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Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1995. 24:343-72
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Copyright © 1995 AnnUllI Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
ANTHROPOLOGY
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Michael G. Peletz
ABSTRACf
This review examines the state of play of kinship studies in late twentieth-cen
tury anthropology, paying close attention to theoretical advances and shifts in
methodology and intent that have occurred since the 1970s. It highlights
developments in Marxist, feminist, and historical approaches, the repatriation
of kinship studies, various aspects of lesbian/gay kinship, and issues bearing
on the new reproductive technologies. Contemporary kinship studies tend to
be historically grounded; tend to focus on everyday experiences, under
standings, and representations of gender, power, and difference; and tend to
devote considerable analytic attention to themes of contradiction, paradox, and
ambivalence.
The handful of us...are prepared to wade through the sort of kinship algebra. . . which has
gradually developed, memorize long lists of native terms, follow up complicated dia
grams, . . .endure long deductive arguments, . . . [and] the piling of hypothesis upon hypothe
sis. The average anthropologist, however, [is] somewhat mystified and perhaps a little
hostile . . . . and has his doubts whether the effort needed to master the bastard algebra of
kinship is really worthwhile. He feels that, after all, kinship is a matter of flesh and blood,
the result of sexual passion and maternal affection, of. ..a host of personal intimate inter
ests. Can all this really be reduced to formulae, symbols, perhaps equations?
B Malinowski (65:19)
0084-6570/95/1015-0343$05.00 343
344 PELETZ
Compared with cooking and music and the peculiarities of naming systems, the study of
kinship . . . is dull and pedestrian stuff, but for an anthropologist, kinship is the hard core.
E Leach (56:10)
Kinship patterns can be understood as objects of artistic appreciation, in the same way that
mathematical proofs or car engines are, for some people, such objects. Opening the hood
of a fancy sports car, some of us will see nothing but a confusing jumble of ugly machin
ery. Others, who understand such things, will be perfused with bliss. It is the Same with
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kinship patterns.
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M Trawick (127:117-18)
INTRODUCTION
they are on "blood" and kinship, are in some sense a distorted or mirror image
of our own ("advanced") society, based on "soil" and the state (54), about
which anthropologists have long shared a celebrated ambivalence as social
critics. The argument here is that in casting the Other as a distortion or
inversion of ourselves, we inadvertantly inscribe or introduce an ambivalence
that the anthropological enterprise is in some sense designed to ameliorate.
Anthropology's love affair with kinship has cooled in recent decades, and
the ambivalence in question has become more pronounced, or, stated perhaps
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more accurately, been revalorized. This trend has been construed by some
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observers as a clear (if not relieving) sign that the study of kinship is dead or
moribund. Although such views remind one of Mark Twain's remark that
reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated, they do resonate with two
important changes in the status, scope, and constitution of kinship studies that
have occurred since the early 1970s. First, theories and debates about what
were once taken to be the basic building blocks of kinship (kinship terminolo
gies, so-called rules of descent, marriage, and postmarital residence) no longer
occupy their long privileged position of centrality within the discourse of
anthropology. The dethronement is evidenced by recent reviews of anthropol
ogy and social theory (e.g. 12, 19, 66, 84), which make scant reference to
issues that were the central focus of classic studies by American, British, or
French anthropologists. The change has occurred partly because of the critical
rethinking of basic assumptions in the traditional study of kinship by Leach,
Needham, Schneider, and others beginning in the 1960s. More broadly, the
shift reflects the waning of structural-functionalism as a guiding paradigm.
The feeling has arisen in its place that the study of kinship and other traditional
subfields (e.g. economic anthropology, political anthropology) cannot be pur
sued in the isolated terms of what are ultimately functionally defined institu
tional domains (14: 1-3).
A second important change that has occurred in the study of kinship since
the 1970s is frequently overlooked by those who persist in viewing anthropol
ogy in terms of the conventionally defined subfields. I refer to the fact that the
study of kinship has been reconstituted and partially subsumed under other
(admittedly problematic and contested) rubrics such as social history, legal
anthropology, and political anthropology, and, of course, the feminist anthro
pology of Rubin (100), Weiner (133, 134), Ortner & Whitehead (87), Rapp
(95-97), Gailey (26), Martin (70), Strathern (121-123), Collier (13), Ginsburg
(28), and Weston (135). Feminist anthropologists have infused new enthusi
asm into the field of kinship and have contributed to its reconstitution. This is
especially apparent in Collier & Yanagisako's 1987 volume Gender and Kin
ship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis, the primary objective of which is "to
revitalize the study of kinship and to situate the study of gender at the theoreti
cal core of anthropology by calling into question the boundary between these
346 PELETZ
two fields" (14:1; see also 29, 63). The editors advocate a program that focuses
on the cultural analysis of meaning and that deals with social systems as
systems of social inequality that, like patterns of symbols and meanings, are
most usefully understood in historical terms. They also argue that Schneider
(108) has convincingly "denaturalized" the study of kinship, and that it is no
longer defensible to take "the natural facts" of sex, procreation, and the rearing
of offspring as "the universal raw material" comprising systems of kinship.
The more general critique is that both "kinship" and "gender" studies typically
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fall short because they begin by taking "difference" for granted, "treating it as
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Kinship as Symbols
ings are more or less the same for males and females, and for members of all
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grids, as may be the assertion that the functionally defined institutional domain
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of kinship as understood in the West exists nowhere else in the world. But
assertions of the latter sort strike many as hyperbolic and problematic-while
Schneider has decentered biology from the study of kinship, he has not really
denaturalized the study of kinship (see 103)-and, in any event, have negative
implications for the comparative study of social relatedness. Rather than insist
that no one else has kinship as we do, and that kinship as we understand it is a
nonsubject, we should perhaps first examine the systems of social relatedness
others do have.
Collier & Yanagisako (14) and Yanagisako & Delaney (142), among oth
ers, stress that we should approach the study of kinship free of biases rooted in
assumptions about biology. But to my knowledge none of these scholars have
really begun to suggest what a kinship system cut free of any mooring in, or
relationship to, cultural constructions of biology would look like (21). Two
relevant bodies of data come to mind: first, the results of the brilliant "thought
experiment" by Cucchiari (18), which delineate the structure and organization
of a hypothetical (pre-Upper Paleolithic) hunting and gathering society with
neither kinship nor gender; and second, data on the families created by lesbi
ans and gays in the United States that are based on choice and not "blood," but
that are nonetheless conceptualized by the natives in relation/opposition to
their "blood" or "straight" families; while such families are not grounded in
biology, they are clearly defined in relation to it (135).
Schneider's work (and other types of cultural analysis) also questions how
to effect closure on kinship if it is defined in strictly cultural terms, especially
since, as Schneider himself has pointed out in recent years (107), it interpene
trates with other cultural domains like gender, religion, etc. One solution is to
define kinship as a domain of social relations, as Kelly has (48:521-22):
Kinship relations are social relations predicated upon cultural conceptions that
specify the processes by which an individual comes into being and df:velops
into a complete (i.e. mature) social person. These processes encompass the
acquisition and transformation of both spiritual and corporeal components of
being. Sexual reproduction and the formulation of paternal and maternal
contributions are an important component of, but are not coextensive with, the
relevant processes. This is due to the ethnographic fact that a full complement
KINSHIP STUDIES 349
riage' . ..; is explained or justified in terms of a biologial idiom ...; assigns the
parties to an 'in' group or category, in opposition to persons not so assigned...;
entails the joint ownership, ... use, . .. or serial inheritance of property and re
sources; serves as a medium for assigning hereditary social positions...;
[and/or] involves the nurture and upbringing of small children....
Kinship as Structures
mensions of unilineally bounded groups. But the move was far less profound
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when one considers that the focus was still on unilineally bounded groups and
their external relations and reproduction through time. In short, descent-based
social units still constituted the point of departure and ultimate loci of investi
gation, and little analytic provision was made for other structural principles
such as siblingship, which may have highly variable implications for the
presence or absence of bounded groups per se, but may nonetheless serve to
inform a broad array of social relations and domains of cultural order.
The theme of siblingship as a principle of social order commensurate with
principles of descent, filiation, and affinity was first developed by Kelly in his
landmark study of structural contradiction among the Etoro (45). Kelly pointed
out the analytic problems inherent in then current, widely held notions of
"loose structure" and also resolved the "Nuer paradox" that had baffled Evans
Pritchard and many since. In recent years Oceanic materials have encouraged
an analytic formulation of siblingship relatedness in terms of equivaknt, paral
lel, or essentially complementary rights, obligations, and experiences, with
respect to a specific territorial domain, political office, or other mediating
element (69). This formulation has significance both within Oceania (68,1 1 4),
and beyond-in lowland South America (50) and Southeast Asia (52, 64, 73,
89).
The suggestion that we take siblingship, as opposed to, say, parent-child
relations, as our point of departure is far more radical than it might initially
appear. The proposal is that first we concentrate our analytic gaze on relations
among the living (rather than links between the living and the dead and/or the
unborn); and that, second, we zero in on bonds among individuals of the same
relative generation-which, of course, constitute "key" ("core") social rela
tions in all societies. Broadly speaking, by devoting greater attention to the
ways in which siblingship serves as a key symbol and central organizing
principle in intragenerational relations, we can reorient and revitalize the study
of kinship, which has always been characterized by a focus on intergenera
tional links (47; see also 81:3, 103:373). This same general focus arising from
both siblingship and "the exchange of women" relocates kinship in practice
(see 1 1, 45).
KINSHIP STUDIES 351
years (32, 94), perhaps most notably by Weiner (133, 134), who examines
exchange not merely as a means by which to mediate conceptual oppositions
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between self and other, but also as a way to effect social control and deal with
the paradoxes central to social life in all societies.
It is now widely recognized that static, highly abstract formulations and
models of "official" rules and principles of social structure, such as those for
which Levi-Strauss is justly famous (see also 34; cf 4), don't take us far
toward understanding social actors or the myriad contexts in which they or
ganize themselves, relate to one another, acquire and use resources, or create
order and meaning in their lives. This recognition resonates with Bourdieu's
view that to understand actors and contexts we need to devote greater attention
to behavioral strategies, especially everyday practical strategies geared toward
the attainment of locally defined value. These strategies, informed by official
rules and principles, are also conditioned by culturally induced but largely
implicit dispositions as well as material and symbolic interests, and are thus
not in any way "mere execution[s] of the model (in the . . . sense of norm . . . [or]
scientific construct)" (1 1:29). Whether or not Bourdieu's interpretations of
data bearing on parallel-cousin marriage in North Africa prove to be of endur
ing interest (see 32, 40), the analytic framework he has developed (practice
theory) clearly is, as is his commitment to studying kinship through time (see
also 99, 129).
social history and conveying the everyday lives of European peasants as they
are practiced, experienced, and represented.
Anthropologists' interest in social history, coupled with the increased avail
ability of archival materials, helps to engender new perspectives on some old
problems concerning the social organization of tribal societies (broadly de
fined) These include: the historical development of Nuer segmentary organi
.
zation and the expansion of Nuer territory and population over time (at the
expense of Dinka) (46; see also 41); the reproduction and transformation of
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conical clans, pyrimidal ramages, or status lineages in Tonga (26); and the
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one variant of lineality to another (e.g. from matriliny to patriliny). The larger
and most basic issue, of course, is the salience of kinship in social history.
chy" and "patriarchy." This was especially so after Engels entered the fray
with his views concerning the status of Iroquois women in relation to their
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In the 1960s, Meillassoux's work among the Guro of the Ivory Coast sparked a
new wave of interest in these topics. Meillassoux's influence has been espe
cially strong in France and England, where the "lineage mode of production"
has often been debated (see 43, 74, 124). Despite some disagreement over key
issues, the general consensus appears to be that in societies characterized as
"segmentary" (which, for some, refers to societies with segmentary lineages a
la Nuer; for others means "tribal" in Sahlins's and Service's evolutionary
formulation; and for still others simply means "primitive"), lineage and kin
ship generally operate both as infrastructure and superstructure insofar as
kinship relations serve as relations of production but also constitute the basis
for ideologies and normative systems (6, 26, 43, 48, 1 13).
Of special interest to this side of the Atlantic and to feminists worldwide is
Meillassoux's twofold contention (74; cf 13:vii) that in societies without
classes, or "castes," or "estates," kinship organizes rights and obligations, and
that marriage as the basis of kinship thus organizes the inequalities that exist in
terms of age and gender (a theme to which we return below). Issues of
continuing concern are whether such inequalities are appropriately seen as
entailing exploitation of the same general sort found in state contexts, and
whether one can appropriately speak of the existence of distinct social classes
in such societies. Also at issue is the validity (with respect to the study of
kinship in precapitalist economic formations) of Althusser's distinction be-
354 PELETZ
Bloch (7) emphasizes that kinship is a system of signs that not only organizes
"production and reproduction... [as well as] the transfer of surplus from one
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French and British fieldworkers in Mrica and elsewhere have focused on tribal
societies and chiefdoms and have frequently emphasized how structures of
kinship and domestic domains have been affected by state policies, trade, and
colonialism. Recently researchers have turned to peasantries and urbanites in
state societies, particularly in Europe, the Andes, and China. Noteworthy here
is Reiter's (98) pioneering work on public and private domains in rural France,
which shows how the marked segregation of the sexes (characteristic of most
of the Mediterranean) is fostered by state societies, whose ideologies assign to
women the jobs of serving and reproducing kinship networks. States, espe
cially those built upon industrial capitalism, need taxes and labor power, hence
people are reproduced and sustained in the context of (domestic) kinship;
because only women can literally guarantee the reproduction of people, states
tend to intervene in women's lives in major ways and to effect relatively
extreme distinctions between public and private domains (but see 141, cf 26,
28).
KINSHIP STUDIES 355
Such processes are also evident in the Andes. During pre-Inca times, ayUus
operated in conjunction with parallel descent and inheritance, and a gendered
division of labor conceptualized in terms of complementarity (112 : 9 10). But
-
mining ties that had previously linked women, and otherwise used structures
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Rethinking Difference
Similarities and differences between Eastern and Western kinship systems are
among the major foci of the most ambitious study of kinship in late twentieth
century anthropology. I refer in detail to Goody's (32) The Oriental, the
Ancient, and the Primitive, which is both the definitive treatise on systems of
kinship and marriage in the preindustrial societies of Eurasia as well as an
exemplary model of transdisciplinary research informed by a global sense of
variation in space and time reminiscent of social theorists like Marx and
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Weber.
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kin groups (like the notion of their complete severance from natal kin) is thus a
Western fiction informed by market metaphors and economistic thinking.
Goody concludes that while gender inequality is pervasive in the Asian socie
ties under investigation, "women [in these societies] are never simply the
pawns of others but are themselves players in the game, especially as heir
esses" (32:68); that the "domestic slavery" and the purported absence of con
jugal love and parental affection that Westerners have long associated with the
Orient is a chimera (32:317, 425); and, more broadly, that ancient and modern
Orientals are not so different from ancient and modern Westerners after all.
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both within and across cultures. However, one can identify several issues to
which Goody might have devoted more systematic attention. The frequently
unqualified treatment of the "position [or status] of women" makes little
provision for distinctions among variables of power, authority, autonomy, and
prestige, a surprising lapse given Goody's commitment to the development of
an analytic apparatus that can be used to help debunk various myths in the
literature on kinship and gender. It would have been useful as well had Goody
devoted additional attention to siblingship, the more so in light of his argu
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ments, advanced mainly in relation to South Asia, that ties linking married
women (and their children) with their brothers may compromise the concep
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tual logic and social entailments of lineage and clan. There are, moreover,
tantalizing references to the concept of contradiction throughout the book,
some of which point to the important role of structural contradiction in histori
cal change, yet Goody makes no effort to present a unified theory of contradic
tion, or to theorize social transformation in terms of process, though he clearly
historicizes kinship. There is, finally, an occasional tendency to derive mean
ing from function, though for the most part Goody maintains the distinction
between interpretations offered by social actors, and those constructed by the
analysts.
Modeling Inequality
Works by Goody and others cited above provide key insights into the produc
tion of difference and inequality in the context of relationships between kin
ship and other institutions in state societies. The most systematic models of
kil)ship and inequality, however, are those devised for classless societies.
Collier (13), for example, synthesizes certain Marxist and feminist perspec
tives in the course of presenting three ideal-typic models for analyzing the loci
and entailments of gender and generational inequality among nineteenth-cen
tury Great Plains groups and other societies that lack stratification (bands,
tribes, and ranked societies, but not chiefdoms): the "brideservice" model,
developed in relation to Comanche data; the "equal bridewealth" model, con
structed largely on the basis of Cheyenne data; and the "unequal bridewealth"
model, heavily informed by Kiowa data. In each model Collier systematically
relates inequality to a particular form of validating marriage (performing
brideservice, paying equal or unequal bridewealth), and systematically links
the latter with numerous other variables: production and circulation (the mean
ing of work, the content of statuses, the meaning of gifts), political processes
(the causes of conflict, the nature of leadership, folk models of social structure
and human agency, practical action), and cultural representations (gender con
ceptions, rituals, etc). While Collier reformulates Meillassoux's Marxism in
light of contemporary feminist concerns, she is also committed to the more
actor-oriented, practice-theory approach of Bourdieu; consequently, she not
KINSHIP STUDIES 359
classless, especially brideservice, societies (see also 25, 91). Kelly's objective
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is not merely to show how data from Etoro society and other Strickland
Bosavi tribes are out of keeping with the brideservice model proposed by
Collier (who cites Etoro and related groups as candidates for inclusion in the
model) but also to develop an alternative model that can account for the
phenomena at issue.
Defining social inequality as "social differentiation accompanied by differ
ential moral evaluation," Kelly emphasizes that stigma is the negative recipro
cal of prestige, that analytic discussions of so-called prestige systems (e.g. 86)
would benefit from greater terminological and conceptual precision (see also
141:26-28), and that such systems are more accurately characterized as sys
tems of prestige/stigma. Kelly's goal is to describe and analyze all social
inequalities that exist among the Etoro and related groups, including, in par
ticular, inequalities that are not "organized by marriage or derived from the
means and relations of production" (48:4). In realizing this objective, Kelly
highlights how a shamanic elite and other ritual experts-along with initiation
ceremonies, witchcraft beliefs, and associated cosmologies-are implicated in
the production of inequality. He also illustrates that social inequalities are
entailed in marriage, and in the division of labor, but that in the latter case "the
differential moral evaluation that engenders this is derived from the cosmo
logical system rather than from economic processes per se" (48:9). This is to
say that both "the means and relations of the production and allocation of
prestige and moral superiority are . . . linked to the perpetuation of life across
generations" (48:1 1); and, more broadly, that "the [gender] asymmetry that
Collier points to . . . turns on the differential age of marriage for males and
females and the fact that marriage corresponds to the age of transition to an
adult level of production for women but not for men . . . . The orienting proposi
tion that marriage organizes inequalities collapses analytically pertinent dis
tinctions and lumps together a number of independently variable causal factors
as a single variable assessed in terms of presence or absence (i.e. married or
unmarried)" (48:437).
Despite their divergent emphases, Kelly and Collier both call for a radical
recontextualization of kinship and gender. And they both demonstrate that
360 PELETZ
systems of kinship and gender are "about" difference and inequality, and, as
such, are most usefully analyzed as components of more encompassing sys
tems of distinction and hierarchy that are variably grounded in cosmology and
political economy (see also 90, 91, 121). These studies reinforce the theme that
feminist and Marxist concerns alike lead back to kinship (or social relations).
Indeed, Kelly and Collier share with Goody and numerous feminists and
Marxists the focus on kinship as an array of key social relations that engage
production and reproduction and that remain squarely embedded in practice.
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nese] feel and think about, and handle, the tasks and tribulations of their
individual existences" (137:xvi). In contrast to earlier writers on Balinese,
Wikan devotes considerable attention to Balinese "feeling-thoughts" about the
seamier side(s) of human nature and social relations. She believes that while
Balinese commitments to graceful performances are partly about "beauty for
beauty's sake," they also reflect an anxiety to avoid giving offense and pro
voking the ire of intimate others in a society where roughly half of all deaths
are attributed to black magic or poisoning (137:43).
According to Wikan, Balinese are forever anxious about "liv[ing] always
exposed and vulnerable" (137:81) to the threats of others. Balinese believe
they live in a panopticon in which all kinship and social relations are hierarchi
cal and power laden and all social activities are scrutinized and evaluated by
intimate and not so intimate others. This is not the panopticon of Foucault's
(22) writings, in which Big Brother or his agents, with their unrelenting gazes
and disciplinary mechanisms, penetrate the most intimate recesses of personal
and social space and consciousness. Indeed, Balinese feelings of vulnerability
are only minimally (if at all) related to their positions in class or other rela
tively fixed status hierarchies and are only minimally (if at all) keyed to the
presence of Big Brother or his agents. These feelings stern instead from the
hundreds if not thousands of big and little brothers and sisters peopling their
kinship and social universe(s), good numbers of whom are assumed to be
deploying the social and cultural resources at their disposal in order to enhance
(or at least maintain) their own status and prestige while simultaneously under
cutting the status and prestige claims of others.
Feelings such as these serve as powerful moral constraints and deserve
thorough analysis, especially in conjunction with themes of domination and
resistance. I make the point partly because moral variables tend to be given
short shrift in studies of domination and resistance unless they "muddy the
waters" of class or otherwise impinge on relations of power and domination
between major status groups (landlords and tenants, rich and poor, etc). The
underlying issue is that while scholars of resistance (M Taussig, J Scott)
frequently distance themselves from Marxist theories of exploitation and class,
362 PELETZ
they often preserve one of Marxism's own hidden premises: that class is
somehow the most essential, natural, or unfetishized of all social groupings,
and that class interests are thus the most important or rational of all social
interests. Data from Bali, Malaysia (91), and elsewhere indicate that in order to
understand kinship or social relations of any variety, we must seriously con
sider culturally specific (as well as generalized) forms of personal submission,
humiliation, and degradation that are not tied to class-based (or feudal) hierar
chies, or to systems of caste, apartheid, slavery, and the like.
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terns approaches (e.g. 115) alike tend to be insufficiently attuned to the ways
the politics of cultural identity and ideological factors inform not only the
pooling, "patchworking" (51), and deployment of resources among household
members, but also intrahousehold competition over resources, relations be
tween the sexes and generations, and the multitude of pathways in terms of
which households are reproduced and transformed over time.
Kibria's ethnography of Vietnamese American families in Philadelphia
(51), for example, reveals the complex and often contradictory reworking of
Vietnamese traditions bearing on kinship and gender. Taking issue with ac
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counts that depict Vietnamese in the United States as yet another example of a
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Weston's research on lesbian and gay kinship (135) provides what is per
haps the most compelling example of the theoretical insights and challenges
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reject the basic concepts of sociobiology (e.g. kin selection, reciprocal altru
ism) (62), and have turned their backs on sociobiologists rather than involve
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CONCLUSION
kinship is, in a sense, a "postnominalist field" and has been since the work of
Needham (81). Noteworthy in this connection is Comaroff's (16) delineation
of how to reconstitute and reproblematize the field while attending to the
objections raised by the nominalist critique.
The fifth and most general point is that the study of kinship is alive and well
and still vital to the discipline, though often carried out under other rubrics and
aliases. This is epitomized by Marxist approaches and Modjeska's comment
that while he "explore[d] . inequality [by looking at means and relations of
0 0
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Raymond Kelly, Nancy Ries, Ric Thompson, and Gary Urton
for reading an earlier draft of this essay on short notice and for offering
comments. Thanks are also extended to the following individuals: Tom Fricke,
Sharon Hutchinson, Mary Moran, Fred Myers, and Terence Turner, who pro
vided references and/or reprints; Randi Feinstein and Lisa Todzia, who served
as research assistants; and Letta Palmer-Holmes, who patiently prepared many
versions of the bibliography. Because of space limitations, I have focused
almost exclusively on English-language sources and published material.
Any Annual Review chapter, as well as any article cited in an Annual Review chapter,
may be purchased from the Annual Reviews Preprints and Reprints service.
1-800-347-8007; 415-259-5017; email: arpr-c1ass.org
368 PELETZ
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