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The Rebirth of Kinship

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DOI: 10.1007/s12110-011-9105-9 · Source: PubMed

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Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15
DOI 10.1007/s12110-011-9105-9

The Rebirth of Kinship

Evolutionary and Quantitative Approaches
in the Revitalization of a Dying Field

Mary K. Shenk & Siobhán M. Mattison

Published online: 31 May 2011

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract Kinship was one of the key areas of research interest among anthro-
pologists in the nineteenth century, one of the most hotly debated areas of theory in
the early and mid-twentieth century, and yet an area of waning interest by the end of
the twentieth century. Since then, the study of kinship has experienced a
revitalization, with concomitant disputes over how best to proceed. This special
issue brings together recent studies of kinship by scientific anthropologists
employing evolutionary theory and quantitative methods. We argue that the melding
of the evolutionary theoretical perspective with quantitative and ethnographic
methodologies has strengthened and reinvigorated the study of kinship by
synthesizing and extending existing research via rigorous analyses of evidence.

Keywords Kinship . Quantitative methods . Evolutionary theory . Human behavioral

ecology . History of anthropology

This special issue results from a session organized for the December 2009 meetings of the
American Anthropological Association, whose theme was “The End/s of Anthropology.”
Intended to address the objectives of anthropology as well as the tenacity of
anthropology’s position as a field of contemporary study, the meeting asked participants
to examine the goals of anthropological research and whether the methods employed by
anthropologists were sufficient to meet those goals. In responding to this challenge, we
decided that the topic of kinship was uniquely suited to addressing these questions.
Kinship is one of the foundational areas of anthropological study. From Morgan’s
seminal work on the Iroquois to the well-known debate between alliance and descent

M. K. Shenk (*)
Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, 107 Swallow Hall, Columbia,
MO 65211-1440, USA
e-mail: shenkm@missouri.edu

S. M. Mattison
Department of Anthropology and Morrison Institute, Stanford University, Main Quad,
Building 50, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-2034, USA
e-mail: siobhanm@stanford.edu
2 Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15

theorists, the study of kinship has provoked intense interest among anthropolo-
gists. In attempting to unravel cross-cultural variation, anthropologists have
focused on kinship systems as collaborative networks and on the decisions of
individuals acting within those networks. The methodologies employed in
examining human kinship systems run the gamut from emic interpretations of
symbolism and behavior through cross-cultural comparisons of kinship systems
considered as individual entities. The study of kinship has also spanned
disciplinary boundaries, engaging linguists, sociologists, psychologists, and
various other professions in the pursuit of understanding this universal but highly
variable characteristic of human societies.
In a field of study that seems saturated by existing theoretical and methodological
perspectives, what do evolutionary and quantitative approaches add? Following a
spate of debates focused on family research in the 1970s and 1980s, interest in
kinship dwindled during the last part of the twentieth century. Recently, however,
anthropologists armed with an evolutionary theoretical perspective as well as
quantitative techniques have charted new territory in a field that once seemed to be
dying. Used in conjunction with traditional ethnographic methods, evolutionary and
quantitative approaches have led to unique insights, elaborating with elegant models
the complex ways in which individuals behave and interact in cooperation with, or
opposition to, their kin. Such models have been powerful aids to traditional
conceptualizations, often suggesting hypotheses that would not have arisen from
strict intuition, while still accounting for significant variability in local socioecology.
This double issue of Human Nature (Vol. 22 [1&2]) incorporates articles that address
how the use of evolutionary theory and quantitative methods together with
ethnographic techniques have revolutionized the study of kinship in anthropology,
enabled us to expand research into novel questions and settings, and helped to avert
an “end” to the anthropology of kinship that might have resulted from persistent use
of stagnant methodology.
Papers in this special double issue discuss kinship in contexts as diverse as
hunter-gatherers and transitional or postindustrial societies, and incorporate
ethnographic, mathematical, statistical, and reconstructive techniques. The papers
explore both traditional and modern topics in the study of kinship, including
marriage alliances, matrilocality, family life cycles, cooperative child rearing,
patrilineal and matrilineal systems, kin dispersion, and both genetic and social
aspects of kinship. In this introductory article, we give a brief overview of the
history of the study of kinship in anthropology and demonstrate how
evolutionary and quantitative approaches have been instrumental to the revival
of its study. The articles in this special issue give readers a sense of the breadth
and depth of these new approaches to kinship and should stimulate further
research on one of the oldest topics of anthropological inquiry.

A Brief History of the Study of Kinship in Anthropology

Kinship is to anthropology what logic is to philosophy or the nude is to art; it

is the basic discipline of the subject (Fox 1983:10).
Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15 3

Kinship is a foundational area of anthropological study with a long and varied

history, and the contributions made by evolutionary and quantitative anthropologists
need to be understood within this context. In outlining this history, we hope to
provide the reader with a sense of how modern evolutionary anthropology differs
from unilineal evolutionism (see also Mattison 2011), with which it is sometimes
conflated, and a sense of the unique contributions evolutionary and quantitative
perspectives make to a relatively mature area of study.
Kinship has been a central and distinctive theme in anthropological research since
the 1850s, well before the first academic anthropology programs were established in
the United States or elsewhere. Early on, anthropologists saw kinship as a universal
feature of human culture that served as the major organizing principle in human
societies. Drawing on the philosophical insights of Hobbes (1909 [1651]), who
believed it was kinship that allowed humans to escape from a brutish life in a state of
nature, unilineal cultural evolutionists argued about the form of the original human
family and the sequence over which it evolved toward contemporary, “civilized”
society. Early theorists such as Sir Henry Maine (1960 [1861]) favored the idea that
patriarchy preceded matriarchy, while others, such as Johann J. Bachofen (1897
[1861]), John Ferguson McLennan (1865), and Lewis Henry Morgan (1997 [1871],
1964 [1877]) favored evolutionary sequences in which promiscuity was the original
condition of human societies, followed by descent through females and then descent
through males. Such progressions usually culminated in the European norm of
monogamy and bilateral inheritance.
Among the unilineal evolutionists, Lewis Henry Morgan deserves special
mention. Sometimes considered the father of kinship studies in anthropology,
Morgan was also one of the first systematic cross-cultural researchers, comparing his
own research to data from missionaries and colonial administrators in other parts of
the world to draw his conclusions. Like McLennan and Bachofen, Morgan argued
that human societies progressed through a series of stages (savagery to barbarism to
civilization), and from an original state of promiscuity through a series of more
complex systems culminating in civilized monogamy. Unlike some of his
predecessors, however, Morgan’s research was based explicitly on fieldwork and
empirical data. Through analysis of kinship terminologies, Morgan inspired
generations of debate on the symbolic versus genealogical understandings of
categories of kin. His work was also famously influential to both Marx and Engels,
as reflected in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Engels
1942 [1884]), which was based on Morgan’s work and Marx’s annotations thereof.
Subscribing to a unilineal evolutionist perspective, Engels extended Morgan’s
arguments to encompass the origin and evolution of social inequality. In what would
be foundational to later feminist and Marxist anthropologists, Engels linked familial
control of property to male control over marriages and the consequent subjugation of
women. Thus, the unilineal evolutionists together set the stage for future
anthropological studies of kinship, addressing, among other topics, universalism,
hierarchical and internal structure, terminology, symbolism, genealogy, and
inequality, and helping to move anthropology from the armchair to the field.
In the early twentieth century, anthropologists rejected unilineal evolutionism (e.g.,
Radcliffe-Brown 1941). Anthropologists in Britain turned to conceptualizing kinship
in terms of its functions and structural features, while American anthropologists,
4 Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15

following Franz Boas, opted for understanding kinship systems in terms of the
framework of cultural relativism. All parties dismissed the idea of universal,
progressive stages of evolution: Malinowski (1913, 1930) and his followers, following
Westermarck (1903 [1891]), emphasized the functional nature of the nuclear family as
the foundation of social systems, while Boas’s followers, such as Kroeber (1909) and
Lowie (1919), questioned the nature of kinship universals.
The perspective of structural-functionalism pioneered by Radcliffe-Brown came
to dominate kinship studies in the mid twentieth century. Rejecting both unilineal
evolutionism and the cultural diffusionism of the Boasian school, the structural-
functionalists advocated instead for the use of the comparative method to find
patterns within and across human societies. In this paradigm, cultural practices were
interpreted in light of their contributions to social structure, and kinship systems
were seen as integral to the form and maintenance thereof. Evans-Pritchard and
Meyer Fortes championed this perspective, arguing that the primary form of social
structure in stateless societies was their organization into unilineal descent groups by
the principle of descent from a common ancestor; this principle generated corporate
kinship groups with non-overlapping membership, clarifying rules of inheritance and
aiding organization of the defense of property. The structural-functionalist
“obsession with descent” (Parkin and Stone 2004:15) was eventually called into
question by advocates of structural alliance theory headed by Claude Lévi-Strauss
(1967 [1949]). In this view, the function of kinship was to generate systems of
reciprocity based on the affinal exchange of women. Both perspectives would
eventually be subsumed by the structural-functional rubric, as kinship theorists
realized that families acted simultaneously in the realms of descent and alliance. This
perspective also received ample attention from scholars such as Murdock (1949),
Goody (1976), and the Embers (Ember and Ember 1983), who were pursuing cross-
cultural studies (see also “Quantitative Approaches to Kinship,” below).
The field of kinship was thrown into upheaval by David Schneider (1968, 1972,
1984), who, in a fashion analogous to Boasian criticisms of unilineal evolutionism,
rejected the field of kinship studies as inappropriately rooted in a genealogical (and
ultimately biological) way of thinking. Suggesting that this emphasis on biological
relationships reflected a Euroamerican folk model derived from the so-called
genealogical method (Rivers 1900), Schneider argued that the comparative study of
kinship was an intellectually bankrupt enterprise (1972, 1984). Schneider’s influence
contributed to a decline in the study of kinship in the 1970s and 1980s and also
inspired much of the more recent kinship literature that has cast kinship in
particularistic or emic terms, arguing that kinship cannot be understood as an
organizing principle or even as an overarching topic of study (e.g., Carsten and
Hugh-Jones 1995; Yanagisako and Collier 1987). These perspectives have in turn
motivated new emphases in modern kinship studies, including a focus on gender (e.g.,
Stone 2010; Yanagisako and Collier 1987), power and inequality (e.g., Han 2004), and
new types of kin relationships emerging in modern societies with the advent of new
reproductive technologies (e.g., Kahn 2000; Ragoné 1994), high rates of divorce and
remarriage, and increasing acceptance of homosexuality (e.g., Hayden 1995).
The study of kinship in modern social anthropology is a much smaller and more
marginal field than it once was, and it has gone from de rigeur to passé. Although
kinship has been the subject of numerous theoretical, empirical, scientific, and
Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15 5

humanistic treatments, many of the questions asked by earlier anthropologists

remain unresolved. Here we advocate for a revitalized, coherent approach to the
study of kinship based on Darwinian evolutionary theory and pursued using modern
quantitative methods. This approach expresses structural and functional aspects of
kinship in terms of a common currency, yet it remains rooted in ethnographic
inquiry, underlining the need to gather and evaluate empirical evidence within the
context of social and environmental factors affecting individual behavior. It is to this
perspective that we now turn.

Evolutionary Approaches to Kinship

Evolutionary perspectives have not been used widely in the study of kinship since
the very early twentieth century. In the past 35 years, however, and especially since
the mid-1980s, a different, powerful, and yet relatively unknown body of kinship
studies has emerged in light of Darwinian (i.e., as opposed to unilineal) evolutionary
theory. In contrast to more mainstream, culturally deterministic perspectives on
kinship, evolutionary perspectives foreground the contributions of evolutionary
biology to the explanation of variation in human kinship systems. We briefly review
some of the major trends within this body of literature and highlight the unique
ability of evolutionary studies to synthesize previously disparate views on kinship
systems by providing a unitary theoretical framework that nonetheless accounts for
significant variation in local customs.
Recent trends in the mainstream kinship literature have trivialized the extent to
which biological processes contribute to variation in kinship systems. In their
introduction to Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader, one of the more
comprehensive recent compendia of the history of kinship in anthropology, Parkin
and Stone (2004:3) write that “for the social anthropologist the biological aspects [of
kinship] cannot be denied; but, being uniform, they cannot explain cultural variation
and are therefore uninformative in relation to the issues that concern social
anthropologists the most.” The authors’ implication that biological perspectives
predict uniformity across people, and thus cannot account for the variation in kinship
behavior, rests on a misunderstanding—or at least a narrow understanding—of the
nature of the relationship between human biology and behavior. An evolutionary
perspective suggests that, just as bodies and biological processes vary predictably
given local socioecological circumstances, so, too, should human behavior.
Whereas prior versions of “evolutionary” theory (i.e., unilineal evolutionism)
posited uniformity in human kinship systems, contemporary Darwinian theory does
not. Unilineal evolutionism of the Morganian and Spencerian variety appealed to
evolutionary historicism to explain the passage of societies through “evolutionary”
sequences in which social organization, including kinship, was relatively uniform.
This perspective incorporated “evolution” in the broadest sense—in other words, in
the sense that societies had evolved or changed over time—but incorrectly identified
the processes underlying evolution as progressive in nature (see also Currie and
Mace 2011). In contrast, contemporary Darwinian evolutionary theory views
evolution as an outcome of undirected (i.e., nondirectional) processes associated
with fitness (i.e., reproductive success), which, in turn, are affected by variation in
6 Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15

individual opportunities and constraints in the local social and ecological context in
which an individual is embedded. As opposed to unilineal evolutionism, with which
it is sometimes conflated, Darwinian evolutionism explicitly predicts variation in
behavioral (and biological) outcomes, explaining such variation in terms of a unified
currency interacting with differing constraints imposed by variable ecological
circumstances. For example, in this volume, Neill (2011) shows how child
educational performance, increasing urbanization, and changing opportunities for
women interact to produce daughter-biased investment among Indo-Fijians.
Darwinian evolutionary perspectives also provide explanations that synthesize
findings from previous kinship studies, allowing unification of many traditional
kinship topics, including inheritance, descent, residence, and marriage, under a
single theoretical rubric. For instance, whereas previous studies have associated
postmarital residence with certain features of the socioecological environment (e.g.,
see Murdock and White 1969; Naroll 1970), evolutionary theory provides a rationale
for such associations and updates outdated empirical associations. Several recent
papers (e.g., Kramer and Greaves 2011; Marlowe 2004; Wood and Marlowe 2011)
have questioned the association between foraging subsistence and unilocal
postmarital residence, positing instead flexibility in residence in order to capitalize
on help from kin. Similarly, evolutionary anthropologists (e.g., Holden et al. 2003;
Holden and Mace 2003; Leonetti et al. 2004, 2007; Mattison 2011) have explored
the causes and consequences of lineality in inheritance or descent in terms of
investment in children and other social outcomes, linking inheritance patterns to
gender differences in fitness optimization. Marriage has received recent attention by
evolutionary anthropologists considering the fitness consequences of polygyny (e.g.,
Borgerhoff Mulder 1990), polyandry (e.g., Smith 1998), and women’s status within
the household (e.g., Leonetti et al. 2004, 2007). Related work has examined the costs
and benefits of arranged marriage for both parents and children (e.g., Apostolou
2007; Shenk 2004).
Finally, old considerations of the importance of corporate descent groups in
human kinship have been revived in terms of understanding what advantages
unilineal groups might offer over other systems of organizing kinship, subsistence,
or property ownership (e.g., Alvard 2003, 2009, 2011; Chapais 2008; Nolin 2011).
In this volume, Alvard compares genetic relatedness to social kinship structured by
descent and affinal ties in relation to the cooperative task of whale hunting. In a
related paper, Nolin (2011) shows how different systems of defining kin can be
important for different domains of behavior within the same society; he finds that
corporate kin groups facilitate cooperation among hunting crews, but that bilateral kin
relationships structure patterns of food sharing. Also in this volume, Jones (2011) takes
a broader view, arguing that matrilineal and matrilocal patterns of descent and
residence have been historically and functionally associated with “demic expansions”
of humans into frontier territories where cross-cutting ties among males in different
kin groups would have been helpful in warfare against rival ethnic groups.
Evolutionary anthropology not only provides insights into traditional realms of
kinship inquiry, it also facilitates resolution of some of its more tenacious debates.
Two of the most intransigent—the importance of alliance versus descent in creating
kin groups and the nature versus culture debate—have both been tackled by
evolutionary anthropologists. The former case has been settled partially by way of
Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15 7

comparison with our primate ancestors: both Fox (1983 [1967], 1975) and Chapais
(2008) have noted that our kinship systems are more complex than those of primates,
positing that the human emphasis on alliance and descent is what sets us apart.
Human kinship systems produce larger social networks than are present in apes
(Chapais 2008; Fox 1975; Palmer et al. 2006; Rodseth and Wrangham 2004), extend
across multiple groups or places of residence (Rodseth et al. 1991), and involve
more reliance on sibling relationships compared with our primate ancestors (Rodseth
and Wrangham 2004). Such comparisons have also facilitated mending of the false
dichotomization of nature versus culture as separate processes in kinship systems.
Evolutionary anthropologists not only recognize the importance of culture in
shaping kinship systems, they also emphasize that most behavior is determined
by a complex interaction between genes and variable social and ecological
environments (e.g., van den Berghe 1979; Jones 2000, 2003a, b). The confluence
of these processes in shaping behavior in general has become an important new
area of theory (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981;
Durham 1991; Jones 2000, 2003c; Richerson and Boyd 2005) and has also
enriched our understanding of kinship per se by discussing explicitly how culture
and material factors interact to affect kinship (e.g., Leonetti and Chabot-Hanowell
2011; Lipatov et al. 2011; Mattison 2010).
Finally, evolutionary theory provides insights into areas of inquiry not commonly
or systematically addressed by mainstream kinship theory. In particular, such topics
of traditional interest to evolutionary researchers as subsistence strategies, group
formation, mating and reproduction, parental investment, cooperation, and conflict
have been the subject of empirical tests or theoretical elaboration in terms of kinship
(e.g., Alexander 1974; Chagnon and Irons 1979; Hughes 1988; Wilson 1978). Major
advances have been made in our understanding of both the causes and consequences
of the provision of care to offspring by mothers (e.g., Fox 1983 [1967], 1975; Hrdy
2009; Sear and Mace 2008; Scelza 2011), fathers (e.g., Flinn et al. 2007; Geary
2000; Gray and Anderson 2010; Hrdy 2009; Kaplan et al. 2000; Marlowe 2000), and
others (e.g., Hawkes et al. 1997; Hrdy 2009; Sear and Mace 2008). Indeed, how
certain caretakers have contributed to the unique human life history is a major topic
of interest within contemporary human behavioral ecology (e.g., Hawkes and Paine
2006; Kaplan 1996; Kramer 2005; Kramer and Ellison 2010; Lee and DeVore 1968;
Voland et al. 2005). The study of life history theory also has informed research on
topics as diverse as sex-biased parental investment (e.g., Sieff 1990), adoption (e.g.,
Silk 1980; Turke 1988), and infanticide (e.g., Daly and Wilson 1984; Dickemann
1979; Hrdy 1992), while kin selection and cooperation theories have informed
discussion of varied topics, including inheritance and kin conflict (e.g., see
overviews in Barrett et al. 2002; Shenk 2011). Given the bearing of such research
on the underpinnings of human kinship, these topics should be of widespread
interest, both within the field of anthropological kinship studies and beyond.
Whether tackling traditional areas of kinship research or venturing into areas that
are relatively new, the study of kinship from an evolutionary perspective has become a
thriving area of research. The insights provided by these studies not only link numerous
themes of research under a common rubric but also expand the scope of previous
research. We turn now to the use of quantitative techniques in kinship studies, describing
some of the key methods by which evolutionary research is able to achieve its gains.
8 Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15

Quantitative Approaches to Kinship

One of the strengths of evolutionary studies of kinship is their frequent deployment of

quantitative means of analysis. Whereas strict reliance on qualitative methods can lead
to ambiguity in the statement and evaluation of research questions, quantitative methods
can generate explicit tests of hypotheses. Quantitative studies naturally complement the
hypothetico-deductive method employed by evolutionary anthropologists (Smith and
Winterhalder 1992) in at least three ways: they generate new, often unintuitive,
hypotheses through use of formal models; they provide rigorous, repeatable, and
comparable tests of hypotheses; and they may suggest new avenues of research based
on observed interrelationships among variables that are not otherwise apparent. All of
the articles in this double issue contribute to one or more of these ends.
The contributions made by quantitative evolutionary anthropologists to the study
of kinship must be understood within the context of existing studies, as the use of
quantitative techniques to study kinship is by no means new. Indeed, kinship may
have been one of the first areas of anthropological study in which such techniques
were elaborated (e.g., Tylor 1889), particularly within the context of cross-cultural
analysis inspired by Tylor’s work (Naroll 1970; e.g., Aberle 1961; Divale 1974;
Driver and Schuessler 1967; Ember and Ember 1971; Murdock 1949, 1967;
Murdock and White 1969; Otterbein 1969; Otterbein and Otterbein 1965). Other
scientific anthropologists have also relied on quantitative methods in studies of
kinship behavior (e.g., Wolf and Huang 1980), and many contemporary anthropo-
logical studies of kinship use some form of quantitative methodology in their
research, even if just to tabulate outcomes.
While laudable in terms of relative precision and comparability, quantitative
methods in general, and cross-cultural comparative methods in particular, have been
criticized on a number of grounds (e.g., Barnes 1971; Köbben 1952). More
sophisticated methods employed by many evolutionary anthropologists today have
the potential to resolve or circumvent many of these criticisms. For example, while
simple quantitative methods have been criticized as reductionist, evolutionary
models and tests of kinship behavior are increasingly complex, allowing for nuanced
interactions and feedback in the understanding of kinship systems. In this issue,
Leonetti and Chabot-Hanowell (2011) provide a quantitative model that explores
how sex- and age-based divisions of labor impact the formation of households,
suggesting that subtle differences in metabolic expenditures may lie at the root of
one of the defining characteristics of human kinship. Wood and Marlowe (2011)
advance a new quantitative model of postmarital residence that explains how a
woman’s number of children relates to the costs and benefits of residing near
patrilateral versus matrilateral kin. These models may generate new substantive
insights into our understanding of kinship behavior. They retain the precision
invaluable to modeling scientific hypotheses (Levins 1966) while at the same time
allowing for generalization and avoiding particularism inherent to ethnographic case
studies by stating model terms generally and designing them to incorporate local
variation.
The use of multivariate statistics in testing hypotheses also represents an
important improvement to more commonly used, more general quantitative
evaluations of kinship behavior (e.g., cross-tabulations and correlations common to
Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15 9

cross-cultural analyses). Importantly, while multivariate statistics cannot address

causality when used in conjunction with cross-sectional data, they can nonetheless
yield insights into the relative importance of independent and interacting covariates
in determining outcomes. They can also discriminate between alternative causal
hypotheses via incorporation of confounding variables. Thus, Mattison (2011)
explores the explanatory value of a simple quantitative model of matriliny (Holden
et al. 2003), emphasizing that the forms of wealth affecting reproduction may be
more important in determining whether inheritance or wealth transmission will be
daughter-biased than paternity certainty is on its own. Scelza (2011) shows that
geographic proximity may not always be a good indicator of maternal support in
studies of collaborative child-rearing, highlighting the dynamics between proximity
and reported direct support in determining outcomes of child well-being. Both of
these studies elucidate theoretical causality in kinship behavior by contemporane-
ously weighing two or more putative causes through multivariate analysis.
Finally, the papers in this issue advance our understanding of kinship by
incorporating new and robust forms of data that allow for analysis of issues that are
not possible using more traditional methods. Kramer and Greaves (2011) revisit
postmarital residence patterns among the Pumé using longitudinal data, showing that
where a couple resides is not only more flexible than previously imagined but also
adapted to variable subsistence practices. Alvard (2011) uses relational data to analyze
the structure of cooperative whaling networks in Lamalera, Indonesia, yielding
insights into a question that has long been the topic of kinship inquiry: why are
lineages used over other structural forms to organize labor? Finally, Strassmann and
Garrard (2011) perform a meta-analysis to test evidence for the grandmother
hypothesis against several alternative models. Contrary to previous reviews using
the same studies, they find that the presence of both maternal grandmothers and
grandfathers is positively correlated with grandchildren’s survival. Moreover, these
results obtain despite the fact that all populations in their analysis are patrilocal,
suggesting that maternal grandparents would not have been co-resident with
grandchildren, a finding that supports the kin competition model.
If current quantitative methods represent an improvement over methods previously
employed, this does not indicate that quantitative or evolutionary analysis of kinship
serves as a panacea. Rather, we suggest that quantitative analysis, complemented by
ethnographic methods, provides a distinctive set of advantages with respect to previous
methods. There is no doubt that current quantitative studies in some cases are subject to
the criticisms that have been leveled at quantitative research more generally. For
example, current studies do not always adjust for dependence in samples, often fail to
elucidate cause and effect, and are subject to classification and coding errors.
Nonetheless, we argue that evolutionary theory in conjunction with quantitative
methods and ethnographic grounding offer decisive advantages over less-
comprehensive methods in providing scientific, generalizable, precise and yet realistic
views of kinship. They do so by adjusting general theoretical models stated in
quantitative terms to fit the ethnographic specifics of each population under study and
by providing at least a theoretical rationale for underlying causality, which can be
partially validated or rejected with appropriate quantitative techniques. The sheer
breadth of quantitative methods now employed or under development—including
computational, mathematical, statistical, and relational—suggests that this approach
10 Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15

will be increasingly able to validate theories from several theoretical and methodolog-
ical perspectives, a long-held objective of proponents of holistic anthropology.

Conclusions and Future Directions

The influence of the strongly particularistic, antipositivist perspective of Schneider

(1972, 1984) is often credited with ending the era in which kinship was central to
anthropology (e.g., Carsten 2004; Chapais 2008; Holý 1996; Parkin and Stone 2004;
van den Berghe 1979). Yet since that time a revitalization of research on kinship has
been occurring in two different spheres. One revitalization movement followed
Schneider in a poststructuralist direction but with a more moderate form; authors
following this tradition have focused on indigenous conceptions of kinship and
gender, gender and power in kin relationships, kinship ramifications of new
reproductive technologies, and emerging types of kinship in postindustrial nations
(e.g., Carsten 2000; Stone 2001). The second revitalization movement has taken an
entirely different direction: emphasizing the incorporation of evolutionary theory to
look for the ultimate motivations behind human kinship patterns, and utilizing
formal mathematical models and/or statistical analyses as its primary tools.
The first movement emphasizes the perspective that kinship is cultural and non-
biological, whereas the second has as its primary tenet a renewal of emphasis on the
biological nature of kinship, out of favor in anthropology since Boas and even more
deeply since Schneider. Modern evolutionary approaches rest on the key tenet that
an understanding of biology can deepen our understanding of human kinship by
linking it to our primate heritage as well as behavioral ecology theory and cultural
transmission theory explaining the origins of behavioral diversity. By linking
ultimate evolutionary motivations to their expression in and interactions with
complex socioecologies, evolutionary approaches to kinship remain deeply
anthropological. They maintain the understanding that human kinship systems are
cultural as well as biological in nature, and they argue that individual kinship
systems result from uniquely human patterns of behavioral flexibility that allow the
formulation and modification of complex social rules as a primary means of
adaptation. Moreover, ethnographic methods remain central to this approach. In fact,
the combination of evolutionary theory with quantification allows for generalizabil-
ity across cultures while still taking into account the particulars of each culture under
study. Whereas other types of cross-cultural studies must obscure within-culture
differences in order to provide generalizable results, modern evolutionary studies
generalize via theory enabling researchers to distinguish between the trends predicted by
theory and the details of local cultural customs or norms.
Finally, we hope that this introduction and the remainder of the papers in this special
issue serve to explicate not only some of the common misunderstandings of the use of
evolution in kinship studies, but also the benefits provided by a more holistic approach to
the study of kinship. We contend that the combination of evolutionary theory and
quantitative techniques with ethnographic methods forms a holistic pattern for research
rooted simultaneously in theory and empiricism, biology and culture, and integrating
ethnographic particulars with cross-cultural research. The combination of methods and the
emphasis on holism connects this method to both the ethnographic approach advocated by
Hum Nat (2011) 22:1–15 11

Boas and Malinowski as well as the comparative approach of interest to twentieth-century

structural-functionalist anthropologists, while avoiding the problems inherent in the work
of the early unilineal evolutionists.
Despite the increasing number of studies taking this approach in the past few
decades, evolutionary and quantitative approaches are neither widely known nor
widely accepted in mainstream sociocultural anthropology. A common perception is
expressed by Holý, who argues that since Schneider, “The new insights into kinship
have so far been partial and fragmented, and they certainly have not resulted in a
clear and concise formulation of a new theory” (Holý 1996:6–7). Commonly used
undergraduate textbooks in kinship either do not discuss evolutionary perspectives at
all or discuss them in limited ways (e.g., Stone 2010). Yet evolutionary theory, in
combination with quantitative methods of analysis, does indeed give us a clear and
concise theoretical perspective on many aspects of human kinship systems. And
while most sociocultural anthropologists remain unaware of—or resistant to—this
approach, it is nonetheless a fast-growing field that has consistently and increasingly
offered unique and useful perspectives on human kinship systems.
In closing, we would like to suggest two related avenues that we think will be
particularly fruitful in reestablishing the centrality of kinship within anthropology (or the
social sciences more generally) as well as in reexamining important unanswered
questions. First, we would like to see more attention to topics of interest to earlier
anthropologists, including the cross-cultural examination of systems of descent,
inheritance patterns, and marriage patterns. Work by Chapais (2008) is an interesting
start in this direction, and researchers might find it useful to follow his advice by
building on the work of functionalist and structuralist anthropologists (see also Hughes
1988). Such work would also help to advance the second avenue of endeavor, namely
the dissemination of evolutionary and quantitative work on kinship into more
mainstream anthropological journals and textbooks. While some of this has begun to
occur (e.g., Leonetti et al. 2007; Marlowe 2004; Quinlan 2006), there is a long way to
go before this kind of approach has the influence it should on our understanding of
kinship in anthropology and beyond. Given the inherent links between kinship and
many other topics of interest to anthropologists and others, including the transmission of
social inequality, modernization, demography, linguistics, social structure, political
economy, medical anthropology, and so on, we believe efforts to disseminate such
research are likely to be worthwhile and well-received.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the participants in “The End/s of Kinship,” our
December 2009 session at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings; the Evolutionary
Anthropology Section of the AAA for sponsoring it; the audience for their enthusiasm in attending; and Jane
Lancaster for inviting us to turn it into a special issue of Human Nature. We would also like to thank the
authors of the articles for their cooperation through the sometimes tortured process of review and revision.

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Mary K. Shenk is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri. Her work focuses
on marriage, parental investment, inheritance, and fertility from the perspectives of human behavioral
ecology, demography, and microeconomics. She has researched marriage in urban South India, and her
current project focuses on the causes of the demographic transition in rural Bangladesh.

Siobhán M. Mattison obtained her Ph.D. from the biocultural program of the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Washington. Her dissertation explored the behavioral ecology of
kinship and reproduction among the ethnic Mosuo of Southwest China. She is currently a Mellon
Foundation John E. Sawyer postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University and the Morrison Institute,
studying the bases of sex-biased parental investment in China and India. Her research interests also
include demography, statistical modeling, and the emergence of health and income disparities as they
relate to transitions in economic markets.

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