When we think of kinship, we usually think of ties between people based upon blood

or marriage. But we also have other ways-nowadays called ‘performative’-of

establishing kinship, or hinting at kinship: many Christians have, in

addition to parents, godparents; members of a trade union may refer to each

other as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’. Similar performative ties are even more

common among the so-called ‘tribal’ peoples that anthropologists have studied

and, especially in recent years, they have received considerable attention

from scholars in this field. However, these scholars tend to argue that

performative kinship in the Tribal World is semantically on a par with

kinship established through procreation and marriage. Harold Scheffler,

long-time Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, has argued, by

contrast, that procreative ties are everywhere semantically central,

i.e. focal, that they provide bases from which other kinship ties are

extended. Most of the essays in this volume illustrate the validity of

Scheffler’s position, though two contest it, and one exemplifies the

soundness of a similarly universalistic stance in gender behaviour. This book

will be of interest to everyone concerned with current controversy in kinship

and gender studies, as well as those who would know what anthropologists have

to say about human nature.

The study of kinship once ruled the discipline of anthropology, and Hal

Scheffler was one of its magisterial figures. This volumes reminds us why.

Scheffler’s powerful analyses of kinship systems often conflicted with the

views of his more relativist contemporaries. He cut through the fog of theory

to emphasise the human essentials, namely the importance of the social bonds

rooted in motherhood and fatherhood. Anthropology in its decades-long retreat

from the serious study of kinship has lost a great deal. This volume points

the way to a restoration. - Peter Wood, National Association of Scholars