Description
Book Synopsis Using some of his landmark publications on kinship, along with a new introduction, chapter and conclusion, Robert Parkin discusses here the changes in kinship terminologies and marriage practices, as well as the dialectics between them. The chapters also focus on a suggested trajectory, linking South Asia and Europe and the specific question of the status of Crow-Omaha systems. The collection culminates in the argument that, whereas marriage systems and practices seem infinitely varied when examined from a very close perspective, the terminologies that accompany them are much more restricted.
Trade Review “Accounts of kinship terminology evolution either have mostly focused on single, or a few, regions without placing the account into a larger context… Parkin provides a far more complete account based on extensive empirical evidence regarding the world-wide variations among kinship terminologies.” • Dwight Read, UCLA
Table of Contents List of Figures
Introduction
Part I: Terminological change
Chapter 1. Kinship as classification: towards a paradigm of change
Chapter 2. Terminology and alliance in India: tribal systems and the north-south problem
Chapter 3. From tetradic society to dispersed alliance
Chapter 4. Why do societies abandon cross-cousin marriage?
Chapter 5. Dravidian and Iroquois in South Asia
Chapter 6. Indo-European kinship terminologies in Europe: trajectories of change
Part II: Crow-Omaha
Chapter 7. On the origin of Crow-Omaha terminologies
Chapter 8. Substitutability of kin and the Crow-Omaha problem
Chapter 9. The evolution of kinship terminologies: non-prescriptive forms of asymmetric alliance in Indonesia
Conclusion
Glossary
Appendix: Publications on kinship by Robert Parkin
Index
