How Kinship Systems Change

Robert Parkin was Departmental Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, from 2002 until his retirement in 2017. He has conducted field research in India, the UK, Brussels, northern Italy, and Poland.

“Accounts of kinship terminology evolution either have mostly focused on single, or a few, regions without placing the account into a larger context… Parkin provides a far more complete account based on extensive empirical evidence regarding the world-wide variations among kinship terminologies.” • Dwight Read, UCLA

• List of FiguresIntroductionPart I: Terminological changeChapter 1. Kinship as classification: towards a paradigm of changeChapter 2. Terminology and alliance in India: tribal systems and the north-south problemChapter 3. From tetradic society to dispersed allianceChapter 4. Why do societies abandon cross-cousin marriage?Chapter 5. Dravidian and Iroquois in South AsiaChapter 6. Indo-European kinship terminologies in Europe: trajectories of changePart II: Crow-OmahaChapter 7. On the origin of Crow-Omaha terminologiesChapter 8. Substitutability of kin and the Crow-Omaha problemChapter 9. The evolution of kinship terminologies: non-prescriptive forms of asymmetric alliance in IndonesiaConclusionGlossaryAppendix: Publications on kinship by Robert ParkinIndex