New Directions in Anthropological Kinship

Contributions by Lynn Åkesson, Lisa M. Anderson-Levy, Caroline B. Brettell Southern Methodist Univer, Rosa De Jorio, Allen S. Ehrlich, Kathy-Lee Galvin, Ilana Gershon, Barry S. Hewlett, David Jacobson, William Jankowiak, Louise Lamphere, Joan H. Liem, Susanne Lundin, Richard E. Maddy, Judith S. Modell, Cynthia Robin, Joan B. Silk, Karen Sinclair, Robert S. Weiss Edited by Linda Stone

Publication date:

13 December 2000

Length of book:

368 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

235x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780742501072

Following periods of intense debate and eventual demise, kinship studies is now seeing a revival in anthropology. New Directions in Anthropological Kinship captures these recent trends and explores new avenues of inquiry in this re-emerging subfield. The book comprises contributions from primatology, evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology. The authors review the history of kinship in anthropology and its theory, and recent research in relation to new directions of anthropological study. Moving beyond the contentious debates of the past, the book covers feminist anthropology on kinship, the expansion of kinship into the areas of new reproductive technologies, recent kinship constructions in EuroAmerican societies, and the role of kinship in state politics.

Part 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Theoretical Implications of New Directions in Anthropological Kinship
Part 3 Kinship in the History of Anthropology
Chapter 4 Whatever Happened to Kinship Studies?
Chapter 5 "Not that Lineage Stuff": Teaching Kinship into the 21st Century
Part 6 Biology and Culture in the Study of Kinship
Chapter 7 Ties that Bond: The Role of Kinship in Primate Studies
Chapter 8 Neoevolutionary Approaches to Human Kinship
Chapter 9 Schneider Revisited: Sharing and Ratification in the Construction of Kinship
Part 10 Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies
Chapter 11 Bound by Blood? New Meanings of Kinship and Individuality in Discourses of Genetic Counseling
Chapter 12 The Threatened Sperm: Parenthood in the Age of Biomedicine
Part 13 Kinship and Gender
Chapter 14 Mischief on the Margins: Gender Primogeniture and Cognatic Descent among the Maori
Chapter 15 Power, Control, and the Mother-in-law Problem: Face-offs in the American Nuclear Family
Chapter 16 Colliding/ Colluding Identities: Race, Class, and Gender in Jamaican Family Systems
Chapter 17 Kin and Gender in Classic Maya Society: A Case Study from Yaxchilan, Mexico
Part 18 New Family Forms and New Formulations of "Family"
Chapter 19 Parenting from Separate Households: A Cultural Perspective
Chapter 20 Open Adoption: Extending Families, Exchanging Facts
Chapter 21 In the Name of the Father: Theology, Kinship, and Charisma in the American Polygynous Community
Chapter 22 Fictive Kinship in American Biomedicine
Part 23 Kinship and the Politics of Nations
Chapter 24 Going Nuclear: New Zealand Bureaucratic Fantasies of Samoan Extended Families
Chapter 25 Women's Organizations, the Ideology of Kinship, and the State in Post-Independence Mali

New Directions in Anthropological Kinship is an important, expansive, and provocative collection of essays that simultaneously demonstrates both the vitality and promise of the reconstituted field of kinship studies as well as the intellectual value of a broadly defined anthropology. The contributors present a good deal of original research in highly accessible prose, and analyze topics ranging from the history of kinship studies, primate kinship, and problems with mothers-in-law, to discourses of genetic counseling, post-divorce parenting, open adoption, and the gender(ed) and class politics of kinship in nation-states. This fine book will be of interest to seasoned anthropologists and to students at all levels.