Dividends of Kinship


Book Description

This collection reaffirms the importance of kinship, and of studying kinship, within the framework of social anthropology with examples from areas such as Austria, Greenland, Portugal, Turkey and the Amazon.




What Kinship Is-And Is Not


Book Description

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.




Bonds of Blood?


Book Description

The North Caucasus, specifically Chechnya and Ingushetia, is a region that has experienced some of the deadliest and most protracted conflicts in Europe. By examining the relationship between state and society, this book considers how state-building has unfolded in a region with highly complex social structures, a history of colonialism, Soviet authoritarianism, and later post-Soviet wars and trauma. Focusing on a systematic analysis of subnational state-building in post-Soviet Chechnya and Ingushetia, and the role of teips (clans) in this process, this study responds to the widely accepted academic claim that governance and ethnic consolidation in the North Caucasus is shaped by the politics of teips. Through socio-anthropological analysis of the clans and how they function towards political systems, Sokirianskaia shows how the teips lost their organizational structure and roles, becoming incapable of mobilizing for political action. While teip symbolism has remained politically relevant, and the bonds of kinship are highly important, they do not form the basis of politics and subnational statebuilding in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Consequently, subnational authoritarianism is not the result of the pre-existing social composition of the society, but a reflection of the rules of the game imposed by Moscow and political choices of the Kremlin-installed local elites.




The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork


Book Description

This book offers a state-of-the-art guide to linguistic fieldwork, reflecting its collaborative nature across the subfields of linguistics and disciplines such as astronomy, anthropology, biology, musicology, and ethnography. Experienced scholars and fieldworkers explain the methods and approaches needed to understand a language in its full cultural context and to document it accessibly and enduringly. They consider the application of new technological approaches to recording and documentation, but never lose sight of the crucial relationship between subject and researcher. The book is timely: an increased awareness of dying languages and vanishing dialects has stimulated the impetus for recording them as well as the funds required to do so. The handbook is an indispensible source, guide, and reference for everyone involved in linguistic and cultural work.




One of the Family


Book Description

In recent years there has been growing interest in identifying the social and cultural attributes that define the Metis as a distinct people. In this groundbreaking study, Brenda Macdougall employs the concept of wahkootowin � the Cree term for a worldview that privileges family and values interconnectedness � to trace the emergence of a Metis community in northern Saskatchewan. Wahkootowin describes how relationships worked and helps to explain how the Metis negotiated with local economic and religious institutions while nurturing a society that emphasized family obligation and responsibility. This innovative exploration of the birth of Metis identity offers a model for future research and discussion.




Thicker Than Water


Book Description

A pioneering new study of nineteenth-century kinship and family relations, focusing on the British middle class, and highlighting both the similarities and the differences in relations between brothers and sisters in the past and in the present.




Entrepreneurship and Family Business


Book Description

Deals with the issue of entrepreneurship and family business. This title considers the issues, problems, contexts, or processes that make a family firm more entrepreneurial. It covers topics such as the emergence and growth of family businesses, and the use of entrepreneurial policies, practices and strategies by family firms.




Handbook of Transnational Families Around the World


Book Description

This handbook compiles the most up-to-date research on transnational families. It employs a dialogue between classical approaches and cutting-edge directions in transnational family research to identify continuities and changes in terms of socioeconomic disparities and actors, and to analyze coexistence. Further, the volume adopts a twofold global and international comparative perspective. On the one hand, it focuses on different migratory flows around the world and describes their entangled logics; on the other, it is written by an international group of contributors, with a diverse range of professional backgrounds. Their contributions are based on sound empirical research, and explore geographical regions around the world. The handbook presents different thematic perspectives on transnational families, including an analytical focus on gender, global sociodemographic inequalities, power asymmetries, and border- and mobility regimes, as well as the organization of transnational care, transnational fatherhood, ageing, family reunions and return. It also includes a variety of methodological approaches to transnational family research, ranging from ethnography, biographical research, and life-course methods, to multi-sited approaches and quantitative surveys. Investigating an emergent debate, it sheds new light on migratory fluxes, their common and specific determinants, the types of actors involved, and ways to empirically and methodologically approach them. This is a must-read reference for social scientists interested in family research, migration, and gender studies. Chapter 7 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




The Social Science Encyclopedia


Book Description

The Social Science Encyclopedia, first published in 1985 to acclaim from social scientists, librarians and students, was thoroughly revised in 1996, when reviewers began to describe it as a classic. This third edition has been radically recast. Over half the entries are new or have been entirely rewritten, and most of the balance have been substantially revised. Written by an international team of contributors, the Encyclopedia offers a global perspective on key issues within the social sciences. Some 500 entries cover a variety of enduring and newly vital areas of study and research methods. Experts review theoretical debates from neo-evolutionism and rational choice theory to poststructuralism, and address the great questions that cut across the social sciences. What is the influence of genes on behaviour? What is the nature of consciousness and cognition? What are the causes of poverty and wealth? What are the roots of conflict, wars, revolutions and genocidal violence? This authoritative reference work is aimed at anyone with a serious interest in contemporary academic thinking about the individual in society.




A Handbook of Economic Anthropology


Book Description

This timely Research Agenda examines the ways in which public–private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure continue to excite policy makers, governments, research scholars and critics around the world. It analyzes the PPP research journey to date and articulates the lessons learned as a result of the increasing interest in improving infrastructure governance. Expert international contributors explore how PPP ideas have spread, transferred and transformed, and propose a range of future research directions.