Kinship Theory: A Paradigm Shift
Dwight Read
Department of Anthropology & Department of Statistics
University of California - Los
Angeles
Abstract:
Despite the
centrality of kinship in anthropological theorizing about human social
systems, a satisfactory account for the conceptual basis of kin relations
expressed in the form of kinship terminologies has only recently been worked
out. The prior, long-standing assumption has been that the kin terms making
up a kinship terminology have primary meaning as semantic labels for a
classification of positions in an ego-centric, genealogical space and
secondary meaning arising through metaphorical extensions. This assumption,
however, runs counter to ethnographic observations regarding the way kin
relations are calculated and leaves unexplained precisely what needs to be
explained, namely the particular kin relations identified in a kinship
terminology and the reasons underlying differences in the way the domain of
kin relations is constituted when one compares one kinship terminology with
another terminology. The received view of kinship terminologies as being
derived from a genealogical domain has erred by not recognizing that a
kinship terminology is a culturally constructed system of concepts with an
underlying generative structure that determines the genealogical
distinctions associated with kin terms and not the reverse. Analysis of the
logic underlying the generative structure of kinship terminologies makes
evident commonality across terminologies regarding the way the domain of kin
relations is constituted and allows us to account for differences in
properties of kinship terminologies by referring to this logical basis for
the generation of a particular terminology. More broadly, the paradigm
shift introduced by the discovery that kinship terminologies have an
underlying generative structure leads to a far richer and more encompassing
understanding of what is entailed by considering kinship in human societies
to be based on a system of culturally constructed kin relations.