University of Edinburgh

School of Social & Political Science

Social Anthropology
2013 2014
Semester 2

Kinship: Structure and Process

SCAN10021
Wednesdays 09.10 10.50,
First floor, Adam House, Chambers Street
Professor Janet Carsten & Dr Maya Mayblin
Email: J.Carsten@ed.ac.uk & maya.mayblin@ed.ac.uk

Aims and Objectives

This course examines some of the ways in which people in different societies
conceptualise and live out relatedness. It shows how notions about relatedness
are linked to notions about gender, theories of procreation (which are
themselves changing under the impact of new reproductive technologies), and
ideas about bodily substance, as well as having emotional, economic, and
political salience. Kinship has long been regarded as the core of the
anthropological discipline, although the extent to which this is still the case is
questionable. The course will consider some of the history of kinship studies,
looking at some central debates in the subject and assessing their implications
for anthropological theory.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students should have an overview of the ways in
which anthropologists have approached kinship in both some classic nonWestern cases, and more recently, in Western cultures. They will have an
understanding of the economic and political salience of kinship, the history of
kinship within anthropology, and of the significance of key debates about what
kinship is, and how it might be studied.

Teaching Methods
The course involves one two-hour session a week for the whole class, together
with small group support teaching in separate one-hour sessions. In the main
session, most weeks will involve a mixture of a lecture and some discussion
and group work. You will be allocated to a group for the term in the first session,
and each group will have a specific short reading to work on for each week,
with the group reporting back to the whole class.

The small group support teaching will normally be concerned with one or more
readings that illustrate, underpin or extend issues raised in the main sessions.
Students should note that participation in the small group support
teaching sessions is compulsory and attendance will be recorded. See
the note on Tutorial Participation under ASSESSMENT at the end of this
course guide.

Communications:
You are strongly encouraged to use email for routine communication with
lecturers. We shall also use email to communicate with you, e.g., to assign
readings for the second hour of each class. All students are provided with email
addresses on the university system, if you are not sure of your address, which
is based on your matric number, check your EUCLID database entry using the
Student Portal.
This is the ONLY email address we shall use to communicate with you.
Please note that we will NOT use private email addresses such as yahoo
or hotmail; it is therefore essential that you check your university email
regularly, preferably each day.

Submitting your coursework

Course work will be submitted online using our submission system ELMA.
You will not be required to submit a paper copy.
Marked course work, grades and feedback will be returned online you will not
receive a paper of your marked course work or feedback.
For information, help and advice on submitting coursework and accessing
feedback,
please
see
the
ELMA
wiki
at
http://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/SPSITWiki/ELMA

Length Penalties
Essays over the word limit will lose 10% of their marks. (This applies as much
to essays of 5 words over as to essays of 500 words over). This word limit
includes footnotes and appendices but not the bibliography.
Any apparently deliberate misrepresentation of the word count or failure to
declare a word count will lead to a deduction of 20 marks. N.B. This can affect
your final result.

Late submission of assessed items

Unlike coursework in Years 1 and 2, for all Social Anthropology Honours
assessment, NO EXTENSIONS ARE GRANTED WITH RESPECT TO THE
SUBMISSION DEADLINES FOR ANY ASSESSED WORK.
Please refer to the Honours handbook for additional information regarding late
submission of coursework and essays and instructions on how to submit a
Lateness Penalty Waiver.

Special Circumstances:
If you find yourself struggling due to illness, an accident or bereavement, you
can ask your Personal Tutor and Student Support Officer for advice on applying
for Special Circumstances. You should also read the Special Circumstances
section of the Honours Handbook.

LECTURE PROGRAMME
Week
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Date
15 January
22 January
29 January
5 February
12 February
19 February
26 February
5 March
12 March
19 March
26 March

Topic
What is Kinship?
Incest Debates
Procreation
Gender
Kinship, Politics, and the State
No Lecture: Innovative Learning Week
Class, Economics, and Marriage
The House and Memory
Kinship and Cosmology
Reproductive Technologies and Gay Kinship
What Kinship Is: Debate and Review

CLASSES, READING LIST & BEYOND

Each weeks readings and activities are organized under three headings.
Journal articles will be available through the library e-journal list. Copies of book
chapters will (as far as possible) be available on Learn. You are expected to do
a minimum of three readings per week. At least one in advance of the lecture
(see starred reading), one for the discussion following the lecture, and at least
one in preparation for the tutorial. Students are expected to demonstrate a
broad range of reading in examination and essay answers.
It is essential to read as you go along: reading cannot be left until the
rather brief revision period!
Lecture readings. These are the readings that will be directly discussed in the
lecture itself. Everyone should try to read AT LEAST ONE in preparation for
each weeks lecture. If you cannot decide, we recommend the starred reading.
Good answers to the exam and the short essay will draw on a wide range of
these readings.
Discussion readings. For the second hour each week, students will usually
work in small groups with a specific short reading or question. It is essential to
read the allocated discussion reading before the lecture.
Tutorial readings. Again you must read at least one of these before attending
the tutorial, and bring your short written personal response to the reading to
hand over to the tutor (see under Assessment at the end of this course guide).

General texts on kinship

These will help in defining terms and summarising theoretical issues in the
study of kinship:

Louis Dumont 2006[1971] An introduction to two theories of social

anthropology
David M Schneider, 1984 A critique of the study of kinship
Alan Barnard & Anthony Good, 1984 Research practices in the study of
kinship
Ladislav Holy, 1996 Anthropological perspectives on kinship
Robert J Parkin, 1997 Kinship: an introduction to the basic concepts
Janet Carsten, 2004 After kinship

Readers on kinship
The following recent collections provide overviews of anthropological
approaches to kinship. Several of the weekly group readings are taken from
these collection, and if you plan to buy any books for this course these are likely
to be the most useful.

Janet Carsten (ed), 2000 Cultures of relatedness: new approaches to the

study of kinship. Cambridge: University Press.
Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds), 2004 Kinship and family: an
anthropological reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Ethnographies
In addition to the weekly readings, students are strongly advised to read from
the following ethnographies (listed in alphabetical order, not order of priority!)
which focus on kinship:

Rita Astuti, 1995 People of the sea: identity and descent among the Vezo
of Madagascar
Cecilia Busby, 2000 The performance of gender: an anthropology of
everyday life in a south Indian fishing community
JK Campbell, 1964 Honour, family and patronage; a study of institutions
and moral values in a Greek mountain community
Janet Carsten, 1997 The heat of the hearth: the process of kinship in a
Malay fishing community
E Valentine Daniel, 1984 Fluid signs: being a person the Tamil way
Jeanette Edwards, 2000 Born and bred: idioms of kinship and new
reproductive technologies in England
EE Evans-Pritchard, 1951 Kinship and marriage among the Nuer
Anthony Good, 1991 The female bridegroom: a comparative study of lifecrisis rituals in South India and Sri Lanka
Peter Gow, 1991 Of mixed blood: kinship and history in Peruvian
Amazonia
Karin Kapadia, 1995 Siva & her sisters: gender, caste, and class in rural
South India

Ethnographies continued

Maya Mayblin, 2010 Gender, Catholicism, and morality in Brazil: virtuous

husbands, powerful wives

Jonathan Parry, 1979 Caste and kinship in Kangra

David M Schneider 1980 (2nd edition.) American kinship: a cultural

account

Rupert Stasch, 2009 Society of others: kinship and mourning in a west

Papuan place

Marilyn Strathern, 1992 After nature: English kinship in the late twentieth
century

Yunxiang Yan, 2003 Private life under socialism: love, intimacy and family
change in a Chinese village 1949-1999

Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, 2002 Producing culture and capital: family firms
in Italy

Classes & Reading List

* = Essential reading. Where two are listed, do at least one.
WEEK 1: What is Kinship? [JC]
Can we define something called 'kinship'? We will look at some different
anthropological definition of kinship and their analytic implications, including the
mid-twentieth century paradigm of unilineal descent groups.

*J. Carsten 2004 After Kinship, Introduction.

*D.M. Schneider, 1984 A critique of the study of kinship. chap 9.
Meyer Fortes, 1953 The structure of unilineal descent groups. American
Anthropologist 55: 17-41 [E; also in Fortes, Time and social structure, and
other essays]
Adam Kuper, 1988 The invention of primitive society, ch 10
R. Needham, 1964 'Remarks on the analysis of kinship and marriage' in
Needham (ed) Rethinking kinship and marriage (ASA Monographs
No.11).
E. Gellner, 1973 (1960) 'The concept of kinship', in The concept of kinship
and other essays.
J.A. Barnes, 1961 'Physical and social kinship'. Philosophy of Science,
28: 296-99.
J. Carsten, 2000 Cultures of Relatedness, Introduction.

Discussion:
Allocation of groups and readings.
We will use some recent media accounts to discuss the significance of kinship
in contemporary life.
Tutorial reading: The Genealogy of Kinship

M. Bouquet 1996 Family trees and their affinities: the visual imperative
of the genealogical diagram, Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 2: 43-66.

WEEK 2: Incest Debates [MM]

What is the incest taboo, and can it be defined as universal? In this lecture we
will consider some of the different theories and explanations for the presence
of the incest taboo, and go on to look at how incest might be defined differently.

*Lvi-Strauss, C. 1969 (1949) The Elementary structures of kinship, Chs

1-5. Beacon Press.
*Schneider, David. 1976. The Meaning of Incest. 149-169 The Journal of
the Polynesian Society 85 (2): 149-169
Freud. S. 1913. (1950) Totem and Taboo. Some points of agreement
between the mental lives of savages and neurotics. Ch 1. On the horror
of incest. Routledge.
Hooper.A. 1976. Eating Blood: Tahitian Concepts of Incest. The Journal
of the
Polynesian Society 85 (2): 227-241.
Kuper. A. 2002. Incest, Cousin Marriage, and the Origin of the Human
Sciences in nineteenth-century England. Past and Present 174(1): 158183.
Roscoe, Paul B. 1994. Amity and Aggression: A Symbolic Theory of
Incest. Man
New Series 29 (1): 49-76.
Wagner, Roy. 1972. Incest and Identity: a critique and theory on the
subject of
exogamy and incest prohibition. Man (New series) 7 (4): 601-613
Westermarck, E. 1891 (1922) The History of Human Marriage.
London: Macmillan
Wolf, Arthur. P. 1966. Childhood Association, sexual attraction, and the
incest taboo: a Chinese case. American Anthropologist 68 (4): 883-898.

For Discussion:
Pinker, S. 2002. Chapter 2: Silly Putty in Blank Slate: The modern denial of
human nature. London: Allen Lane.
1.
2.

How is Pinkers argument relevant to anthropological debates about the

incest taboo?
Why does Lvi-Strauss assert cultures importance over nature in the
explanation of the incest taboo?

Tutorial Readings: Incest in the West

La Fontaine, J. S. 1988. Child Sexual Abuse and the Incest Taboo: Practical
Problems and Theoretical Issues. Man (New Series) 23(1): 1-18.
McKinnon. S. 1994. American Kinship/American Incest: Asymmetries in a
Scientific Discourse / In in S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney (eds) Naturalizing
power: essays in feminist cultural analysis

WEEK 3: Procreation [JC]

Where do babies come from? Can we take procreation for granted as a
universal fact of life? What could be more natural than reproduction?

*S. Franklin 1997 Conception amongst the Anthropologists, ch. 1 in her

Embodied progress: a cultural account of assisted conception.
B. Malinowski, 1932 The sexual life of savages 'special foreword' to 3rd
edition, 'foreword' and chs. 1 and 7.
E. Leach, 1966 'Virgin birth' Proceedings of the R.A.I (Also in Genesis as
myth, Leach 1969).
M. Spiro, 1966 'Virgin birth, parthenogenesis and physiological paternity:
an essay in cultural interpretation' Man 3: 242-61.
Correspondence in Man vol. 1 1968; vol. 1 1969; vol. 2 1972.
D.M Schneider, 1980 American Kinship: A Cultural Account.
C. Delaney, 1986 'The meaning of paternity and the virgin birth debate'
Man 21 (3): 494-513.

For Discussion: Special Guest Speaker, Dr Claudia Rezende

J.S. Taylor 1998 Images of contradiction: obstetrical ultrasound in American
culture in Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power, and Technological
Innovation, eds. S. Franklin and H. Ragon
1.
2.

Discuss how motherhood and fatherhood are constituted prior to birth in the
context described in the article you have read.
What is the wider social and political significance of these meanings? And why
is this important for the study of kinship?

Tutorial Reading: How are babies made?

Emily Martin, 1991 'The egg and the sperm: how science has constructed a
romance based on stereotypical male-female roles', Signs 16 (3): 485-501.

WEEK 4: Gender [MM]

Social anthropology is the study of men and women, but the ubiquity of gender
and its effects was not fully recognised within the discipline until the 1970s and
80s, when theorists started looking to other cultures to inform debates about
the universality of sexual inequality. This lecture will look at the connections
between gender and kinship in practice and in theory.

*Collier, J. and S.J. Yanagisako, 1987 Toward a unified analysis of

gender and kinship', in J. Collier and S. Yanagisako (eds) Gender and
kinship: essays toward a unified analysis.
*Ortner. Sherry. 1974. Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?. In M.
Z.Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds). Woman, culture, and society. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Busby, C. 1997 Of marriage and marriageability: gender and Dravidian
kinship. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 3: 21-42
Krier, Jennifer. 2000. The marital project: beyond the exchange of men in
Minangkabau marriage. American Ethnologist 27 (4): 877-897

Week 4 continued

Peletz, M.G. 1994. Neither Reasonable nor responsible: contrasting

representations of masculinity in a malay society. Cultural Anthropology
9: 135-78

Strathern, M. 1998 [1980] No Nature, No Culture: The Hagen Case. Ch

8 in Nature Culture and Gender, edited by M. Strathern and C.
MacCormack.

Watson, R. 1986 The named and the nameless: gender and person in
Chinese society. American Ethnologist 13: 619-31.
For Discussion:
Astuti, Rita (1998) 'It's a boy', 'It's a girl!': reflections on sex and gender in
Madagascar and beyond. In: M. Lambek and A. Strathern (eds.) Bodies and
persons: comparative perspectives from Africa and Melanesia. Cambridge
University Press
1.
2.

How does Astutis article challenge the performance theories of gender?

What does Ortners article assume that all women have in common?

Tutorial Readings:
Atkinson, J. 1990. How Gender Makes a Difference in Wana Society. In
Atkinson and Errington (eds.) Power and Difference. Gender in Island
Southeast Asia.
Atkinson, J. 1996. Quizzing the Sphinx: Reflections on Mortality in Central
Sulawesi. In Spears (ed.) Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia.

WEEK 5: Kinship, Politics, and the State [MM]

In what ways are kinship and politics related? We will discuss how in
contemporary nation states kinship becomes an idiom of national ideology and
how notions of marriage, genealogy and intimacy are framed by projects of
liberal citizenship. We will analyse how national histories intertwine with family
ones to look at kinship as a site of conflict between different political projects.

*Bloch, M. 1973. 'The long term and the short term: the economic and
political significance of the morality of kinship' in J. Goody (ed) The
character of kinship.
*Carsten, J. 2004. After Kinship. Ch 6.
Das V. 1995 Ch.3: National honour and practical kinship: unwanted
women and children. In Das.V Critical events. An Anthropological
Perspective on Contemporary India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press..
Delaney, C. 1995. Father state, motherland, and the birth of modern
Turkey, in S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney (eds) Naturalizing Power:
essays in feminist cultural analysis.
Goldstein, D.M. 2005. Orphans of the state: conceptualising citizenship,
space and kinship in Bolivian municipal politics. Cultural Dynamics,
17(1):5-31.

Week 5 continued

Klein, C. 2000. Family ties and political obligations: the discourse of

adoption and the Cold War commitment to Asia. In C. Appy (ed.) Cold War
Constructions: the political culture of United States imperialism, 19451966

Philips, Kristin D. 2010. Pater rules best: political kinship and party politics
in Tanzaniaa presidential elections. PoLAR: Political and Legal
Anthropology Review 33(1): 109-132.
For Discussion:
Stoler, A. 1995. Mixed-bloods and the cultural politics of European identity in
colonial southeast Asia, in J.N. Pieterse and B. Parekh (eds) The
decolonisation of the imagination.
1.
2.

Why, in Stolers account, is mixed-blood considered a threat to colonial

bureaucracy?
What does Bloch mean when he describes kinship systems as moral
systems?

Tutorial Readings:
Erdreich, L. 2006. Marriage talk, Palestinian women, intimacy and the liberal
nation-state. Ethnography 7(4): 493-523.
Friedman, Sara. 2005. The intimacy of state power: marriage, liberation, and
socialist subjects in southeastern China. American Ethnologist 32
(2): 312 327.

WEEK 6: Innovative Learning Week

WEEK 7: Marriage, Status and Economics [Guest lecture: Dr Sarah

Walker]
We will start our discussion by looking at classical conceptualisations of affinity
and alliance and move from there to look at debates concerning the
interconnection between marriage, status and economics.

Blackwood, Evelyn. 2005. Wedding bell blues: marriage, missing men,

and matrifocal follies. American Ethnologist 32 (1): 3-19.
*Borneman, John. 1996. Until death do us part: marriage/death in
anthropological discourse. American Ethnologist 23 (2): 215 235.
Friedman, Sara L. 2005. The Intimacy of State Power: Marriage,
Liberation, and Socialist Subjects in Southeastern China. American
Ethnologist 32(2): 31227.
Gow, Peter. 1989. The Perverse Child: desire in a native Amazonian
susbsistence economy. Man. (New Series) 24 (4): 567-82.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1969 (1949) The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Chs
1-5. Beacon Press.

Week 7 continued

*Masquelier, Adeline. 2005. The Scorpions Sting: Youth, Marriage and

the Struggle For Social Maturity In Niger. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 11(1): 5983.

Mauss, M. 1970 The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic

Societies. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul.

Smith, Raymond. 1996. Matrifocality: power, pluralism and politics. Ch 5.

New York: Routledge.

Sonbol, A. (2005) History of Marriage Contracts in Egypt. Hawwa 3 (2):

159-196.

Stack, Carol. 1974. All Our Kin: strategies for survival in a black
community. Chs 4 & 7. New York: Basic Books.

Yan, Yunxiang. 2003. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and
Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Class Activity: Marriage and Economics
In preparation for this part of the seminar, all students are requested to
individually select a document or object that will serve as stimulus for discussion
about the interconnection between marriage and economics.
Tutorial Discussion
Cole, Jennifer. 2009. Love, Money, and Economies of Intimacy in Tamatave,
Madagascar. In Love in Africa, eds. Jennifer Cole and Lynn M. Thomas.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hunter, Mark. 2009. Providing Love: Sex and Exchange in Twentieth-century
South Africa. In Love in Africa, eds. Jennifer Cole and Lynn M. Thomas.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1.

What is the relationship between affect and exchange?

WEEK 8: The House: Work and Memory [Guest lecture: Dr Siobhan

Magee]
In which contexts is the house used as an idiom of relatedness? Which
practices and beliefs show houses to be repositories for the transmission of
emotional values, memories, and material possessions associated with the
family? The lecture will discuss how ideas about houses, and what happens
inside of them, pose questions about work and labour. How might
anthropological thought on the the house be useful for discussing a
comparable nexus of sentiments, labour, and, intergenerational relations: the
family business?

*J. Carsten and S. Hugh-Jones, 1995 'Introduction' to About the House:

Lvi-Strauss and Beyond.
*Dunn, E.C. 2004. Ideas of kin and home on the shop floor in Privatizing
Poland: Baby food, big business and the remaking of labor. Cornell
University Press.

Week 8 continued

Pierre Bourdieu 1990 The Kabyle House or the World Reversed.

Appendix in The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
pp. 271-283.

M. Bloch The resurrection of the house among the Zafimaniry of

Madagascar, pp.69-83 in About the House: Lvi-Strauss and Beyond
(eds.) Carsten and Hugh-Jones.

Bahloul, Jolle. 1996 The Architecture of Memory: A Jewish-Muslim

Household in Colonial Algeria, 1937-1962. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

J. Carsten, 2004 After Kinship, chap 2

Mary Weismantel, 1995 Making kin: kinship theory and Zumabagua

adoptions, American Ethnologist 22 (4): 685-704.

Frances Pine. 1996 Naming the house and naming the land: kinship and
social groups in the Polish highlands Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 2: 443-459. OR Memories of movement and stillness of place:
kinship memory in the Polish highlands, Chap. 5 in J. Carsten (ed.)
Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness.

Yanagisako, S.J. 2002. Introduction and Chapter 3: The generation of

firms in Producing Culture and Capital: Family Firms in Italy. Princeton
UP.
For discussion: The House in the Diaspora

Leinaweaver, J.B. 2009. Raising the Roof in the Transnational Andes:

Building Houses, Forging Kinship, The Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, 15: 777-796.
OR

Silverstein P.A. 2004. Of Rooting and Uprooting. Kabyle Habitus,

Domesticity and Structural Nostalgia, Ethnography, 5(4): 553-578.
1.
2.

In what ways can houses come to embody familial memory?

How do processes of dislocation impact on the symbolism of houses?

Tutorial Reading: Disruption and the Problem of Cumulative Continuity

Janet Carsten 2000 Knowing where youve come from: ruptures and
continuities of time and kinship in narratives of adoption reunions. Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 6: 687-703.

WEEK 9: Kinship as cosmology [MM]

What came first, kinship or cosmology? In this lecture we will look more closely
at the symbolic and sacred aspects of kin terms and kinship structure. Can
there be relatedness between lineages and cosmological deities? How do
changing religious systems impact upon long standing concepts and ideas
about kinship?

*Bloch, M. and S. Guggenheim. 1981. Compadrazgo, Baptism and the

Symbolism of
Second Birth. Man (N.S).16 (3):376-386.
*Mayblin, M. 2011. The Madness of Mothers. Agape love and the maternal
myth in Northeast Brazil. American Anthropologist 114 (2):240-252
Du Boulay, Juliet. 1984. The Blood: Symbolic Relationships between
Descent, Marriage, Incest Prohibitions and Spiritual Kinship in Greece
Man (New Series) 19 (4): 533-556.
Handman, Courtney. 2011. Israelite Genealogies and Christian
Commitment: The Limits of Language Ideologies in Guhu-Samane
Christianity. Anthropological Quarterly 84 (3): 655-677
Scott, Michael W. 2000. Ignorance is cosmos; knowledge is chaos:
articulating a cosmological polarity in the Solomon Islands. Social
Analysis 44 (2): 56-83.

For Discussion:
Course, Magnus. 2011. Ch 2: Kupal. The Sociality of Descent. In Becoming
Mapuche. University of Illinois Press.
1.
2.

Does kinship inform ontology, or is it the other way round?

What is kupal?

Tutorial Readings:
Cannell, F. 2011. English ancestors: the moral possibilities of popular
genealogy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.17: 462-480.

WEEK 10: Reproductive Technologies and Gay Kinship [JC]

With the advent of assisted conception, the possibility of having children of their
own has been opened up for infertile people, single and gay parents. What is
the role of choice in the family and reproduction and how does it relate to the
natural desire to have children? And is it only alternative families who need
to give nature a helping hand?

*J. Carsten 2004 After Kinship, ch. 7.

M. Strathern, 1992 Reproducing the future: essays on anthropology,
kinship and the new reproductive technologies, part 1 (chs. 1-3)
J. Edwards, 2004 Incorporating Incest: Gamete, Body and Relation in
Assisted Conception. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Vol. 10 (4): 755-774.

Week 10 continued

S. Franklin, 1997 Embodied progress: a cultural account of assisted

conception, especially ch. 5

F. Cannell, 1990 'Concepts of Parenthood: the Warnock report, the Gillick

debate and modern myths', American Ethnologist 17(4): 667-88.

S.M. Kahn, 2000 Eggs and wombs: the origins of Jewishness pp. 112-39 in her
Reproducing Jews: a cultural account of assisted conception in Israel. [Also
reprinted pp.362-77 in Parkin and Stoned (eds)].

J. Butler, 2002 Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual? In Differences

13 (1): 14-4.

J. Edwards and M. Strathern, 2000 Including our own. In J. Carsten (ed.)

Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship, pp.
149-166.
For Discussion: Gay Kinship
K. Weston, 1995 'Forever is a long time: romancing the real in gay kinship
ideologies' in S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney (eds) Naturalizing power: essays
in feminist cultural analysis.
OR
C. Hayden, 1995 Gender, Genetics, and Generation: Reformulating Biology in
Lesbian Kinship. In Cultural Anthropology 10 (1): 41-63.
1.
2.

In what ways does gay kinship raise particular questions for

anthropologists?
How are ideas about biology deployed by gay people in either of these
two cases?

Tutorial Readings: Giving Nature a Helping Hand

H. Ragon, 1996 Chasing the blood tie: surrogate mothers, adoptive mothers
and fathers American Ethnologist 23 (2): 352-365.
OR
C. Thompson, 2001Strategic naturalizing: kinship in an infertility clinic in
Relative values: reconfiguring kinship studies, eds. S. Franklin and S.
McKinnon.

WEEK 11: What Kinship Is [JC]

We will begin this session with a debate on the motion: Sahlins definition of
kinship as mutuality of being is a persuasive intervention in anthropological
discussions about kinship. See

*Sahlins, M. 2011 What kinship is (part one) Journal of the Royal

Anthropological Institute 17: 2-19.
What kinship is (part two), Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
17: 227-242.
See also Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory Vol 3 No. 2 (2013)
Symposium on Marshal Sahlins, What Kinship Is - And Is Not, pp. 245316.

The second part of the session will be a review of the course considering some
different ways in which anthropologists and those they study have understood
the sources of kinship and its emotional power, and paying particular attention
to ties of sentiment and substance.

Meyer Fortes. 1970 Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis
Henry Morgan, Chap 11: Kinship and the axiom of amity.
Strathern, 1973 'Kinship, descent and locality: some New Guinea
examples' in J. Goody (ed) The Character of Kinship.
J. Carsten, 1995 The substance of kinship and the heat of the hearth:
feeding, personhood and becoming related among Malays on Pulau
Langkawi, American Ethnologist 22: 223-41 [also pp 309-27 in Parkin &
Stone (eds)]
Bodenhorn, 2000 He used to be my relative: exploring the bases of
relatedness among Inupiat of northern Alaska. Pp 128-48 in J. Carsten
(ed.) Cultures of Relatedness.
M. Peletz. 2001 Ambivalence in Kinship since the Forties in S. Franklin
and S. McKinnon Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies.
T. Ingold, 2007 Genealogical lines, in Lines: A Brief History
M. Lambek, 2011Kinship as gift and theft: acts of succession in Mayotte
and ancient Israel American Ethnologist 38: 2-16.
R. McKinley 2001 The philosophy of kinship: A reply to Schneiders
Critique of the Study of Kinship. In R. Feinberg and M. Ottenheimer (eds)
The Cultural Analysis of Kinship: The Legacy of David M. Schneider, pp.
131-167

The discussion will provide an opportunity to review the course, ask questions,
and discuss revision for the exam. Please review your notes from the course
and bring your questions!

ASSESSMENT
All students will be assessed by:
1.

2.
3.

Assessed course work in the form of a short Mid-Term essay (1500

words). The assessed course work carries a weighting of 20% towards
the final overall mark for the course as a whole. To be submitted online
via ELMA by 12 noon on Thursday 27 February 2014.
An examination at the end of the Semester. Exam times will be announced
by Registry later. The exam carries a weighting of 70%.
Tutorial participation, which carries 10% of your mark.

Please refer to the Honours Handbook for more complete information about
assessment procedures.
Course work
Short essay titles will be put up on Learn. The mark awarded will be an overall
assessment of quality, based on the following criteria: quality of ethnographic
evidence; analysis (awareness of relevant theoretical debates; critical
assessment of theoretical positions); use of relevant literature (evidence of
independent literature search; linkage between ethnography and theory);
structure of argument (original ideas and approach; intelligent use of analysis,
argument, criticism and debate); style and presentation; and correct citation of
references. It is important to remember however, that the overall mark is the
result of a holistic assessment. For example, brilliance in one criterion cannot
override weakness in other criteria.
Tutorial participation
The system of written assessment, the "personal response," will form the
backbone of students tutorial participation. Each week you will be required to
come to class with a short piece of written work, about 100-200 words long.
You will write a short paragraph of your own personal response to the tutorial
readings for that week. A personal response is not a summary of the reading,
but rather your reaction to it: What did you like or not like about the piece? What
questions did it answer or leave unanswered? You will be required to bring a
paper copy of your personal response to class, a copy of which will be handed
in to the tutor at the end of the class. You will not receive a mark or feedback
for each individual response, but these responses will feed into the final tutorial
participation mark awarded. The rationale behind this system is: to make class
discussion more focused, to help students formulate their own opinions, to give
more opportunities to practice writing skills, and to provide a basis for awarding
a grade for tutorial participation at the end of the course.
Exam
In assessing your answers we will be looking especially for evidence of breadth
of knowledge on different sections of the course and depth of understanding of
particular topics.

The following are the criteria through which each exam answer will be marked.
However, it is important to note that the overall mark is a result of a holistic
assessment of the answer as a whole.

Does the answer address the question set, and with sufficient focus?
Does the answer show a grasp of the relevant concepts and knowledge?
Does the answer demonstrate a logical and effective pattern of argument?
Does the answer, if appropriate, support arguments with relevant,
accurate and effective forms of evidence?
Does the answer demonstrate critical thinking in relation to arguments and
evidence?
Does the answer attempt to make a point that is original?
Is the answer adequately presented in terms of spelling, grammar and
style.