After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century

by Marilyn Strathern

Overview

Central as kinship has been to the development of British social anthropology, this is the first attempt by an anthropologist to situate ideas about English kinship in a cultural context. Marilyn Strathern challenges the traditional separation of Western kinship studies from the study of the wider society. If contemporary society appears diverse, changing and fragmented, these same features also apply to people's ideas about kinship. She views ideas of relatedness, nature and the biological constitution of persons in their cultural context, and offers new insights into the late twentieth-century values of individualism and consumerism. After Nature is a timely reflection at a moment when advances in reproductive technology raise questions about the natural basis of kinship relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521426800
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/12/1992
Series:	Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures , #1989
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.59(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Preface: making explicit; 1. Individuality and diversity; 2. Analogies for a plural culture; 3. The progress of polite society; 4. Greenhouse effect; Recapitulation: nostalgia from a postplural world; Footnotes; References.

Editorial Reviews

"...a circuitous and often insightful examination of Englih middle-class culture, as wel as an extended commentary on anthropology and its approach to the study of kinship." Choice

"It is impossible to do justice to all the themes, reflections and methodological suggestions discussed by Strathern....her social critique, her commitment to environmental issues, and, above all, her readiness to tackle all-encompassing and provocative themes, makes her book very stimulating reading." Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher