What Kinship is - and is Not by Marshall Sahlins

by Marshall Sahlins

In this pithy two-part essay, Marshall Sahlins reinvigorates the debates on what constitutes kinship, building on some of the best scholarship in the field to produce an original and creative outlook on the deepest bond humans can have. Covering thinkers from Aristotle and Levy-Bruhl to Émile Durkheim and David Schneider, and communities from the Maori and the English to the Korowai of New Guinea, he draws on a breadth of theory and a range of ethnographic examples to form an acute definition of kinship, what he calls the “mutuality of being.” Kinfolk are persons who are parts of one another to the extent that what happens to one is felt by the other. Meaningfully and emotionally, relatives live each other’s lives and die each other’s deaths.               

In the second part of his essay, Sahlins draws on his wide ethnographic knowledge to show that mutuality of being is a symbolic notion of belonging, not a biological connection by “blood.” Quite apart from relations of birth, people may become kin in ways ranging from sharing the same name or the same food to helping each other survive the perils of the high seas. In a groundbreaking argument, he demonstrates that even where kinship is reckoned from births, it is because the wider kindred or the clan ancestors are already involved in procreation, so that the notion of birth is meaningfully dependent on kinship rather than kinship on birth. By formulating this reversal, Sahlins identifies what kinship truly is: not nature, but culture.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Science

Hardcover

First published December 1, 2012

About the author

Marshall David Sahlins was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

[Read me two times · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessantissimo (mini)saggio sulla parentela, dal punto di vista antropologico, sociologico, filosofico ed etnografico. È curioso che tutti gli studi riportati nel testo (e sono tanti) siano su società piccole e non ascrivibili al mondo occidentale.
La parentela è reciprocità, il sangue non sarà acqua ma di sicuro non è nemmeno così fondamentale quanto tutto il resto, che costituisce il vero legame.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

insightful, beautifully written study that undoes any sense that kinship is a matter of biology.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

when my professor said he was gonna send me this I misheard it as "I'll send you this kinship essay by Stalin"

The galactic mimesis begins in the microcosm of the group's mutuality of being... or is it in the imaginative powers of the ruler? One has merely a limited view of kinghip without a greater understanding of Sahlins's argument for the cultural forces that shape the being of a collective and their fealty to a king. The king is an Anti-Kin that establishes a dominion of order over new lands and previous kinships and yet through their demand of offerings and subsequent gift of life and distribution of supplies they turn the kinship practices into paradoxical ones which, when the King successfully embodies this transcendent being maker, the antithesis of Kin becomes both King and a super-kin or a higher embodiment of the divine forces and ancestral history and sovereign might which utterly transforms and scales up the capacity of kinship amongst groups within their dominion.

[Meema · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two essays from a giant in the discipline of Anthropology,Marshall Sahlins. He argues kinship is culture and a relationship that is invoked through atmosphere and society rather than biology as one may instinctively assume. Through citing ethnographic studies from tribal and island people to using Aristotle and Durkheim, as and when needed, Sahlins makes his point of how strangely the simple bonds of blood do not necessarily exist and if they do exist, it is only under the umbrella of cultural practice. Through shared history and struggle and everyday life practices kinship is formed. Well argued , my only criticism is while the ethnographic information was eye-opening it also serves to other the other. There were not enough examples from the so-called mainland or dominant majority cultures and that raises at least a 'huh?!' from this reader. Interesting read nonetheless.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary piece! I first got to the topic moved by Haraway's motto, "Make kin, not babies": it made me asked myself, what exactly is to be kin? Is there anything outside this oppressive, strictly biological Western kin? And indeed, there is. If one is looking for other ways of making kin, here there are hundreds of examples of ways in which people become more than neighbours: through land, through commensality, through name-sharing, and whatnot. Honestly, I think this is absolutely extraordinary and is a massive work in thinking outside our own paradigm, trying to get else-where, as Haraway would say. Even if so, I really missed more-than-human kin, which Sahlins doesn't explictitly talk about and is typical from totemist and animist ontologies: not only kin, but odd-kin.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not a perfect introduction--you do need to reference and dig into many of the anthropological and kinship study controversies beyond Sahlin's gloss--this book is an solid overview of the debates around the meaning of kinship in anthropology. It's pithy and yet often dense, and while Sahlin's a clear agenda here, it does present the research controversies fairly clearly.

[Hakan Karabas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eğer akademik çalışma yapmıyorsanız, vaktinizi başka kitaplar ile değerlendirmenizi öneririm.

[Dimitris Alexakis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Απαιτητικό ανθρωπολογικό δοκίμιο με μια πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα προσέγγιση για τη συγγένεια ως αμοιβαιότητα ύπαρξης

[Phyllis]

You would never know what kinship is by reading this. That's for sure.