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Kin Groups and Social Structure
This text examines the evolution of kinship and social structure. Keesing considers the importance of patrilineal descent and the permutations of descent systems, matrilineal and double descent, alliance systems, cognate descent and bilateral kinship as organizing principles. Relevant analogies and examples are used throughout.
- GenresNonfictionAnthropology
177 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1901
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About the author
Roger M. Keesing
16 books3 followersProfessor Roger Martin Keesing was a linguist and anthropologist, noted for his fieldwork on the Kwaio people of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, and his writings on a wide range of topics including kinship, religion, politics, history, cognitive anthropology and language. Keesing was a major contributor to anthropology.
He was the son of Felix M. Keesing, another distinguished anthropologist with an interest in the South Pacific. Keesing studied at Stanford and Harvard and began work in 1965 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1974 he became a professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, heading the Department of Anthropology from 1976. In 1990 he moved to McGill University in Montreal.
In 1974 he wrote a famous article, one of around a hundred published over the course of his career, defining and specifying a view of culture inspired by linguistics and Marxian thinking. He also wrote several books, and is perhaps best known among students of anthropology as the author of Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, regarded as one of the most authoritative general introductory works on the subject.[citation needed] This was based on a book originally authored by his father, and was extensively revised by Keesing over the course of many years, beginning with an updated edition of the original in 1971, and continuing with a full rewrite in 1976, revised further in 1981. Since Keesing's death this task was taken up by Dr Andrew Strathern, and the book remains popular.
In 1989, Keesing worked closely with the author to translate Jonathan Fifi'i's autobiography "From pig-theft to parliament : my life between two worlds" which chronicled his life from his poor Kwaio origins through to the Maasina Ruru movement and onto his career as a politician.
Keesing died suddenly of a heart attack at the Canadian Anthropology Society dance and reception in 1993, and his ashes were transferred to the Solomon Islands, where the families of his Kwaio associates accord him the status of an andalo or ancestral spirit.
He was the son of Felix M. Keesing, another distinguished anthropologist with an interest in the South Pacific. Keesing studied at Stanford and Harvard and began work in 1965 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1974 he became a professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, heading the Department of Anthropology from 1976. In 1990 he moved to McGill University in Montreal.
In 1974 he wrote a famous article, one of around a hundred published over the course of his career, defining and specifying a view of culture inspired by linguistics and Marxian thinking. He also wrote several books, and is perhaps best known among students of anthropology as the author of Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, regarded as one of the most authoritative general introductory works on the subject.[citation needed] This was based on a book originally authored by his father, and was extensively revised by Keesing over the course of many years, beginning with an updated edition of the original in 1971, and continuing with a full rewrite in 1976, revised further in 1981. Since Keesing's death this task was taken up by Dr Andrew Strathern, and the book remains popular.
In 1989, Keesing worked closely with the author to translate Jonathan Fifi'i's autobiography "From pig-theft to parliament : my life between two worlds" which chronicled his life from his poor Kwaio origins through to the Maasina Ruru movement and onto his career as a politician.
Keesing died suddenly of a heart attack at the Canadian Anthropology Society dance and reception in 1993, and his ashes were transferred to the Solomon Islands, where the families of his Kwaio associates accord him the status of an andalo or ancestral spirit.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 23, 2019
The best part of this book is probably also its fatal flaw. Embedded in this encomium of kinship theory rest 22 mini-ethnographies, each a page or two in length, and each a terse summary of an ethnography from the canon of social anthropology. This seemed like a good idea, as each mini-ethnography fleshes out the surrounding theory with an example or two. This approach of Keesing’s reminds the reader that all this kinship/descent theory stuff is about people, human beings like you and me, folks who are strategically guided by their aspirations through a web of (a particular) social organization. But ultimately this mini-ethnography tactic was not adequate to make quite a baroque array of kin terms stick with me. Many times, and in the final chapter especially, Keesing refers to ethnographic examples presented earlier. I came to realize that I had most of these very interesting vignettes confused and conflated with one another.
And yet the book works for me as an historical document and as a summary and summation of what kinship theories were like at their zenith, just prior to kinship being rapidly replaced in the anthropology curriculum by the Belles Lettres and Beaux Arts of postmodernism. When I first read this work in 1985 in a seminar on social organization, the prof and none of us students apparently had yet heard that kinship was dead. But in retrospect, in re-reading Kin Groups and Social Structure, the writing clearly was on the wall. Keesing succinctly presents dissenting arguments of feminists (who he seems to respect while disagreeing with), and he presents (more favorably) the arguments of social theorists like Schneider and Asad. The arguments of these social theorists are subtle, but I feel they may be reduced to the maxim that ‘all grammars-of-culture leak’. In other words, there is too much play and give in any system for strict and consistent rules to hold sway categorically, and people actually seem to require this flexibility from their system in order to face old or future problems with a wider assortment of options. In this context, Keesing marks out social theory’s (then current) move from analyzing corporate groups to interpreting situations of conflict. In part this move is indicative of real-world social changes, for primitive networks of alliance or redistribution or residence become less and less relevant as primitive people (and primitiveness) continue to disappear. But the emphasis on conflict also reflects a mass migration in anthropology as a discipline away from the study of tiny societies and towards work on modern, urban realities, where the collateral family unit and nuclear domestic group generally reign supreme, and where relations of the workplace, of fictive kinship, and of friendship become more significant.
Even so, the bread and butter of this book would have to be Keesing’s deep understanding of the logical distinctions between terms used to describe kinship and descent structures. He often provides ecological or psychological bases for the different systems which emerge and thrive in small scale societies. That’s where this book’s mini-ethnographies come in very handy. Also useful are the plentiful diagrams—anyone who has ever read a syntax article with no trees knows what I mean. Seeing is believing, even though Keesing makes it clear that the diagrammatic representation of kinship structures can have a reifying effect. This reification makes kin/descent structures look more polished and perfect than they ever are in real life situations.
In conclusion, I feel that this 1975 book provides a fascinating glimpse into the cogs and wheels of a well-developed social-theoretical machine. The fact that this machine seems to have been broken into a million postmodern pieces fails to make this book irrelevant. Certainly, anthropologists have moved on to more productive sub-fields to nurture and grow their ideas about being human. And yet the old, fallow sub-fields, where lie buried the study of kinship and descent, might one day (and once again) provide fertile fields and green pastures for anthropology’s renewed growth and nurturing of that thing called social theory.
And yet the book works for me as an historical document and as a summary and summation of what kinship theories were like at their zenith, just prior to kinship being rapidly replaced in the anthropology curriculum by the Belles Lettres and Beaux Arts of postmodernism. When I first read this work in 1985 in a seminar on social organization, the prof and none of us students apparently had yet heard that kinship was dead. But in retrospect, in re-reading Kin Groups and Social Structure, the writing clearly was on the wall. Keesing succinctly presents dissenting arguments of feminists (who he seems to respect while disagreeing with), and he presents (more favorably) the arguments of social theorists like Schneider and Asad. The arguments of these social theorists are subtle, but I feel they may be reduced to the maxim that ‘all grammars-of-culture leak’. In other words, there is too much play and give in any system for strict and consistent rules to hold sway categorically, and people actually seem to require this flexibility from their system in order to face old or future problems with a wider assortment of options. In this context, Keesing marks out social theory’s (then current) move from analyzing corporate groups to interpreting situations of conflict. In part this move is indicative of real-world social changes, for primitive networks of alliance or redistribution or residence become less and less relevant as primitive people (and primitiveness) continue to disappear. But the emphasis on conflict also reflects a mass migration in anthropology as a discipline away from the study of tiny societies and towards work on modern, urban realities, where the collateral family unit and nuclear domestic group generally reign supreme, and where relations of the workplace, of fictive kinship, and of friendship become more significant.
Even so, the bread and butter of this book would have to be Keesing’s deep understanding of the logical distinctions between terms used to describe kinship and descent structures. He often provides ecological or psychological bases for the different systems which emerge and thrive in small scale societies. That’s where this book’s mini-ethnographies come in very handy. Also useful are the plentiful diagrams—anyone who has ever read a syntax article with no trees knows what I mean. Seeing is believing, even though Keesing makes it clear that the diagrammatic representation of kinship structures can have a reifying effect. This reification makes kin/descent structures look more polished and perfect than they ever are in real life situations.
In conclusion, I feel that this 1975 book provides a fascinating glimpse into the cogs and wheels of a well-developed social-theoretical machine. The fact that this machine seems to have been broken into a million postmodern pieces fails to make this book irrelevant. Certainly, anthropologists have moved on to more productive sub-fields to nurture and grow their ideas about being human. And yet the old, fallow sub-fields, where lie buried the study of kinship and descent, might one day (and once again) provide fertile fields and green pastures for anthropology’s renewed growth and nurturing of that thing called social theory.
January 5, 2019
I read this when I was an ungrad in Anthropology in the mid-90s. I remember my professor presenting it as, the theories of Kinship and Social Structures are going out of style in Anthrpology, but I'm supposed to teach it to you, so I am...
I thought it was kinda cool, I have no idea if Kinship Systems are the done thing...
I thought it was kinda cool, I have no idea if Kinship Systems are the done thing...
April 1, 2020
First textbook of the school semester done. And thank god. Not that the book was bad. It was actually fairly informative. A little dated but there was some interesting ideas in the book. However it was a little too dry for me. I keep finding myself thinking of other things while reading and then I'd have to go back and reread what I didn't pay attention to. I find kinship interesting but the topic can be very complicated. This book assumes you already have a large foundation in kinship. Luckily I do, but I still found myself having to stop and remind myself what Keesing is saying every once in a while. It's not light reading by any means, but I would say an important book for the field of cultural anthropology.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews