A Critique of the Study of KinshipUniversity of Michigan Press, 1984 - 208 pagine Schneider challenges the assumptions on which anthropology has depended for the last century by showing that one of the major categories in terms of which social life has been understood is largely untenable. The idea of kinship is subject to penetrating scrutiny. Unlike the proverbial Emperor, it is not that kinship has no clothes. The question is whether there is anything at all underneath those clothes. And even when the clothes appear to be shreds and patches held together by a web of illusions. The critique uses a novel device in that the same set of ethnographic "facts" are looked at through different theories. This reveals a good deal about the different theories. By the same token, of course, this critique goes into the question of what a "fact" of "kinship" might be and how to recognize one either at home or in the field. Schneider's critique also uses history to raise cogent questions about how kinship has been studied. But it is not as 20/20 hindsight that history is used. Due respect is paid to the climate of the time, as well as the climatic changes and the ways in which these helped to create the emperor's clothes. Right, wrong, or indifferent, Schneider's study of how the emperor "kinship" was dressed and then redressed as the winds of change threatened disarray, proves challenging to the theories by which anthropology lives, as well as to the specifically privileged domain of "kinship." The implications of this study for a wide range of problems within theoretical anthropology are striking. |
Sommario
Introduction | 3 |
The First Description | 11 |
The Second Description | 21 |
Is Theory Alone Responsible for the Weakness of the First Description? | 35 |
Introduction to Part II | 43 |
Some Assumptions behind the First Description | 45 |
Is Kinship a Privileged System? | 57 |
Tabinau FatherChild and Patriliny Is This Kinship? | 67 |
A History of Some Definitions of Kinship | 97 |
Some Fundamental Difficulties in the Study of Kinship Exemplified by Scheffler and Lounsbury | 113 |
A Note on the Significance of Definition | 127 |
Malinowskis Legacy and Some Perils of Functionalism | 133 |
Some Further Perils in the Study of Kinship as Exemplified by Goodenough | 145 |
The Fundamental Assumption in the Study of Kinship Blood Is Thicker Than Water | 165 |
Institutions Domains and Other Rubrics | 181 |
Conclusion | 187 |
Genung MotherChild and Matriliny Is This Kinship? | 79 |
Introduction to Part III | 95 |
References | 203 |
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Parole e frasi comuni
agnatic ancestor anthropologists aspects assumption binau biological facts Blood Is Thicker child citamangen-fak relationship citiningen conception consanguinity constitute content of kinship context conventional wisdom define kinship definition of kinship depends distinction domain Durkheim economic emic etic example father fatherhood formulated functionalist functions Genealogical Unity genitor Gennep genung Goodenough human reproduction human sexual ical idiom of kinship jural kin-based society kind kinship and descent kinship relations kinship relationship kinship system land landholder lineage mafen Malinowski marriage meaning membership Morgan mother mother's husband motherhood nature notion parenthood patrilineage patrilineal patrilocal extended family person physical kinship political position precisely privileged system problem question rela relative products role Scheffler and Lounsbury second description sexual intercourse sexual reproduction significance simply sister social kinship Spiro study of kinship tabinau Tallensi thagith theory of reproduction Thicker Than Water tion unilineal descent universal village wolagen woman Yapese culture
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