[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

[Greg Thompson]

apologies if this is a re-posting, but here is the text of the message that
accompanied the Sahlins text, just in case it didn't go through:

Apologies if this is another trip round the mulberry bush (or the
maypole?), but this is a conversation that has, as one might imagine, been
quite a big deal in anthropology. Here's a quick and brief summary.

Initially, "kinship" in anthropology was defined as the way that it has
traditionally been defined in European cultures - as based on blood. (other
forms are kinship, e.g., adoption, were seen as derivative of the central
trope of blood relation).

Then along came a fellow by the name of David Schneider (I attached a
picture, cf. David and Martin's pictures of Malinowski). Although Schneider
couldn't write his way out of a paper bag, he conducted field work on the
Micronesian island of Yap and published a few books on the subject that
forever changed the way that anthropologists' think about kinship.
Essentially, he challenged this blood-based notion of kinship by showing
how Yapese kinship formation is not blood-based (although blood based
relationships are still recognized, they do not hold the same sense that a
blood-based notion of "family" does).

Following Schneider, the field of kinship studies spent a bit of time in a
relativistic malaise, shifting between those who stuck to the old view of
kinship and those who refused to use the concept at all.

Then along came work that would eventually become what has come to be known
as "new kinship studies". This approach sought to recover the concept of
"kinship" without the concept of "kinship-as-blood". In the view of new
kinship studies, "kinship" is understood, as Rupert Stasch has put it, as
"intersubjective belonging" or "mutuality of being" (mentioned in the
Sahlins essay that is attached).

New kinship studies have also turned their gaze back onto kinship in
European/Western/American culture (and indeed, Schneider's other big book
was titled American Kinship). These folks have noted that even in these
cultures, previously thought to be entirely blood-based, one can find lots
of slippage from a simple model of blood-based kinship. Janet Carsten is a
key figure in this regard and she looks at, among other things, how
technologies have changed kinship formation (think test-tube babies and
sperm extraction from deceased persons - fun stuff!).

One of the best summaries of the new kinship studies is Marshall Sahlin's
essay What Kinship is? I have attached it here as it has a wonderful
collection of examples of how kinship is formed in various places around
the globe.

I guess the more interesting question for this group is: what does this
have to do with Vygotsky/XMCA?

-greg

On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 7:15 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> ​Martin,
>
> Not sure if things got garbled on the way into virtual XMCA-land, but in
> the end of my message about kinship studies in anthropology that
> accompanied the Sahlins (and which doesn't seem to appear in your reply -
> did the message come through with the attachment - usually it is the
> reverse!), I noted that Sahlins provides a nice summary of the new kinship
> studies that followed David Schneider.
>
> Does that help or were you looking for something else? (and, was the text
> of the message really missing entirely?)
> -greg ​
>
> On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
>
>> Greg, could you say a bit about why you sent this?
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 7, 2018, at 7:07 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
>> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> > <image.png><Sahlins, Marshall - What is Kinship.pdf>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>



-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson