American Kinship: A Cultural Account

by David Murray Schneider

American Kinship is the first attempt to deal systematically with kinship as a system of symbols and meanings, and not simply as a network of functionally interrelated familial roles. Schneider argues that the study of a highly differentiated society such as our own may be more revealing of the nature of kinship than the study of anthropologically more familiar, but less differentiated societies. He goes to the heart of the ideology of relations among relatives in America by locating the underlying features of the definition of kinship-nature vs. law, substance vs. code. One of the most significant features of American Kinship , then, is the explicit development of a theory of culture on which the analysis is based, a theory that has since proved valuable in the analysis of other cultures. For this Phoenix edition, Schneider has written a substantial new chapter, responding to his critics and recounting the charges in his thought since the book was first published in 1968.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography

148 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

David Murray Schneider (November 11, 1918, Brooklyn, New York – October 30, 1995, Santa Cruz, California) was an American cultural anthropologist, best known for his studies of kinship and as a major proponent of the symbolic anthropology approach to cultural anthropology.

He received his B.S. in 1940 and his M.S. from Cornell University in 1941. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard in 1949, based on fieldwork on the Micronesian island of Yap.

After completing his graduate work, he first taught at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1960, he accepted a position at the University of Chicago, where he spent most of his career, teaching in Anthropology and the Committee on Human Development. He was Chairman of Anthropology from 1963 to 1966.

While at Chicago, Schneider was director of the Kinship Project, a study supported by the National Science Foundation that looked at how middle-class families in the United States and Great Britain respond to their kinship relations. His findings challenged the common-sense assumption that kinship in Anglo-American cultures is primarily about recognizing biological relatedness. While a rhetoric of "blood" ties is an important conceptual structuring device in US and British kinship systems, cultural and social considerations are more important. The discoveries he demonstrated through a series of books, most famously American Kinship: a cultural account, revolutionized and revitalized the study of kinship within anthropology, on the one hand, and contributed to the theoretical basis of feminist anthropology, gender studies, and lesbian and gay studies, on the other.

Schneider critiqued the so-called Western theories of kinship by accusing its supporters of being ethnocentric.

As a teacher, Schneider was also known for taking on and encouraging students studying nontraditional topics, and as a mentor to women and lesbian or gay graduate students, who often otherwise had difficulty finding mentors.

After retiring from Chicago in 1986, he joined the anthropology department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he remained until his death in 1995.

Reviews

[Adrianna Grezak · Rating 2 out of 5]

My issue was how repetitive this was, let alone the generalized statements. I read the second edition which included a follow-up chapter called "Twelve Years Later," in which Schneider admits that his argument is based on informant interviews with white, upper-middle class Americans. Basically, he didn't truly understand the symbolic nature of American Kinship.

[James Yoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my Feminist Anthropology class. Schneider's work is very intriguing, and I enjoy learning about kinship theory, but I did think the structure was a bit all over the place. Nevertheless, I think his work has a lot of theoretical and historical importance within cultural anthropology and is worth reading.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, short book exploring structural anthropology in the US. Very dated in some respects, and it mostly focuses on white, middle class Americans, but Schneider acknowledges these shortcomings in his afterword.

[Shridula · Rating 1 out of 5]

men should not be allowed to write. this book is my thirteenth reason.

[Tara]

A skim for revision

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

American Kinship was an important turning point in the anthropological discussion about kinship, but I felt that Schneider did not place enough importance in actually doing his job in this work. His informants were white middle class urbanites in 1967, in no way an actual cross section of American families. I expected so much more out of this.