Twelve chapters, including the introduction and conclusion, explain the collapse of kinship studies in the 1980s, present a theory of social organization that embraces the new theory of kinship, explore the relationship between kinship systems and biology, explain and illustrate kinship maps, and treat domestic groups. For graduate anthropology collections.

Choice Reviews

In this book Leaf and Read continue to explore the paradigm shift in the anthropology of kinship. Leaf’s and Read’s argument unfolds against the background of the fundamentals of human cognition - binary operations, reciprocity, and recursion that are also the basis of kinship terminologies themselves. Starting from the work of such illustrious ancestors as L. H. Morgan, who was the first to notice that kinship terminologies are among the fundamental capacities of human intelligence, Leaf and Read illuminate the trail with an experimental procedure using algebraic models to show that the structures of kinship terminologies is generated from their own logical constraints rather than external exigencies. They discuss objectivity vs. subjectivity and Western vs. indigenous models, showing how various idea systems, such as family life, property and land management, converge in kinship maps as observable objects. Kinship terminologies are outcomes of the dynamics between the shared social reality and computational reasoning, “itself built into our social life” and witnessed in the anthropological fieldwork among indigenous "actors”. Firmly placing the study of kinship terminology within the experimental sciences, this book stands among the indispensable readings not only for anthropologists, but also of great interest to archaeologists, linguists and cognitive scientist.

Bojka Milicic, University of Utah