Robert Parkin is a Lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. His books include Kinship: An Introduction to Basic Concepts (Blackwell, 1997), Perilous Transactions and other Papers in Indian and General Anthropology (2001), and Louis Dumont and Hierarchical Opposition (2002). Linda Stone is Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University. Her publications include Illness Beliefs and Feeding the Dead in Hindu Nepal (1989) and Kinship and Gender: An Introduction (2nd edition, 2000). She is also editor of New Directions in Anthropological Kinship (2001) and co-author of Gender and Culture in America (2nd edition, 2001).

• Preface. Acknowledgments.General Introduction.Part I: Kinship as Social Structure: Descent and Alliance:.1. Descent and Marriage:.Introduction: Robert Parkin.Unilateral descent groups: Robert H. Lowie (deceased 1957, formerly of University of California, Berkeley).The Nuer of the southern Sudan: E. E. Evans-Pritchard (deceased 1973; formerly of Oxford).Lineage Theory: a brief retrospect: Adam Kuper (Brunel).African models in the New Guinea Highlands: J. A. Barnes (formally of The Australian National University).The Amerindianization of Descent and Affinity: Peter Rivière (Oxford).Inheritance, Property, and Marriage in Africa and Eurasia: Jack Goody (Cambridge).2. Terminology and Affinal Alliance:.Introduction: Robert Parkin.Kinship and Social Organization, Lecture One: W. H. R. Rivers (deceased, formerly of Cambridge ).Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology: Claude Lévi-Strauss (Emeritus, College de France).Concerning Trobriand Clans and the Kinship Category ‘tabu’: Edmund Leach (deceased 1989, formerly of Cambridge).The Dravidian Kinship Terminology as an Expression of Marriage: Louis Dumont (George Mason University, DC).Prescription, Preference and Practice: Marriage Patterns Among the Kondaiyankottai Maravar of South India: Anthony Good (University of Edinburgh).Analysis of Purum Affinal Alliance: Rodney Needham (formally of Oxford).Tetradic Theory: An Approach to Kinship: N. J. Allen (Oxford).Part II: Kinship as Culture, Process and Agency:.3. The Demise and Revival of Kinship:.Introduction: Linda Stone.What is Kinship All About?: David M. Schneider (deceased 1995, formerly of the University of Chicago).Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender and Kinship: Silvia Junko Yanagisako and Jane Fishburne Collier (Stanford University).Sexism and Naturalism in the Study of Kinship: Harold W. Scheffler (Yale University).The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi: Janet Carsten (University of Edinburgh).4. Contemporary Directions in Kinship:.Introduction: Linda Stone.Surrogate Motherhood and American Kinship: Helena Ragoné (Independent Scholar).Eggs and Wombs: The Origins of Jewishness: Susan Martha Kahn (Brandeis University).Gender, Genetics and Generation: Reformulating Biology in Lesbian Kinship: Corinne P. Hayden (University of California, Berkeley).Has the World Turned? Kinship in the Contemporary American Soap Opera: Linda Stone (Washington State University).Kinship, Gender and Mode of Production in Post-Mao China: Variations in Two Villages: Hua Han (Independent Scholar).Primate Kin and Human Kinship: Robin Fox (Rutgers University).Kinship and Evolved Psychological Dispositions: The Mother’s Brother Controversy Reconsidered: Maurice Bloch and Dan Sperber (London School of Economics and Directeur de Recherche au CNRS, Paris).Glossary.Index

"One looks to a Reader to be authoritative: this is also a highly imaginative collection. Nuanced as well as balanced, the editors’ compilations bring out the best not just in the study of kinship but in anthropology. A tonic for old hands and new hands alike." Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge