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Authority of Ancestors: A Sociological Reconsideration of Fortes's Tallensi in Response to Fortes's Critics by C. J. Calhoun
http://www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Ancestors/calhoun.html
The full-text of Calhoun's article in Man (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute) 15(2), 304-319 published in 1980. Calhoun argues against critics of Fortes's work on ancestor worship and kinship. He says that Fortes's critics have stressed cultural categories and terminology to the exclusion of sociological analysis. This article reconsiders Fortes's material with a more sociological analysis and argues that the 'authority of the ancestors' is the key to the Tale kinship system. The article is part of David Zeitlyn's Ancestors in Africa project. The project is one of the HEFCE funded Experience Rich Anthropology Projects coordinated by the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing at the University of Kent.
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Changing Families, Changing Food (CFCF)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/familiesandfood/
Changing Families, Changing Food is a Leverhulme Trust funded project based in the social science facility at University of Sheffield. The program is organized into three research strands: pregnancy and motherhood; childhood and family life; and family and community. Research focuses on "recent changes in family life and examines how changes in family form have affected patterns of food consumption". Resources on the site include working papers in pdf format, which requires Adobe Acrobat software to view, and the CFCF bibliography in RTF. Topics covered include: negotiating food practices in everyday family life, Parental food choice and childhood obesity, Socio-historical reproduction and transmission of food values, Food provision and the media, fast food; food eating and social trends, There is an internal and external events calendar and links to relevant websites.
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Defining marriage and legitimacy, by Duran Bell
http://www.economics.uci.edu/~dbell/marriageandlegit.pdf
"A cross-culturally valid conception of marriage must begin with a definition of husband-wife and with a distinction between spouses and lovers. From this perspective, we find that marriage is an institution by which men are provided (socially supported) rights to women. Typically, this situation is embedded within a domestic group wherein a multiplicity of other rights and responsibilities are assigned. Hence, the definition of marriage attributable to E.R. Leach confounds domestic rights (which may exist in the absence of marriage) with marital rights. 'Notes and Queries' and Kathleen Gough define marriage by reference to the legitimacy of children. However, legitimacy is a construct oriented toward restricting access to resources on the basis of parentage. In particular, characteristics of parentage are used strategically as a basis for delimiting the set of offspring admissible into the corporate groups to which their fathers or, in matrilineal systems, their mothers belong. The extent to which legitimacy is tied to marriage is a strategic variable in the control of dominants within a social system. It is often associated with marriage but sometimes not." [Author's abtsract.] This article was originally published in Current Anthropology Vol. 38. No. 2. 1997. The author is Professor of Economics and Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine and the paper is presented on the web as part of his own site.
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Explaining the Level of Bridewealth, by Duran Bell and Shunfeng Song
http://www.economics.uci.edu/~dbell/bridewealthvalue.pdf
This article examines critically arguments that seek to explain the level of bridewealth by reference to cost benefit economics. The authors argue that "it is simply presumed that a wife provides a net benefit to the wife taker relative to her cost. There is no effort to compute the value of a wife and directly compare that value with bridewealth expenditures. This paper will present such a calculation. We shall see that in a hypothetical well-managed system in which cattle constitute bridewealth goods, the benefits of wifely services will be insufficient to cover the cost of their acquisition. In other words, by a benefit-cost criterion, wives are not worth the cattle expended on them. However, we also find that wives are more abundant and more useful to those who acquire them when their acquisition is less profitable, the usefulness of wives being inversely related to an economistic measure of benefit. These observations, when applied to a well-managed dynamic process, demonstrate the inapplicability of the benefit-cost perspective to the analysis of bridewealth." The article was originally published in Current Anthropology, Vol. 35. No. 3. 1994 and is made available on the web as part of a set of papers on the web pages of Duran Bell. The authors are at the University of California, Irvine.
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Familien som integrerende institution for flygtninge og indvandrere i Danmark (FIID)
http://fiid.ku.dk/
"Familien som integrerende institution for flygtninge og indvandrere i Danmark" ( eng. The Family as an Integrating Institution for Refugees and Immigrants in Denmark) is a research project based within the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. The project began in 2006 and is expected to finish in 2009. It includes established researchers, doctoral and masters students with an interest in the roles and functions of the local and transnational family for the everyday life of refugees and immigrants and their integration in the society that surrounds them. Although primarily concerned with studies of the Danish situation, the project also encompasses a comparative approach including studies of migrant families around the world. The website provides information on research results, publications made by the involved researchers, other research projects carried out by the Department of Anthropology and offers links to other Danish and international projects related to issues concerning family life of refugees and immigrants and the society of which they are part. Also included on the site is information on lectures, seminars, workshops and conferences on the above issues. In Danish only.
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Family and Neighbourhood: Ascoli Satriano 1700-1990 by Nevill Colclough and Jean Hosking
http://www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Ascoli/ascpaper/asctoc.
This paper examines the relationship between family and spatial distribution of kin and affines in the town of Ascoli Satriano in the Puglian region of Italy. It is based on a combination of ethnographic and archival research. The authors used documentation dating back several hundred years to establish residential patterns and movements and correlated this data with primary ethnographic data collected in the town, The paper is part of the online Ascoli Project. The Ascoli Project is one of the HEFCE funded Experience Rich Anthropology Projects coordinated by the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing at the University of Kent.
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Kinship and Marriage: An Introduction
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/kinship/
A site maintained by the Minnesota State University's Department of Anthropology. It contains a tutorial on kinship and an introduction to differing cultural understandings of relationships and family units. Terminology and charts are also provided.
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Kinship and Social Organization: an Interactive Tutorial, by Brian Schwimmer 
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/kintitle.html
This is an introduction to the anthropological study of kinship which covers terminology, diagrammatic conventions and the principal types of system. Five sections cover Kin Fundamentals, Systems of Descent, Kinship Terminology, Marriage Systems and Residential Rules.
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Kinship Glossary:Symbols, Terms, and Concepts, Compiled by Michael Dean Murphy
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/kinship.htm
A listing of some two hundred terms used in the description and analysis of kinship in the anthropological literature. All aspects of the field are covered and the definitions given are succinct and clear. The compiler is in the Department of Anthropology of the University of Alabama.
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Kinship with strangers : adoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture, by Judith S. Modell
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008jr/
This is the full text of the book originally published in 1994. Adoption challenges the understanding of the core symbols of kinship in American culture - birth, biology, and blood. Through the lens of anthropological theory, Judith Modell examines these symbols and the way they affect people who experience the "fictive" kinship of adoption. She draws on interviews with birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, some of whom are involved in reforming the adoption process. That reform - the opening of records, the acknowledgment of a biological and a legal parent, the blending of families that are related only through a child - spotlights the very meanings of mother and father, "blood," and identity. Thus her book complements other recent anthropological literature that argues for a radical rethinking of the way we define, and use, those concepts. The book is made available on the Web as part of the University of California Press's eScholarship Editions project.
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Kinship-based demographic simulation of societal processes, by Dwight W. Read
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/1.html
The social boundaries of small scale human societies are defined through culturally defined kin relations that transcend the specifics of the genealogical relationships produced through procreation. Kinship knowledge is culturally defined, distributed knowledge that provides structure for the persons produced through demographic processes. However, the interplay between the demographic system and the cultural system has been difficult to model. Genealogical data are static and do not show how the vagaries of demographic processes affect implementation of a culturally defined, conceptual system. Demographic simulations can provide the dynamic dimension, but usually lack information on how the changing demographic makeup of a population affects application of culturally defined rules relating to marriage, reproduction, residence and the like. This paper presents results obtained from implementation of a multi-agent, demographically driven, simulation of a hunting and gathering group, the !Kung San, in which each agent is imbued with cultural knowledge that affects decisions to be made about marriage, reproduction and place of residence. The goal is to assess the implications of demographic processes, ego-centered decision making, and culturally determined structures (kin relations, social groupings and the like) for the resulting social system. Questions addressed in the simulation are based on ethnographic observations and it is shown that the simulation provides an effective means to assess the validity of hypotheses about the ethnographic observations. The article is published in the ejournal Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 1, no. 1, 1998. The author is Professor of Anthropology at UCLA.
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Matrilineare Gesellschaften: eine Untersuchung aus ethnologischer und historischer Sicht, by Isabella Andrej
http://elaine.ihs.ac.at/~isa/diplom/diplom.html
This is the full-text, in German, of the author's M.Phil thesis submitted at the University of Vienna in 1998. The approach of the thesis is evolutionary with particular emphasis on the work of Bachofen. A wide range of ethnographic reference includes the Iroquois and Huron, the peoples of the Central African matrilineal belt and the Minangkabau of Sumatra.
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Negro Family in British Guiana, by Raymond T Smith
http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Erts1/first.htm
This is the full-text of the book originally published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1956. In an introduction to the Internet edition, the author explains that he has resisted the temptation to alter the text but that he has enhanced some of the tables and illustrations and improved access to references and footnotes. Smith also plans to introduce hypertext links to subsequently-published work which discusses the issues raised in his monograph. The book is published as part of Smith's home page at the site of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago.
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On the economics of polygyny, by Ted Bergstrom
http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1104&context=ucsb
"About 800f all societies recorded by anthropologists are polygynous. Even our own society is less monogamous than claimed. This paper attempts to explain such mysteries as why bride prices and dowries are not 'opposites', why polygamous societies are usually characterized by positive bride prices and dowry is mainly confined to monogamous societies, why polyandry is rare, but not extinct, and why the more you have to pay for a wife the better you will treat her." [Author's summary.] The author is in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.The paper is an unpublished working paper from the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan.
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Reason and passion : representations of gender in a Malay society, by Michael Peletz
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4r29p0jz/
This is the full text of the book originally published in 1996. It is a historical and ethnographic examination of gender relations in Malay society, in particular in the well-known state of Negeri Sembilan, famous for its unusual mixture of Islam and matrilineal descent. Peletz analyzes the diverse ways in which the evocative, heavily gendered symbols of "reason" and "passion" are deployed by Malay Muslims. The book elucidates the cultural and political processes implicated in the constitution of both feminine and masculine identity. It also scrutinizes the relationship between gender and kinship and weighs the role of ideology in everyday life. The author examines gender systems not as social isolates, but in relation to other patterns of hierarchy and social difference. His study is historical and comparative; it also explores the political economy of contested symbols and meanings and presents a model for the analysis of gender and culture by addressing issues of hegemony and cultural domination at the heart of contemporary cultural studies. The book is made available on the Web as part of the University of California Press's eScholarship Editions project.
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Representing Anthropological Knowledge: Calculating Kinship
http://www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Kinship/index.html
An interactive paper written by Michael Fischer of the University of Kent on the basics of genealogy and kinship and how to identify and classify different cultural models. "This unit introduces how we can use computers to address some of the issues that emerge from the complexity of kinship-related information and anthropological ideas about these. We will cover two basic issues, a) how to specify ideas systematically, and b) how to implement these on a computer."
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The Ascoli Project: a Puglian Town and its Hinterland
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/jb6/archives/index.html
This site is the product of an ERA (Experience Rich Anthropology) project, funded by HEFCE. ERA aims to enhance the teaching and learning of anthropology through providing resources for use in teaching with an increased emphasis on field data and analysis. This project presents the work of Dr. Nevill Colclough, Dr. Janet Bagg, Ms. Jean Hosking & Ms. Ripalta Coluccelli and examines changes in kinship and family forms and in marriage and inheritance strategies in Ascoli Satriano, a small 'city' in Puglia, South Italy. The project introduces and explores the main documentary research resources open to historically orientated anthropologists working in Southwest Europe. As a teaching package it provides, and sets, a valuable example of sensitive and critical treatment of such resources. Original documents and rough translations are provided online.
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Wealth transfers occasioned by marriage: a comparative reconsideration
http://www.economics.uci.edu/~dbell/Kinship1.pdf
"The theory of marriage payments has been oriented toward explaining why various categories of practice take place under particular ecological and technological conditions. This effort has been productive of a wide range of important analytical findings. However, the results of this chapter , by Duran Bell suggest that some of that work should be reconsidered by reference to a more systematic and scientifically established set of analytical categories. The attempt here is to observe wealth transfers associated with marriage in all forms of society and to reexamine those transfers on the basis of a set of theoretical understandings that have, heretofore, remained only inchoate in the literature. The principal theoretical issue is the importance of identifying individuals as incumbents of person-categories within socially constructed collectivities. The prevailing analytical perspective tends to present reciprocity as the elementary unit of social action and it presents the individual as the elementary social actor. This perspective... constitutes a serious disability for the advancement of our understanding of a broad range of social processes. The presentation here makes no attempt to construct a case against the individualist-reciprocity paradigm. Rather, this is a positive presentation that explores the behavior of corporate groups in relation to marriage, and it is hoped that the utility of this approach will encourage acceptance."[Taken from the author's introduction.] This paper was originally published in the book "Kinship, Networks, and Exchange" edited by Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. White. The author is Professor of Economics and Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine and the paper is reproduced on the web as part of his own site.
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Widowhood Among the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria by Chima Jacob Korieh
http://www.ub.uib.no/elpub/1996/h/506001/korieh/chima.html
This is the full-text of the author's thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy in History, University of Bergen, 1996. The study examines widowhood practices among the Igbo and concentrates on the rituals a woman undergoes on the death of her husband, Igbo marriage patterns, domestic and affinal relations and their impact on widowhood practices and the widow's life and the economic survival strategies of widows.
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Witchcraft in modern Africa as virtualised boundary conditions of the kinship order, by Wim van Binsbergen
http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/witch.htm
This paper is a wide-ranging discussion of witchcraft in modern Africa drawing particularly on recent work by P.L.Geschiere and M.Schoffeleers. The author concludes that on the basis of the historic underlying pattern of kinship-based village communities of agriculturalists and herdsmen going back to the Neolithic, witchcraft played an important role in defining the moral and productive order in many parts of the African continent.Witchcraft was therefore available for appropriation and virtualisation by African middle classes and elites in their struggle to create meaning in modernity and postmodernity. Without acknowledgement of this shared heritage of African village society, the modernity of witchcraft cannot be understood unless as an alien analytical imposition - which it is certainly not. Acknowledging this common pool of historic inspiration allows us to admit both the continuity and the transformation in modernity. Witchcraft has offered modern Africans an idiom to articulate what otherwise could not be articulated: contradictions between power and meaning, between morality and primitive accumulation, between community and death, between community and the state. The author is at the African Studies Centre, Leiden.
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