Harris - Kinship

Harris, C. C. (Christopher Charles)

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Kinship

A *

Concepts in Social Thought

Series Editor: Frank Parkin

Published Titles

DemocracyCitizenshipWelfareFreedomBureaucracyTrotskyismRevolution andCounter-RevolutionSocialismLiberalismThe StateKinshipIdeologyConservatismPropertyStatus

Anthony Arblaster/. AL BarbaletNorman BarryZygmunt BaumanDavid BeethamAlex Callinicos

Peter CalvertBernard CrickJohn Gray

John A. Hall and G. John Ikenberry

C. C. Harris

David McLellan

Robert Nisbet

Alan Ryan

Bryan S. Turner

When invited to contribute a volume on kinship to this series, myfirst reaction, as a family sociologist, was to suggest that this volumewould more suitably be undertaken by an anthropologist. Thisresponse is symptomatic of the historical relation between thedisciplines of sociology and anthropology. The study of kinship is ahigh-status activity central to anthropology as a discipline, where itoccupies a place corresponding to the study of stratification insociology. Sociologists do not study kinship, but the family.Whereas family studies have recently acquired a new salience due tothe rise of feminist thought and the interest shown by the new rightin family issues, they remain a relatively unprestigious activitywithin sociology and the effect of their current prominence has beento diminish concern with the family as a kin group and focusattention on gender relations, specifically marital relations, withinthe household.

The reasons for the historical division of labour between the twodisciplines lies in essentially evolutionist assumptions about thenature of our society. Simple7primitive7early societies wereseen to be types of social formation whose structures were based onsystems of kinship in contrast to complex, advanced or modern(i.e. industrial/capitalist) societies whose social life was based onthe structure of economic relations. The study of kinship wascentral to our understanding of the first and of economic life to thesecond.

One of the corollaries of this view is the association of particularinstitutions with evolutionary stages or historical periods and thesupposition that we are situated in the midst of an historical processwhich eliminates some social features and replaces them by others.

This corollary leads us to view kinship in modern societies as anarchaic survival which is doomed to extinction and has only anantiquarian interest. The family, on the other hand, may be seen(at least in its nuclear form) to be universal, and hence worthy ofstudy.

I do not for a moment suggest that anyone, sociologist or socialanthropologist, actually subscribes to these curious doctrines, ornot at least in the vague and imprecise form in which I have statedthem here. My expression of them is designed to indicate, nottheories or propositions which any individual or group actuallyholds, but rather a meaning structure which has formed thebackground to the division of labour between the sister disciplinesof sociology and social anthropology and influences their intellectual practice until the present, in a way which I believe is deleteriousboth to our understanding of kinship and of the nature ofcontemporary society. Because I believe this, I feel it appropriate totackle the subject of kinship in a manner which attempts to breakfree from the meaning frame which has in the past inhibited not onlythe development of our understanding of kinship, but of the natureof human society in general. Because this book is concernedspecifically with kinship - it is not a treatise on social theory - it isappropriate that I set forth, in short order, the alternative presuppositions upon which its writing is based.

A glance at the titles in the series to which this book belongsreveals that the concepts selected for discussion are of two quitedifferent kinds. On the one hand, there are concepts that refer toculturally and historically specific ways of thinking, of which thepolitical concepts are the best examples, i.e. socialism, liberalism,conservatism and democracy. Others refer to universal aspects ofhuman social life (e.g. property and status), although they alsoconnote conceptions of their referents which are culturally andhistorically specific.

In the case of the universal, it is relevant to ask of any givensociety, are there specific and distinct institutions concerned witheach? If there are, it is possible to enquire further as to theautonomy of each institution relative to each of the others and to allthe other institutions co-present with it. It is then possible todistinguish societies in terms of the degree of institutional specialization, and in terms of the type of institution which predominates. Ido not object in principle to this way of proceeding, but it can lead to