All Our Kin is the chronicle of a young white woman's sojourn into The Flats, an African-American ghetto community, to study the support system family and friends form when coping with poverty. Eschewing the traditional method of entry into the community used by anthropologists -- through authority figures and community leaders -- she approached the families herself by way of an acquaintance from school, becoming one of the first sociologists to explore the black kinship network from the inside. The result was a landmark study that debunked the misconception that poor families were unstable and disorganized. On the contrary, her study showed that families in The Flats adapted to their poverty conditions by forming large, resilient, lifelong support networks based on friendship and family that were very powerful, highly structured and surprisingly complex. Universally considered the best analysis of family and kinship in a ghetto black community ever published, All Our Kin is also an indictment of a social system that reinforces welfare dependency and chronic unemployment. As today's political debate over welfare reform heats up, its message has become more important than ever.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic in anthropology,
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This review is from: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (Paperback)
A classic ethnography of the social networks and kin structures of low-income Black Americans in a the early 1970's. This book helped me a great deal when I conducted an ethnographic study in an urban, low-income US city in 2009. Some of the findings in the book might be anachronistic or place specific, but she gives the reader a great deal of insight into the logic of these structures. Rather than seeing household and kin ties as deviant, the way many Americans do, she shows that they make perfect sense given the history and political-economic conditions of the people in her study.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Applies to Today,
This review is from: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (Paperback)
I read this book 25-years ago for a Marriage and Family class. I have not re-read it since. The fact that I still remember the book and the essence of its content speaks to how pertinent it is to understanding the culture and how, based on more recent news, it has not really changed since the book was written. I have continually thought about this work on and off over the years and still have not come up with a plausible idea on how to improve the culture, especially since those it do not see the need.
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Carol B. Stack isn't as boring as I thought,
By Jeff T. (New York, NY, UNITIED STATES OF AMERICA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (Paperback)
By looking at the cover.. you'd think this was the most boring book available at the bookstore. I dreaded reading this when it was assigned to my Anthropology course.. however when I finally got around to reading it is insightful and interesting. It brought up facts that I've seen around me but failed to recognize as part of a culture. One question I do pose though, when the family which inherits a large sum of money decides to share it among the poor community. Wouldn't the community be better off if that one family decided to move out of poverty, enabling the poor community to become smaller and thus have more items being able to rotate within the community? Eventually the community can become richer because of this instead of dragging those around them down. Interesting book..
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The Flats is the poorest section of a black community in the Midwestern city of Jackson Harbor (these names are fictitious). Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
cooperating kinsmen, personal kinship network, essential kin, personal kindreds, domestic networks, black family life, residence changes, residence patterns Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Flats, Jackson Harbor, Ruby Banks, Aunt Augusta, United States, Willa Mae, Willie Mae, Household Domestic Arrangement New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The Flats is the poorest section of a black community in the Midwestern city of Jackson Harbor (these names are fictitious). Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
cooperating kinsmen, personal kinship network, essential kin, personal kindreds, domestic networks, black family life, residence changes, residence patterns Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Flats, Jackson Harbor, Ruby Banks, Aunt Augusta, United States, Willa Mae, Willie Mae, Household Domestic Arrangement New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 42
books:
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100
books
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- Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives (8th Edition) by Phillip Whitten in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- RL E: Anthropology and Ethnography: The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology (Routledge Library Editions: Anthropology and Ethnography) by Michael Banton in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Black Folk: Then and Now; An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race. by William Edward Burghardt, Du Bois on page 26, and Back Matter
- Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by Robin Fox in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- History of Civilization: Social Organization by W.J. Perry in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 42 books this book cites
- Survival of the African American Family: The Institutional Impact of U.S. Social Policy by Karen S. Jewell on 4 pages
- Survival of the Black Family: The Institutional Impact of American Social Policy by K. Sue Jewell on 4 pages
- From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: Cultural Images and the Shaping of US Social Policy by K. Sue Jewell in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Undoing Gender by Judith Butler on page 255, and Back Matter
- Behind The Eight Ball: Sex For Crack Cocaine Exchange And Poor Black Women (Haworth Psychosocial Issues of HIV/AIDS) by Tanya Telfair Sharpe on page 46, and Back Matter
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