Pradipa P. Rasidi’s Reviews > What Kinship Is-And Is Not > Status Update

It may not have anything biological at all. This book explores a survey of anthropological findings in the last century on kinship, in an attempt to prove the idea that "kinship", regardless of its variance, is an universal phenomenon across the world. To make his argument, Sahlins works on the concept of "mutuality of being" as a central condition that makes up kinship, that is ... . The short book is divided to two 50-ish pages chapters. The first works on the notion of kinship (What Kinship Is) and the second works on refuting assumption about what kinship is supposed to be (What Kinship Is Not). This is one aspect that makes Sahlin's book quite shines to me; he has been consistently attacking an Eurocentric (American) view on supposedly universal notions (like kinship) by pointing out the "scientification" tendency of Western framework, starting with his attacks on sociobiology in the '80s. In addition to that, he writes in quite eloquent prose, without letting anthropological jargons obstruct his argument. This makes Sahlin's writings relevant not just to aspiring social scientists but to general readers as well, especially in a time that value STEM culture as a magical solution to our everyday's problem.