The Heat of the Hearth The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community

by Carsten, Janet

• ISBN13: 9780198280453
• ISBN10: 0198280459
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-06-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Janet Carsten offers an original and very personal investigation of the nature of kinship in Malaysia, based upon her own experience as a foster daughter in a family on the island of Langkawi. She shows that Malay kinship is a process, not a state: it is determined partly by birth, but also throughout life by living together and sharing food. Carsten gives the reader a fascinating "anthropology of everyday life," including a compelling view of gender relations; she urges reassessment of recent anthropological work on gender, and a new approach to the study of kinship.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	xiii	(1)
List of Figures	xiv	(1)
List of Maps	xiv	(1)
Note on Orthography	xv
Introduction	1	(30)
PART 1: INSIDE THE HOUSE	31	(100)
1. The House	33	(24)
2. The Production of Children: House Cycles and Life Cycles	57	(25)
3. Bodies within Bodies: The House and the Sibling Group	82	(25)
4. The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth	107	(24)
PART 2: OUTSIDE THE HOUSE	131	(150)
5. The World Outside	133	(27)
6. Between Houses: Visiting, Eating, and Feasting	160	(30)
7. The Incorporation of Difference: Marriage	190	(30)
8. Producing Similarity: Affinity and the Sharing of Grandchildren	220	(36)
9. Coercive Incorporation: The Historical Construction of Community	256	(25)
Conclusion	281	(12)
Bibliography	293	(12)
Index	305