All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community [Paperback]

Carol B. Stack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1997

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; unknown edition edition (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061319821
• ISBN-13: 978-0061319822
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic in anthropology April 29, 2010

By R.J.

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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 Carol B. Stack, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community February 2, 2013

By Di

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

From the first I read this small powerful book on how Black women survive and necessary it was for them to cope in this way in the very uncertain, borderline world they lived. It is a classic.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great look at class warfare and family dynamics December 9, 2012

By yael

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Carol Stack did a great job of exploring what happens to poor people in a poor community in a capitalist world. Even if that's not where you come from, or ever want to go, there's a lot to relate to in the connections of the families and friends.