Buy new:
$18.00
FREE delivery Friday, May 17 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
$18.00
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Friday, May 17 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 12 hrs 21 mins
In Stock
$$18.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$18.00
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
30-day easy returns
30-day easy returns
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
30-day easy returns
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$11.99
The cover has visible markings and wear. The cover has curled corners. The pages show normal wear and tear. Codes or product keys that accompany this product may not be valid. Fast Shipping in a Standard Poly Mailer! The cover has visible markings and wear. The cover has curled corners. The pages show normal wear and tear. Codes or product keys that accompany this product may not be valid. Fast Shipping in a Standard Poly Mailer! See less
$3.99 delivery May 20 - 21. Details
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$18.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$18.00
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Ships from and sold by Goodwill Retail Services, Inc..
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Marshall David Sahlins
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

What Kinship Is-And Is Not Paperback – August 19, 2014

by Marshall Sahlins (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$18.00","priceAmount":18.00,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"00","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"0jHD86pkgEtSI%2FhxuCVBvuMq0fsEwUNWag2zNRVbPfAXNNplM%2FnyJZPqqrTEG6GG2ECpCy6OmWZaepjTUo8xghtltXep2EsIHyD4cs5IVx5wMDso%2BE5JAnHuDV%2B0NQBn6JyWfSlifCGR%2BFLtbYRHmQ%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$11.99","priceAmount":11.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"11","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"0jHD86pkgEtSI%2FhxuCVBvuMq0fsEwUNW1WDW3d0%2BBS1R9R%2BuxoxfOPFN4M%2FkdC%2FIG%2BuYKI911jfr9c44hQMU1cmjp6l1xUGvUut9XJTX8c1vEIKbGa9oaaXmD5xz2mkqr5UFxs%2Fmu0YzMrbwcxRDis8glG5BEuEv5iWbtYRB6qZiLQ9Sq%2BbCTeHNgLae9QHh","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

In this pithy two-part essay, Marshall Sahlins reinvigorates the debates on what constitutes kinship, building on some of the best scholarship in the field to produce an original outlook on the deepest bond humans can have. Covering thinkers from Aristotle and Lévy- Bruhl to Émile Durkheim and David Schneider, and communities from the Maori and the English to the Korowai of New Guinea, he draws on a breadth of theory and a range of ethnographic examples to form an acute definition of kinship, what he calls the “mutuality of being.” Kinfolk are persons who are parts of one another to the extent that what happens to one is felt by the other. Meaningfully and emotionally, relatives live each other’s lives and die each other’s deaths.

 

In the second part of his essay, Sahlins shows that mutuality of being is a symbolic notion of belonging, not a biological connection by “blood.” Quite apart from relations of birth, people may become kin in ways ranging from sharing the same name or the same food to helping each other survive the perils of the high seas. In a groundbreaking argument, he demonstrates that even where kinship is reckoned from births, it is because the wider kindred or the clan ancestors are already involved in procreation, so that the notion of birth is meaningfully dependent on kinship rather than kinship on birth. By formulating this reversal, Sahlins identifies what kinship truly is: not nature, but culture.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Print length
    120 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Chicago Press
  4. Publication date
    August 19, 2014
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    022621429X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0226214290
  8. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now

Frequently bought together

What Kinship Is-And Is Not
$18.00
Get it as soon as Friday, May 17
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Stone Age Economics (Routledge Classics)
$21.02
Get it as soon as Friday, May 17
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anar
$12.95
Get it as soon as Friday, May 17
Only 14 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Sahlins catalogs brilliantly the varied ways in which people construct family ties completely apart from their genetic relationships. . . . This is cultural anthropology at its best.” ― Culture & Cosmos, NPR

“Exhilarating. Sahlins’s essay has (re)captured a significant truth—freshly, memorably. He does so without pre-empting the diversity of conceptual interests that anthropologists find their category ‘kinship’ generates, or indeed the manifold truths to be spoken of people’s interrelations. Conversely, this bold articulation of co-presence, of people’s intersubjective participation in one another’s lives, does not need to be confined to discussions of kinship as usually understood. It is important, however, that Sahlins’s argument implies not just a communicative mutuality (reciprocity, anticipation of others’ intentions, etc.), but also mutuality of bodily and personal (in the sense of ‘transpersonal’) being. The book leaves a provocation with this reader: maybe we should think twice when this kind of mutuality flourishes in otherwise non-kinship contexts before taking it simply as an extension of kinship thinking from some pre-metaphorical base.”
-- Marilyn Strathern ― Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“What Kinship Is—And Is Not is a gem of a book; a joy to read and a reminder of why I was enchanted by anthropology when I first encountered it. Ethnographic example tumbles after ethnographic example; many familiar, others less so, all attesting to the richness of the ethnographic record on that contested, albeit perennial, topic of kinship.” -- Jeanette Edwards ― Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

“What Kinship Is—And Is Not is a complex book, subtle and important. Since its publication in 2013, it has continued to challenge the experts. . . . It can be read as a response—late but brilliant—to the radical questioning initiated by Schneider more than forty years ago and the progressive marginalization of the field that followed the corrosive analytical critique that was last made in 1984. . . . The main merit of the book is that Sahlins has produced a remarkable critical synthesis of new kinship studies, which have remained somewhat underground for the last twenty years, despite their importance and their vitality. It is thanks to the diversity and quality of this rich ethnographic corpus that Sahlins was able to carry out his undertaking. Thus, this undisputed master of anthropology. . . . has managed to put these studies at the center of contemporary anthropological debate.” ― European Journal of Social Sciences

“What Kinship Is is clearly destined to become something of a classic in kinship studies in anthropology. This is partly because of the huge breadth of Marshall Sahlins’s scholarship, which takes in everything from Aristotle to the most up to date references in the study of kinship, including a wonderful range of standard and lesser-known works along the way. But this of course is not just a work of synthesis; it is also an original, brilliant, and, above all, creative contribution to current debates in the discipline.”

-- Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh Published On: 2012-04-26

“Marshall Sahlins is one of the great names of modern anthropology, but thus far he has not counted as one of the key figures in the study of kinship. . . . but [The Use and Abuse of Biology] and the present text both show that Sahlins is knowledgeable about kinship and entirely capable of contributing something new to debates concerning it. . . . He has clearly ransacked the most recent literature in the search for relevant ethnography, though he also finds support for his argument in some of the older literature, going back to Tylor in 1865, and even to Plato. The basic theme, therefore, is not new, though his treatment of it is. Sahlins has given this phenomenon a name—“mutuality of being”—and that in itself will compel us to take notice of it.” -- Robert Parkin ― Anthropological Quarterly

“What Kinship Is—And Is Not exhibits its authors’ signature brilliance, erudition, and originality (not faulting wit), and it is impossible to address its many virtues. . . . Sahlins’s Janus-faced universalizing-particularizing orientation provides an encompassing context whose value for the exploration of both earlier and contemporary kinship concerns would be difficult to exaggerate.” -- Robert Brightman ― Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

“What Kinship Is—And Is Not is a tour de force, even by Sahlinsian standards. Kinship is one of the oldest topics in anthropology, but by the 1970s it began to lose its centrality, partly under the weight of critiques which denied the cross-cultural validity of ‘kinship’ as an analytical category. Sahlins develops an incisive counter-critique of that position while at the same time radically reframing kinship as ‘mutuality of being,’ which he takes to be a pan-human phenomenon. A superb piece of anthropological writing, this book does a wonderful job of ethnographically substantiating that concept, along the way making several other major contributions to anthropological theory.” -- Alan Rumsey, Australian National University

“The work of Marshall Sahlins has continuously inspired whole academic generations of anthropologists. As with many of his previous interventions, this bold and incisive essay will be hailed as a beacon of lucidity in the somewhat foggy conceptual landscape of current anthropology. The all too neglected structuralist insight of the radical identity between sociality and semiosis is rescued and developed by Sahlins in a wonderfully refreshing way, with the help and the benefit of an easy, capacious scholarship that embraces everything from philosophy to linguistics to contemporary ethnography (from the Nichomachean Ethics to Benveniste on pronouns, from Amazonian couvade to Maori gift-exchange). This book musters deep and convincing arguments in favor of a thoroughly relational human ontology, bodying forth a renewed notion of internal or intrinsic relationality, which runs counter to the current infatuation with substances and impenetrable essences. It shows that what is natural in human culture is what is cultural in human nature: kinship, precisely.” -- Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

“In What Kinship Is—And Is Not, Marshall Sahlins argues that kinship is culture, not biology, and he does so in the pure, uncompromising, vivid way of which he is the master. We now have the case for the cultural interpretation in the strongest imaginable form, which is at the same time a case for not splitting the difference in the quandary at the heart of kinship studies. It is a service of inestimable value, and all who study kinship will benefit.” -- Thomas Trautmann, University of Michigan

About the Author



Marshall Sahlins (1930-2021) was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and the author of many books.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; Reprint edition (August 19, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 120 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 022621429X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226214290
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 28 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Marshall David Sahlins

Marshall David Sahlins

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
28 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Thomas Ernst
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent little book by a distinguished anthropologist
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is a small book packed with insight yet written on Sahlins' clear and entertaining style. It deals generally with the subject area anthropology has made it's own since the late 19th century. This is a contribution by one of the 20th century's greatest anthropologists. He has written nothing over more than half a century that does not repay reading. What is kinship? Cultural. What isn't it. Biological or based in conceptions of it. Sound too simple or inappropriate? Read it, be enlightened and see for yourself.
This book will be of interest to all cultural and social anthropologists. It will also interest any reader who is interest in making sense of persons and relationships, or should I say cultural systems, relationships and persons?
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
E. N. Anderson
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but dubious
Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2013
Verified Purchase
Marshall Sahlins is a brilliant anthropologist, and always a good read. Here he insists that kinship is a cultural matter, not a biological one. Much more interesting is his claim that kinship is "'mutuality of being': kinfolk are members of one another, intrinsic to each other's identity and existence" (p. 62). Many cultures see kinship as an intangible or subtle substance, shared by kin--"blood" in some circles in my young days, for instance. The main proof that kinship is not (or not just) biology is that we all have kin who are not kin by "blood" but by various kinds of adoption. Certainly I feel exactly the same toward my adopted son and my stepkids as I do toward my biological kids, and feel varying degrees of kinship to various godchildren, friends, and students. I love the phrase "mutuality of being," which reminds me of Emanuel Levinas, but why does it have anything to do with kinship per se? It seems to me more like a description of love, friendship, common humanity, common personhood (which can include animals and even rocks and trees), common role in academia, almost anything. I certainly feel much more mutuality of being with my students than with assorted long-lost relatives.
Sahlins makes his point through selective citation of ethnography. He apologizes for writing like the old-time "among the..." anthropologists, and for cherry-picking. More serious than those is his exoticizing and "othering"; the ethnographic examples are made to sound as different from the modern west as possible. Long before Edward Said and Vine DeLoria, I had a sort of instinctive fear of this sort of argument. The ethnography can get awfully shaky, at best. In the one case I can check, China on p. 86, the intangible shared essence is "breath" to Sahlins. This clearly means qi, which in this case would really mean vital energy, vis animatrix. I wonder about the other examples.
The opposition of "culture" and "biology" is an idea whose time has gone. Sahlins is rather unclear on both. "Culture" is not a thing; it's an anthropologist's abstraction, a cover term for stuff we learn socially (as opposed to stuff we have genetically, or learn on our own without social grounding). "Biology" is not a thing either--it's a science. Sahlins appears to be using the word in two senses: (1) genetics, genetically inherited stuff; (2) using the biology of birth and inheritance to explain kinship. He argues against hanging all kinship on biological relatedness. All anthropologists recognize adoption, sworn brotherhood, and such, but Sahlins argues that calling some of these "fictive kinship" is already begging the question--assuming there is a "real" kinship that is by blood (or marriage). However, he does not really effectively argue against the claim that fictive kinship is extended from biology-related roots. Every culture recognizes something about birth and engendering, and, Sahlins' dubious examples to the contrary notwithstanding, the biological processes of birth do matter. They create relationships that get socially constructed into kinship.
One serious miss: Sahlins contrasts human sociability and acting-for-others with chimpanzee selfishness. Fair enough, but our sociability is a biological fact--a human universal, mediated by innate mechanisms including hormonal balance. Wolves, dolphins and crows have it too. It isn't cultural, however much culture may structure it.
The fact is that kinship, like eating, medical care, and sexual behavior, is a complex phenomenon involving cultural/social construction on a biological base. Without very specific evolved biological mechanisms, there would be no kinship. Without the cultural construction, also no kinship. The model of food is a good one: biology gives us nutrient needs and digestive capabilities; culture determines what we think is edible and proper and when to eat it; individual quirks give us particular tastes and recipes.
The old opposition of culture and biology deserves to die. There is no such thing as culture without biology. There is no such thing as a purely biological determinant of cultural behavior. To borrow somebody's recent line about this, accounts of human behavior based on separating them are like accounts of water created by looking at some hydrogen and some oxygen and combining the two descriptions.
All that said--this is still a very worthwhile read, like everything of Sahlins'. It will make every anthropologist think a LOT about what kinship really is and is not. There are themes of phenomenology, structure, perception, agent behavior, and cultural tradition in this book that need to be picked apart and analyzed at length. The book is extremely dense in ideas and suggestions. It remains a fascinating work, however much based on shaky foundations.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Alexander Rose
5.0 out of 5 stars Another brilliant essay from Sahlins.
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2013
Verified Purchase
While I'm not in anthropology, my doctoral work has been strongly related to cultural studies. Sahlins provides brilliant analysis, drawing on a vast array of resources without being contrived. The icing on the cake, of course, is that he manages to insert acerbic wit into a discussion of the substantial differences between natal and cultural conceptions of kinship. It isn't often that I have cause to laugh aloud while reading academic essays, but Sahlins never fails to deliver-- intellectually or humorously.
10 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
w. c. manson
3.0 out of 5 stars Sahlins' outmoded (though refitted) cultural determinism
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2021
Sahlins's cultural determinism sadly reflects the enduring (even increasing) chasm between cultural and bio-evolutionary anthropology. As to the latter, one may note the prolonged dependency of the human infant, and its consequent need for extended, reliable care--initiated by the intimate contact of breastfeeding. As noted by others, what is love but the affection of intimate attachment, cemented by the daily contacts, verbal and tactile, within the extended circle of kin (however classified)?
Psychoanalyst John Bowlby was able to demonstrate the utmost primacy of the mother-child attachment, the template from which all other stable intimacies may derive. His "attachment theory," which also dealt with the consequences of separation and loss, is linked to object-relations theory in psychoanalytic thought--a body of knowledge of which cultural anthropologists, with a few notable exceptions like Ashley Montagu, have been egregiously uninformed (and uninterested).
Helpful
 Report
cn
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2015
Verified Purchase
Perfect!
Helpful
 Report
warren shapiro
2.0 out of 5 stars MOSTLY NONSENSE
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2013
Verified Purchase
It's mostly a silly book written by a man who's a darling of the Academic Left but who in fact knows nothing about kinship semantics and has the usual Leftist hostility to biological approaches to human affairs. I'm reviewing it at present for a scholarly journal and will make these points there. In fairness, I should add that it makes a couple of good points. But the only thing great about it is its snob appeal.
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
ernest schusky
5.0 out of 5 stars The Latest Word in the Kinship Debate
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2014
As the author of an introductory manual for the analysis of kinship, I avoided defining kinship. I assumed students would use a 'biological' model for understanding it, as does almost everyone. However, Sahlins and a few others have long advocated that kinship is a social-cultural construct that must be understood as a mutuality of relationship, essentially between two people, e.g. father-son, sister-sister, mother's brother-sister's son.
Sahlins draws on a number of cultures to make his point. Tiwi women (Australian aborigines) for example, recognize that intercourse is necessary for birth, but their child actually is formed from their husband's dreaming. I.e. mother-son or father-son is a cultural construct, not a biological one.
I believe the point could be made as easily in the case of adopted children among ourselves. The adoptee, a non-biological relative, can be as close to his or her siblings as the 'blood' siblings are to each other.
Readers without a background in anthropology may find the issue as important as deciding how many angels can dance on the head or a pin, but for social anthropologists the book is a convincing argument for kinship being a cultural construct not a biological one.
ernestschusky.com
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Diego Morais Viana
5.0 out of 5 stars Como o esperado
Reviewed in Brazil on October 23, 2023
Verified Purchase
Como o esperado
Report
Ana M
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2017
Verified Purchase
Great book to introduce you to kinship studies.
Report