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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Social and Political Science : Postgrad (School of Social and Political Studies)

Postgraduate Course: Kinship: Structure and Process (PGSP11184)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Social and Political Science CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThe course considers the history of kinship studies, looking at some central debates in the subject and assessing their implications for anthropological theory more generally; it also examines the relevance of kinship studies for understanding ourselves, our families, and our contemporary world.
Course description a. Academic Description
This course examines some of the ways in which people in different societies conceptualise and live out kinship and relatedness. It shows how notions of relatedness are linked to ideas about gender, theories of procreation (which are themselves changing under the impact of assisted reproductive technologies), and understandings of bodily substance, as well as having profound emotional, economic, political and religious salience. Kinship has long been regarded as the core of the anthropological discipline, and although the extent to which this was still the case had been under question, recent years have seen a marked revival.

b. Outline Content
Introduction : what is kinship
Making kinship: houses, domesticity, food and blood
Kinship and Gender
Kin-making And Childhood
Kinship and Memory
Unpacking procreation
Kinship and Religion
Sex, Romance and Money
Kinship and the State
Kinship, law, and social movements

c. Student Learning Experience
The course involves one two-hour session a week for the whole class, as well as small group tutorial teaching in separate one-hour sessions held weekly. In the main session, most weeks involve a mixture of a lecture and a discussion. In the latter, students discuss particular issues or recommended readings and then report back their conclusions to the class as a whole. The small group tutorial teaching is normally concerned with one or more key readings that illustrate or extend issues raised in the main sessions.
By the end of the course, students should have a grasp of the ways in which anthropologists have approached kinship in both classic non-Western cases and, more recently, in Western cultures too. They will have an understanding of the economic, legal and political salience of kinship, the history of kinship within anthropology, and of the significance of key debates about what kinship is, and how it might be studied. They will also be able to assess, from an anthropologically-informed perspective, the implications of the revolutions in reproductive technology and in attitudes towards marriage, sexuality, and sexual identity that are currently under way around the world.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2023/24, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  30
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Assessment is done through the writing of a 4,000 word essay on a set topic, or a topic proposed by the student and agreed with the course organiser.

Essays need to engage in a sustained manner with a range of readings from the course as well as other relevant literature. They need to show an understanding of the key themes, analyses and methods involved the anthropological study of kinship, and to present a clear and creative analysis in a scholarly and anthropological manner.
Feedback A formative piece of assessment (which does not count towards the final grade for the course) is submitted midway through the semester. This takes the form of a short essay plan on a set topic, and a sample bibliography.

Comments on this, assessing the approach taken towards the topic and the format used for citing sources, will be returned speedily and discussed either individually or collectively in tutorials. The aim is to ensure that students (especially those with little prior experience of anthropology) fully understand, prior to writing their assessed work, what is expected of a good anthropological essay.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students should have an advanced knowledge of the ways in which anthropologists have approached kinship in both some classic non-Western cases, and more recently, in Western cultures. They will have examined in depth the economic and political salience of kinship, the history of kinship within anthropology, and the theoretical significance of key debates about what kinship is, how it might be studied, and the sources of its emotional power.
Reading List
General texts on kinship
These will help in defining terms and summarising theoretical issues in the study of kinship:

Dumont, Louis 2006[1971]. An Introduction to Two Theories of Social Anthropology
Schneider, David M. 1984. A Critique of the Study of Kinship
Barnard, Alan & Anthony Good, 1984. Research Practices in the Study of Kinship
Holy, Ladislav 1996. Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship
Parkin, Robert J. 1997. Kinship: an Introduction to the Basic Concepts
Carsten, Janet 2004. After Kinship

Readers on kinship
The following recent collections provide overviews of anthropological approaches to kinship. Several of the weekly group readings are taken from these collection, and if you plan to buy any books for this course these are likely to be the most useful.

Carsten, Janet (ed), 2000. Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: University Press.
Parkin, Robert & Linda Stone (eds), 2004. Kinship and Family: an Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Ethnographies
In addition to the weekly readings, students are strongly advised to read from the following ethnographies (listed in alphabetical order, not order of priority!) which focus on kinship:

Astuti, Rita 1995. People of the Sea: Identity and Descent Among the Vezo of Madagascar
Busby, Cecilia 2000. The Performance of Gender: an Anthropology of Everyday Life in a South Indian Fishing Community
Campbell, J.K. 1964. Honour, Family and Patronage; a Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community
Carsten, Janet 1997. The Heat of the Hearth: the Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community
Daniel, E Valentine 1984. Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way
Edwards, Jeanette 2000. Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies in England
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1951. Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer
Good, Anthony 1991. The Female Bridegroom: a Comparative Study of Life-Crisis Rituals in South India and Sri Lanka
Gow, Peter 1991. Of Mixed Blood: Kinship and History in Peruvian Amazonia
Kapadia, Karin 1995. Siva & her Sisters: Gender, Caste, and Class in Rural South India
Mayblin, Maya 2010. Gender, Catholicism, and Morality in Brazil: Virtuous Husbands, Powerful Wives
Parry, Jonathan 1979. Caste and Kinship in Kangra
Schneider, David M. 1980 (2nd edition). American Kinship: a Cultural Account
Stasch, Rupert 2009. Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place
Strathern, Marilyn 1992. After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century
Yan, Yunxiang 2003. Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy and Family Change in a Chinese Village 1949-1999
Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko 2002. Producing Culture and Capital: Family Firms in Italy

Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Maya Mayblin
Tel:
Email: maya.mayblin@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Adam Petras
Tel:
Email: Adam.Petras@ed.ac.uk
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