Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies [Paperback]

Rosemary A. Joyce (Editor), Susan D. Gillespie (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0812217233 | ISBN-13: 978-0812217230

Beyond Kinship brings together ethnohistorians, archaeologists, and cultural anthropologists for the first time in a common discussion of the social model of house societies proposed by Claude Levi-Strauss. While kinship theory has been central to the study of social organization, an alternative approach has emerged—that of seeing the "house" both as a physical and symbolic structure and a principle of social organization.

The house stands as a model social formation that is distinguished by its attention to a number of material domains (land, the dwelling, ritual and nonritual objects). As the essays in this volume make clear, the focus on material culture and on place contributes to the ongoing convergence of anthropology and history and helps erase the artificial distinctions between prehistory and history.

Contributions to the volume offer significant new interpretations of primary data as well as reconsidering classic ethnographic material. Beyond Kinship crosses the boundaries within anthropology—not only between cultural anthropology and archaeology but between structural—symbolic and materialist approaches and between American and British schools of anthropology; it is intended to advance the fruitful dialogue now taking place within the field.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An impressive set of papers that must be read by everyone concerned with integrating material objects into their analyses of complex cognitive aspects of culture. This sublime collection reflects the cutting edge of a mature discipline."—Journal of American Folklore

"Lévi-Strauss's latter-day thinking on houses and house societies offers an antikinship kinship theory that puts a new slant on time, family, and hierarchy. Skillfully edited by Joyce and Gillespie, the volume Beyond Kinship illustrates the breadth of investigations into history, people, and place that Lévi Strauss's formulation makes possible."—Current Anthropology

About the Author

Rosemary A. Joyce is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the coeditor of Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, and of Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Susan D. Gillespie teaches anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (May 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812217233
• ISBN-13: 978-0812217230
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,692,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rosemary A. Joyce is an anthropological archaeologist who has conducted fieldwork in Honduras for more than thirty years. With a BA from Cornell University and a PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she has taught at Harvard University and Berkeley, and worked at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and Berkeley's Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. She writes about sex and gender in the past; social organization and social change in prehispanic Mexico and Central America; and theory in contemporary archaeology. While she would like to be known for her work on the earliest villages of Honduras, she is resigned to being best known for her work on the early history of chocolate.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars The Dynamics of Social Reproduction, June 20, 2011

By 

Roberto Dottarelli - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies (Paperback)

The key of interpretation proposed by Levi-Strauss makes it possible to consider the House as a durable institution that makes use of multiple strategies for the recruitment of its members. He wrote: "In New Zealand as in Madagascar, the house is built, looking forward, through marriage-opportunity of choice between race (with relatives) or earth (with neighbors) - and retrospectively through the funeral, namely the right to the grave, along with ancestral land genealogical chain, where, because of being gathered, the dead lose their individuality agnatha, in-laws or similar".

Joyce and Gillespie reject "House society" as a stage in the social evolution, but they reinforce the importance of these studies to investigate how the House can play a major role in the transition from a kinship-based social structure to a political, economic and religious aristocratic type.