Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family

by Lewis Henry Morgan, Elisabeth Tooker (Introduction)

Modern anthropology would be radically different without this book. Published in 1871, this first major study of kinship, inventive and wide-ranging, created a new field of inquiry in anthropology. Drawing partly upon his own fieldwork among American Indians, anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan examined the kinship systems of over one hundred cultures, probing for similarities and differences in their organization. In his attempt to discover particular types of marriage and descent systems across the globe, Morgan demonstrated the centrality of kinship relations in many cultures. Kinship, it was revealed, was an important key for understanding cultures and could be studied through systematic, scientific means.

 

Anthropologists continue to wrestle with the premises, methodology, and conclusions of Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity . Scholars such as W. H. R. Rivers, Robert Lowie, Meyer Fortes, Fred Eggan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss have acknowledged their intellectual debt to this study; those less sympathetic to Morgan’s treatment of kinship nonetheless do not question its historical significance and impact on the development of modern anthropology.

Genres: Anthropology

604 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Lewis Henry Morgan was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist, and one of the greatest social scientists of the nineteenth century in the United States. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois. Due to his study of kinship, Morgan was an early proponent of the theory that the indigenous peoples of the Americas had migrated from Asia in ancient times. His social theories influenced later Leftist theorists. Morgan is the only American social theorist to be cited by Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.

Reviews

[Paul Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a simple curiosity, and such a profound addition to the whole human knowledge! Absolutely incredible. One person compiled a comprehensive global linguistic database of social construct of family and gender; Lewis Henry Morgan.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A monumental work that is too much descriptive and positivistic for my taste: almost all mankind is compiled in this encyclopedia of cultures.

Respects to Morgan.