Status Updates From What Kinship Is-And Is Not

Very compelled by this book--Sahlins is brilliant in his ability to find threads throughout diverse and vast literatures.

..plants who are children of the Amazonian or New Caledonian women who cultivate them, or the animals of Siberia and Amazonia who are affines of the men who hunt them. This is no metaphor, but a sociology of moral, ritual and practical conduct.

The notion of kinship has troubled both general people and anthropologists alike. In predominantly English-speaking places, it is easy to think kinship as a natural, biological relationship - as a father to son - but as anthropologists have shown, in many parts of the world, being a kin does not necessarily mean related by blood (consanguinal) nor by marriage (affinal).