The Anthropology of Chinese Kinship. A Critical Overview

Author: Santos, Gonçalo Duro Dos

Source: European Journal of East Asian Studies, Volume 5, Number 2, 2006 , pp. 275-333(59)

Publisher: BRILL

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Abstract:

This is a critical overview of the anthropology of Chinese kinship focusing on the twentieth-century Euro-American literature. I first deal with the less well-known early literature of the period before the foundation and closure of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. I then show how the thematic and theoretical heterogeneity of this early literature was superseded during the 1960s and 1970s by a powerful but reductive paradigmatic lineage model of Chinese kinship and society, largely derived from documentary-based studies of lineage organisation in the late imperial period and consolidated through field research in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Inspired by earlier critics of this lineage-model, tuned in to new anthropological trends in the field of kinship studies and triggered by the post-Mao opening of the PRC, the 1990s marked the beginning of a very heterogeneous cycle of renovation generated by new field research. Seen as a whole, this current cycle of renovation has been undertaking a revision of the older descent-centred comparative view of Chinese kinship and is giving important insights to current anthropological debates about the nature of human kinship.

Keywords: HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY; CHINA; KINSHIP; LINEAGE; FAMILY; MARRIAGE; GUANXI; RELATEDNESS

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006106778869298

Publication date: 2006-10-01