Cultures of Relatedness

Cultures of Relatedness PDF

Author: Janet Carsten

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-03-09

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780521656276

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Our understanding of what makes a person a relative has been transformed by radical changes in marriage arrangements and gender relations, and by new reproductive technologies. We can no longer take it for granted that our most fundamental social relationships are grounded in 'biology' or 'nature'. These developments have prompted anthropologists to take a fresh look at idioms of relatedness in other societies, and to review the ways in which relationships are symbolised and interpreted in our own society. Defamiliarizing some classic cases, challenging the established analytic categories of anthropology, the contributors to this innovative book focus on the boundary between the 'biological' and the 'social', and bring into question the received wisdom at the heart of the study of kinship.

After Kinship

After Kinship PDF

Author: Janet Carsten

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780521665704

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An approachable and original view of the past, present, and future of kinship in anthropology.

Relative Values

Relative Values PDF

Author: Sarah Franklin

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2002-02-22

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 0822383225

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The essays in Relative Values draw on new work in anthropology, science studies, gender theory, critical race studies, and postmodernism to offer a radical revisioning of kinship and kinship theory. Through a combination of vivid case studies and trenchant theoretical essays, the contributors—a group of internationally recognized scholars—examine both the history of kinship theory and its future, at once raising questions that have long occupied a central place within the discipline of anthropology and moving beyond them. Ideas about kinship are vital not only to understanding but also to forming many of the practices and innovations of contemporary society. How do the cultural logics of contemporary biopolitics, commodification, and globalization intersect with kinship practices and theories? In what ways do kinship analogies inform scientific and clinical practices; and what happens to kinship when it is created in such unfamiliar sites as biogenetic labs, new reproductive technology clinics, and the computers of artificial life scientists? How does kinship constitute—and get constituted by—the relations of power that draw lines of hierarchy and equality, exclusion and inclusion, ambivalence and violence? The contributors assess the implications for kinship of such phenomena as blood transfusions, adoption across national borders, genetic support groups, photography, and the new reproductive technologies while ranging from rural China to mid-century Africa to contemporary Norway and the United States. Addressing these and other timely issues, Relative Values injects new life into one of anthropology's most important disciplinary traditions. Posing these and other timely questions, Relative Values injects an important interdisciplinary curiosity into one of anthropology’s most important disciplinary traditions. Contributors. Mary Bouquet, Janet Carsten, Charis Thompson Cussins, Carol Delaney, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Sarah Franklin, Deborah Heath, Stefan Helmreich, Signe Howell, Jonathan Marks, Susan McKinnon, Michael G. Peletz, Rayna Rapp, Martine Segalen, Pauline Turner Strong, Melbourne Tapper, Karen-Sue Taussig, Kath Weston, Yunxiang Yan

What Kinship Is-And Is Not

What Kinship Is-And Is Not PDF

Author: Marshall Sahlins

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-01-25

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 0226925137

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Dividends of Kinship

Dividends of Kinship PDF

Author: Peter P. Schweitzer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-12-16

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1134739729

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This collection reaffirms the importance of kinship, and of studying kinship, within the framework of social anthropology. The contributors examine both the benefits and burdens of kinship across cultures and explore how 'relatedness' is inextricably linked with other concepts which define people's identities - such as gender, power and history. With examples from a wide range of areas including Austria, Greenland, Portugal, Turkey and the Amazon, it covers themes such as: * how people choose and activate kin * leadership, spiritual power and kinship * inheritance, marriage and social inequality * familial sentiment and economic interest * the role of kinship in Utopian communes Dividends of Kinship provides a timely and critical reappraisal of the place of familial relations in the contemporary world. It will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in anthropology, and across the social sciences.

Cultures of Infancy

Cultures of Infancy PDF

Author: Heidi Keller

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1135592357

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Cultures of Infancy presents the first systematic analysis of culturally informed developmental pathways, synthesizing evolutionary and cultural psychological perspectives for a broader understanding of human development. In this compelling book, author Heidi Keller utilizes ethnographic reports, as well as quantitative and qualitative analyses, to illustrate how humans resolve universal developmental tasks in particular sociodemographic contexts. These contexts are represented in cultural models, and three distinct models are addressed throughout the text: the model of independence with autonomy as developmental organizer; the model of interdependence with relatedness as the developmental organizer; and the model of autonomous relatedness representing particular mixtures of autonomy and relatedness. The book offers an empirical examination of the first integrative developmental task-relationship formation during the early months of life. Keller shows that early parenting experiences shape the basic foundation of the self within particular models of parenting that are influenced by culturally informed socialization goals. With distinct patterns of results the studies have revealed, Cultures of Infancy will help redefine developmental psychology as part of a culturally informed science based on evolutionary ground work. Scholars interested in a broad perspective on human development and culture will benefit from this pioneering volume.

Families Across Cultures

Families Across Cultures PDF

Author: James Georgas

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-08-03

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 1139457640

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Contemporary trends such as increased one-parent families, high divorce rates, second marriages and homosexual partnerships have all contributed to variations in the traditional family structure. But to what degree has the function of the family changed and how have these changes affected family roles in cultures throughout the world? This book attempts to answer these questions through a psychological study of families in thirty nations, carefully selected to present a diverse cultural mix. The study utilises both cross-cultural and indigenous perspectives to analyse variables including family networks, family roles, emotional bonds, personality traits, self-construal, and 'family portraits' in which the authors address common core themes of the family as they apply to their native countries. From the introductory history of the study of the family to the concluding indigenous psychological analysis of the family, this book is a source for students and researchers in psychology, sociology and anthropology.

Family and Human Development Across Cultures

Family and Human Development Across Cultures PDF

Author: Cigdem Kagitibasi

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2014-03-05

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1317779207

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The culmination of 15 years of research by a Turkish psychologist who was educated in the West, this volume examines both the theoretical and practical aspects of cross-cultural psychology. It takes a contextual-developmental-functional approach linking the child, family, and society as they are embedded in culture. A refreshingly different view, the author presents a portrait of human development from "the other side"--from the perspective of the "majority world." In a world seemingly dominated by American psychology, she proposes the cross-cultural orientation as a corrective to the culture-boundedness of much of Euro-American psychology. Analyzing human development in context while avoiding the pitfalls of extreme relativism, this work studies development with an inclusive, holistic, and ecological perspective, focusing on the development of the self and of competence. In so doing, it also attempts to combine cultural contextualism with universalistic standards and psychological processes. It proposes a theory of family change which challenges some commonly held modernization assumptions, and links theory and application while examining the role of psychology in inducing social change.

American Kinship

American Kinship PDF

Author: David M. Schneider

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-06-01

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 022622709X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind PDF

Author: Mark Pagel

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2012-02-07

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0393065871

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.