The Metamorphoses of Kinship

by Godelier, Maurice; Scott, Nora

• ISBN13: 9781844677467
• ISBN10: 184467746X
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-03
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

A declining marriage rate, rising divorce rate, families breaking up and reforming, homosexual marriage and adoption. Where are the transformations in the family today taking us? In order to understand what is happening and what awaits us, the world- renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier has decided to open up the whole question of kinship, surveying the accumulated experiences of humanity as regards marriages and unions, the organization of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the history of the study of kinship, from the nineteenth century to the present, in order to develop his own hypotheses. He concludes that it is nowhere the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to bring a child into existence, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the foundation stone of a society. Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship but rather its remarkable metamorphosis'¬ ;one that, ironically, has brought us closer to the '¬Straditional'¬ societies studied by ethnologists.

Author Biography

Maurice Godelier is a world-renowned anthropologist. Among the many honors he has received are the CNRS Gold Medal and the Alexander von Humboldt prize. His major works include The Making of Great Men, The Metamorphoses of Kinship, The Enigma of the Gift, In and Out of the West, and, more recently, Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Kinship in the Field: The Baruya of New Guinea	p. 23
The Components of Kinship	p. 75
Filiation and Descent (First Component)	p. 87
Alliance and Residence (Second and Third Components)	p. 123
Kinship Terminologies (Fourth Component)	p. 179
The Functions and Field of Parenthood	p. 219
Begetting Ordinary Humans (Fifth Component 1)	p. 229
Begetting Extraordinary Humans (Fifth Component 2)	p. 281
The Sexed Body: A Ventriloquist's Dummy That Gives Voice to the Order or the Disorder of Society and the Cosmos	p. 299
Incest (Sixth Component): And a Few Other Misuses of Sex	p. 319
Concerning the Origins and the Basis of the Incest Taboo: Freud and Lévi-Strauss	p. 391
Proposals for a Different Scenario	p. 431
Of the Past, We Cannot Make a Clean State: Assessing the Theories	p. 479
Conclusion: What Future for What Kin Ties?	p. 521
Glossary	p. 555
Bibliography	p. 583
Index of General Terms	p. 607
Index of Personal Names	p. 621
Index of Societies	p. 625
Maps	p. 629
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