nuclear family, and the increase in marriages and adoptions among same-sex partners, it is clear that the structures of kinship in the modern West are in a state of flux. In The Metamorphoses of Kinship, the world-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier contextualizes these developments, surveying the accumulated experience of humanity with regard to such phenomena as the organization of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the evolution of Western conjugal and familial traditions from their roots in the nineteenth century to the present. The conclusion he draws is that it is never the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to raise a child, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the keystone of society. Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship, but rather its remarkable metamorphosis—one that, ironically, is bringing us closer to the “traditional” societies studied by ethnologists.


Politics and Kinship

Politics and Kinship

Author: Erdmute Alber

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-15

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1000471195

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Politics and Kinship: A Reader offers a unique overview of the entanglement of these two categories in both theoretical debates and everyday practices. The two, despite many challenges, are often thought to have become separated during the process of modernisation. Tracing how this notion of separation becomes idealised and translated into various contexts, this book sheds light on its epistemological limitations. Combining otherwise-distinct lines of discussion within political anthropology and kinship studies, the selection of texts covers a broad range of intersecting topics that range from military strategy, DNA testing, and child fostering, to practices of kinning the state. Beginning with the study of politics, the first part of this volume looks at how its separation from kinship came to be considered a ‘modern’ phenomenon, with significant consequences. The second part starts from kinship, showing how it was made into a separate and apolitical field – an idea that would soon travel and be translated globally into policies. The third part turns to reproductions through various transmissions and future-making projects. Overall, the volume offers a fundamental critique of the epistemological separation of politics and kinship, and its shortcomings for teaching and research. Featuring contributions from a broad range of regional, temporal and theoretical backgrounds, it allows for critical engagement with knowledge production about the entanglement of politics and kinship. The different traditions and contemporary approaches represented make this book an essential resource for researchers, instructors and students of anthropology.


Reconnecting State and Kinship

Reconnecting State and Kinship

Author: Tatjana Thelen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0812249518

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Reconnecting State and Kinship seeks to overcome the traditional dichotomy between state and kinship, asking whether concepts associated with one sphere surface in the other, tracking the evolution of these concepts through time and space, and exploring how this binary is reinforced within the social sciences.