Author Description

In this critical analysis of British kinship theory, Mary Bouquet challenges the claim that kinship is of limited significance to the structure of English society. She reveals the underlying assumptions about kinship to be found in the classic texts of British anthropology. Mary Bouquet argues that, while writing-off the idea of kinship in English culture, anthropologists of the British school absorbed the notion of pedigree into their analysis; it runs through the genealogical method which they used to conceptualise the organisation of other societies. She shows how British anthropological ideas about other cultures thus have their own cultural specificity. A brief comparison with the French ethnological approach to kinship indicates some differences of emphasis. Practical use of the British texts as pedagogical materials in Portugal produced a novel form of ethnography bringing two disparate notions of kinship into focus. The author does more than just reclaim English kinship. She problematises the discrepancy between the original context in which the texts were written, and contemporary contexts in which they are read as anthropological classics. Her view is that the very difficulties involved in this project may open up new ways of writing ethnography. This book will be stimulating reading for all those working on kinship, marriage, family and European ethnography; it will also interest those concerned with theoretical issues surrounding the reading and writing of ethnographic texts.