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Family Beyond Family
The Varieties of Kinship Experience
Edited by Parker Shipton and James P. Ito-Adler
302 pages, 4 ills., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80539-798-4 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (December 2024)
eISBN 978-1-80539-799-1 eBook Not Yet Published
Description
Arguably all humans invent or accept forms of family beyond those that are close biological kin. These fictive forms of kinship may vary across diverse cultures and serve different purposes. This book explores a wide variety of such kinship-forming, from expedient daylong pseudo-marriages to notions of deities as everlasting parents for humankind and life on earth. These range from the purely abstract to the bricks and mortar of college fraternities and sororities. Family Beyond Family observes and examines the principles and purposes of such fabricated connections.
James P. Ito-Adler has served as a member of the faculty at Florida International University and Harvard University. He is Co-Founder and President of the Cambridge Institute for Brazilian Studies, an independent nonprofit educational organization. He is a member of the Board and serves as the Executive Officer of the Association for Central Civilizations and Silk Road Studies (ACANSRS), and as General Editor of the Cambridge Institutes Press. He is the author of The Portuguese of Cambridge and Somerville (Cambridge Dept. of Community Development, 1980).
Parker Shipton is Professor of Anthropology and African Studies, Boston University. He has served as president of the Association for Africanist Anthropology. Some of his publications include Bitter Money (American Anthropological Association,1989), The Nature of Entrustment (Yale University Press, 2007) which won the Herskovits Prize, and Mortgaging the Ancestors: Credit between Cultures (Yale University Press, 2009).