Kinship and Continuity is a vivid ethnographic account of the development of the Pakistani presence in Oxford, from after World War II to the present day. Alison Shaw addresses the dynamics of migration, patterns of residence and kinship, ideas about health and illness, and notions of political and religious authority, and discusses the transformations and continuities of the lives of British Pakistanis against the backdrop of rural Pakistan and local socio-economic changes. This is a fully updated, revised edition of the book first published in 1988.

Kinship and Continuity is a vivid ethnographic account of the development of the Pakistani presence in Oxford, from after World War II to the present day. Alison Shaw addresses the dynamics of migration, patterns of residence and kinship, ideas about health and illness, and notions of political and religious authority, and discusses the transformations and continuities of the lives of British Pakistanis against the backdrop of rural Pakistan and local socio-economic changes. This is a fully updated, revised edition of the book first published in 1988.

Faith Elliot's book has a coherence unusual in a textbook. As its title suggests, it directs our attention to change and continuity in the family. It reviews debates about the biological origins of the nuclear family and gender roles, accounts of the development of the conjugal family as the dominant family form in modern Western societies and of change in the roles of men and women within and without the family, the remodelling of the conjugal family consequent on the legitimation of divorce and the emergence of one-parent families and remarriage families, and the development of alternative lifestyles as exemplified in unmarried cohabitation, same-sex pairings and group living. The book considers Marxist and feminist approaches alongside the functional approaches which have been more traditional in the sociological study of the family.

Between the 18th and the end of the 19th century profound transformations affected the mechanisms of marital relations and the family all around Western Europe. The present volume focuses on fundamental aspects of marriage and family as they evolved during this time-frame, such as attitudes towards consanguinity, classification systems, the impact of migrations. It aims to demonstrate that the process that lead to the construction of the contemporary notion of family saw many changes and continuities, giving rise to unpredictable and unique outcomes, and partially shaping - although with different times and modalities - the modern world.

At one time Francis L.K. Hsu put forth a hypothesis on kinship that proposed a functional relationship between particular kinship systems and behavior patterns in particular cultural contexts. The controversy provoked among cultural anthropologists by this hypothesis is reflected in this book, which points the way toward more fruitful investigations of kinship in cultural and psychological anthropology. Hsu's hypothesis offers an alternative to the study of kinship as a mathematical game and to the treatment of fragmentary aspects of child-rearing practices as major causal factors in culture. Considering the kinship system as the psychological factory of culture, Hsu's aim is to discover the crucial forces in each system that shape the interpersonal orientation of the individual, which forms the individual's basis for adequate functioning as a member of his society and which, in turn, provides his culture with a basis for continuity and change. His central hypothesis is that the attributes of the dominant dyads in a given kinship system (such as father-son or mother-daughter) tend to determine the attitudes and action patterns that the individual in such a system develops toward other relationships in that system as well as toward his relationships outside of it. The topics are varied, ranging from the link between dyadic dominance and household maintenance, to role dilemmas and father-son dominance, to sex-role identity and dominant kinship relationships. The editor has contributed an introduction, an original essay on kinship and patterns of social cohesion, and a summary chapter to bring coherence to the diversity of opinion stated. This new presentation of Hsu's hypothesis, together with its discussion by eminent anthropologists and its recommendations for future research in the area, is an important addition to the literature on kinship. Francis L.K. Hsu (1909-1999) was professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of San Francisco and before that chairman of the department of anthropology, Northwestern University. Concentrating mainly in two related areas, psychological anthropology and the comparative study of large civilizations, Hsu did fieldwork in China, Japan, India, and the United States. He was also president of the American Anthropological Association.

This book deals with the property and inheritance system of the matrilineal Minangkabau of West Sumatra in the context of legal pluralism. The author proposes a new anthropological approach to law, property and inheritance. After the description of the Minangkabau socio-political organization and the development of legal and administrative pluralism, three chapters are devoted to property and inheritance proper. First the ideal legal systems are described. Then he illustrates how the Minangkabau actually handle their property and inheritance affairs, and how the various regulating mechanisms have changed through history. Finally the different agents creating and changing legal conceptions are treated in historical perspective. In his conclusions the author shows how the traditional system of common holding and distributing of property by matrilineal descent groups is slowly being undermined through an increasing monetarization and consequent individualization of property relationships which finds its expression in the form of new legislation. This development is reflected in the conceptual system where the formerly predominant diachronic dimension of property relationships is slowly abolished and where property rights are increasingly reified.

The family narratives in the book of Genesis are important in understanding the meaning of the book and are fundamental to the unfolding story of the birth of the Israelite nation. Devora Steinmetz sees kinship in ancient narratives as a symbolic structure representing the ability of the emerging culture to survive despite conflict that threatened society's existence. The family narratives in Genesis reflect a culture's capacity to survive as a united people. The Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation series explores current trends within the discipline of biblical interpretation by dealing with the literary qualities of the Bible: the play of its language, the coherence of its final form, and the relationships between text and readers. Biblical interpreters are being challenged to take responsibility for the theological, social, and ethical implications of their readings. This series encourages original readings that breach the confines of traditional biblical criticism.