Old Discipline, New Trajectories: Theories, Methods and Practices in Anthropology (original) (raw)

Cvecek 2024 Why kinship still needs anthropologists

Why kinship still needs anthropologists in the 21st century, 2024

With the rise of ancient DNA studies in prehistoric archaeology, terms such as matriliny and patriliny are commonly used in scholarly literature. From a sociocultural anthropological perspective, however, the two terms are not as simple and unproblematic as is widely accepted among archaeogeneticists. Matriliny and patriliny are umbrella terms for societies with a wide range of political and kinship practices, with or without a state. Moreover, archaeogenetic literature has assumed specific associations with matrilineal and patrilineal descent that are not supported by sociocultural anthropology. To properly understand the diversity of human sociopolitical forms in both the deep and recent past, archaeology – in its broadest sense, including archaeogenetics – must avoid essentializing prehistoric communities without exploring the empirical nuances that are well documented ethnographically. Finally, the article calls for more engagement in debates on kinship and sociopolitical organization in prehistory from sociocultural anthropological perspectives.

Kinship in Anthropology

International Ecnyclopedia of Social and Behavioural Sciences. 2nd Edition. J.Wright (ed.)

This chapter outlines the development of kinship studies in anthropology from their beginning to our days. It reviews classic debates on descent and marriage, the role of gender studies in rethinking kinship categories and the more recent contributions approaching the subject from the perspective of the body, aesthetics and new reproductive technologies. In doing so the chapter provides a critical approach to assess the fundamental and ongoing contribution of the kinship studies to the discipline of anthropology.

Kinship Studies in Late Twentieth-Century Anthropology

Annual Review of Anthropology, 1995

This review examines the state of play of kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology, paying close attention to theoretical advances and shifts in methodology and intent that have occurred since the 1970s. It highlights developments in Marxist, feminist, and historical approaches, the repatriation of kinship studies, various aspects of lesbian/gay kinship, and issues bearing on the new reproductive technologies. Contemporary kinship studies tend to be historically grounded; tend to focus on everyday experiences, understandings, and representations of gender, power, and difference; and tend to devote considerable analytic attention to themes of contradiction, paradox, and ambivalence.

Souvatzi. 2017. Kinship and Social Archaeology.

2017

Kinship is a most significant organizing principle of human grouping, the basic matter of social categories in archaeological and ethnographic societies, and an important concept universally. However, its significance has rarely been adequately incorporated within archaeology's theoretical and interpretative practice. This article aims to not only show the potential of bringing kinship into social archaeology, but also argue that archaeology can make important contributions to wider social research. Grounded on prehistoric data, spanning from the 8th to the 4th millennium bc, and drawing on cross-cultural discussions, it explores how understandings and practices of kinship might have been constructed and enacted in the first farming communities through architecture, time, material products, burials, and rituals. In doing so, the article addresses key issues of common interest in archaeology and anthropology, inviting interdisciplinary dialogue.

12 396 History of Anthropological Theory

2017

This reading-intensive course focuses on the history and evolution of anthropology from the mid-nineteenth century up until the contemporary period. Students will be introduced to major anthropological theories and debates and their correspondence with parallel scientific and literary developments. Through critical analysis of leading anthropologists’ ethnographic explorations and theorizations of topics such as, for example, evolutionism, functionalism, structuralism, cognitive anthropology, interpretive and symbolic anthropology, and the anthropologies of gender, modernity, and globalization, students will gain an in-depth understanding of the similarities and differences among and between theoretical and conceptual approaches. In this way, students will gain an appreciation for the historical precedent upon which contemporary anthropological investigations are based.