Dividends of Kinship: Meanings and Uses of Social Relatedness/ Edited by Peter P.Schweitzer

Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 Dividends of Kinship This collection reaffirms the importance of kinship, and of studying kinship, within the framework of social anthropology. The contributors examine both the benefits and the burdens of kinship across cultures and explore how ‘relatedness’ is inextricably linked with other concepts which define people’s identities, such as gender, power and history. With examples from a wide range of areas including Austria, Greenland, Portugal, Turkey and the Amazon, the book covers themes such as: • how people choose and activate kin • leadership, spiritual power and kinship • inheritance, marriage and social inequality • familial sentiment and economic interest • the role of kinship in Utopian communes Dividends of Kinship provides a timely and critical reappraisal of the place of familial relations in the contemporary world. It will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in anthropology, and across the social sciences. Peter P.Schweitzer is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Lecturer at the University of Vienna. Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 European Association of Social Anthropologists Series facilitator: Jon P.Mitchell University of Sussex The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was inaugurated in January 1989, in response to a widely felt need for a professional association that would represent social anthropologists in Europe and foster co-operation and interchange in teaching and research. As Europe transforms itself in the 1990s, the EASA is dedicated to the renewal of the distinctive European tradition in social anthropology. Other titles in the series: Conceptualizing Society Adam Kuper Other Histories Kirsten Hastrup Alcohol, Gender and Culture Dimitra Gefou-Madianou Understanding Rituals Daniel de Coppet Gendered Anthropology Teresa del Valle Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge Kirsten Hastrup and Peter Hervik Fieldwork and Footnotes Han F.Vermeulen and Arturo Alvarez Roldan Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw Grasping the Changing World Václav Hubinger Civil Society Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn Nature and Society Philippe Descola and Gísli Pálsson The Ethnography of Moralities Signe Howell Inside and Outside the Law Olivia Harris Anthropological Perspectives on Local Development Simone Abram and Jacqueline Waldren Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 Recasting Ritual Felicia Hughes-Freeland and Mary M Crain Locality and Belonging Edited by Nadia Lovell Dividends of Kinship Meanings and uses of social relatedness Edited by Peter P.Schweitzer Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2000 selection and editorial matter, EASA; individual chapters © the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dividends of kinship: meanings and uses of social relatedness/ edited by Peter P.Schweitzer. p.cm.—(European Association of Social Anthropologists) Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Kinship-Cross cultural studies. 2. Family-Cross cultural studies. I. Schweitzer, Peter P. II. European Association of Social Anthropologists (Series) GN480.2 .D58 2000 306.85–dc21 99–047551 ISBN 0-203-44975-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-45705-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-18283-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-18284-0 (pbk) Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 Contents Notes on contributors vi Preface viii 1 Introduction 1 PETER P.SCHWEITZER 2 Choosing kin: sharing and subsistence in a 33 Greenlandic hunting community MARK NUTTALL 3 Power and kinship in Shuar and Achuar society 61 ELKE MADER AND RICHARD GIPPELHAUSER 4 On the importance of being the last one: 93 inheritance and marriage in an Austrian peasant community GERTRAUD SEISER 5 Kinship, reciprocity and the world market 125 JENNY B.WHITE 6 Is blood thicker than economic interest in 153 familial enterprises? ANTÓNIA PEDROSO DE LIMA 7 ‘Philoprogenitiveness’ through the cracks: on 179 the resilience and benefits of kinship in Utopian communes CHRISTOPH BRUMANN 8 Concluding remarks 209 PETER P.SCHWEITZER Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 Index 221 Contributors Christoph Brumann is Lecturer at the Institute of Ethnology, University of Cologne. Other than on Utopian communes in Japan and elsewhere, he has written on gift exchange in Tokyo, globalisation and the concept of culture. Currently, he is analysing fieldwork data on tradition, democracy and the urban landscape in Kyoto, Japan. He has published Die Kunst des Teilens: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung zu den Überlebensbedingungen kommunitärer Gruppen (Lit, 1998). Richard Gippelhauser is Lecturer at the Institute of Ethnology, Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna. He has conducted extensive research on social and political organisation in the Peruvian Amazon region. Currently, he is engaged in archaeological research in Austria and Peru. Elke Mader is Associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology, Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, where she defended her ‘venia docendi thesis’ in 1997. Her current research focuses on myth, shamanism and social change in the Ecuadorian Oriente. Her most recent book is Metamorfosis del poder. Persona, mito y visión en la sociedad de Shuar y Achuar (Abya Yala, 1999). Mark Nuttall is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out research in Greenland, Scotland and Alaska, and his publications include Arctic Homeland: Kinship, Community and Development in Northwest Greenland (University of Toronto Press, 1992), White Settlers: The Impact of Rural Repopulation in Scotland (Harwood Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 Academic Publishers, 1996, with Charles Jedrej) and Protecting the Arctic: Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998). Antónia Pedroso de Lima is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology in ISCTE (University of Lisbon), specialising in kinship theory and vii contemporary family relations. She has published on Portuguese urban families, focusing both on the working-class neighbourhoods of Lisbon and on the Portuguese economic élite. She is currently working on a project about dynastic families and their major enterprises. Peter P.Schweitzer received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Lecturer at the Institute of Ethnology, Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in north-eastern Siberia and western Alaska. As well as kinship, his areas of interest include politics, history, and hunter-gatherer studies. He has published widely on northern issues and is co-editor of Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World: Conflict, Resistance, and Self-determination (Berghahn Books, 2000). Gertraud Seiser is currently—after ten years of public service— a member of the scientific staff at the Institute of Ethnology, Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna. She is conducting research on European peasant societies and on the impact of the European Community on economic concepts of marginalised rural areas. Jenny B.White is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of Money Makes Us Relatives: Women’s Labor in Urban Turkey (University of Texas Press, 1994). She has written extensively on the informal sector, civil society, as well as on Turkish identity in Germany after reunification and family life in Turkey. At present she is writing a book on Islamist politics in Turkey. Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:55 07 October 2013 Preface This is the first volume on kinship to appear in the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) series. It is based on papers delivered at ‘The Dividends of Kinship’ workshop at the fourth EASA conference, in Barcelona (July 1996), which was held with the overall theme of ‘Culture and Economy: Conflicting Interests, Divided Loyalties’. While kinship-related workshops were notably absent at the first two EASA meetings, in Coimbra (1990) and Prague (1992), the third conference, in Oslo (1994), featured three workshops under the umbrella topic of ‘A New Agenda for Kinship Studies’. However, none of the workshops resulted in an edited volume in the EASA Routledge series. In 1993, in a first

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