Full Description
This book examines Fanti kinship terminology from a variety of analytic and formal perspectives. Based on work with a broad number of informants, David B. Kronenfeld details and analyzes internal variation in usage within the Fanti community, shows the relationship between terminology and social groups and communicative usage, and relates these findings to major theoretical work on kinship and on the intersections of language, thought, and culture.
The terminological analysis in this study employs a great variety of formal approaches, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and covers a wide range of types of usage. This work also performs a systematic, formal analysis of behavior patterns among kin, joining this approach with the analysis of a kinship terminological system. Rather than treating kinship terminology as a special, isolated piece of culture, this study also ties its analysis to more general semantic and cultural theoretical issues. Including computational and comparative studies of kinship terminologies, this volume represents the fullest analysis of any kinship terminological system in the ethnographic record.
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
PART 1
1. Fanti Kinship: The Structure of Terminology and Behavior 15
2. A Formal Analysis of Fanti Kinship Terminology (Ghana) 31
3. Particularistic or Universalistic Analyses of Fanti Kinterminology: The Alternative Goals of Terminological Analysis 53
4. Fanti Kinship Behavior: What a Fanti Needs to Know to Treat a Kinsman Correctly 71
PART II
5. Context in the Late 1970s: Schneider, Needham, Scheffler, and Keesing 109
6. Morgan vs. Dorsey on the Omaha Cross-Parallel Contrast: Theoretical Implications 153
7. Comparison with Tax's Theoretic Approach (1980) 177
8. Krober vs. Radcliffe-Brown on Kinship Behavior: The Fanti Test Case 181
PART III
9. The Uses of Formal Analysis re Cognitive and Social Issues 205
10. Computer Analysis of Skewed Kinship Terminologies 227
11. Using Sydney H. Gould's Formalization of Kinterminologies: Social Information, Skewing, and Structural Types 255
PART IV
12. Sibling Typology: Beyond Nerlove and Romney 281
13. Fanti Kinship: Language, Inheritance, and Kin Groups 301
14. Some Observations Concerning Usage (1969) 319
Notes 325
References 349
Credits 361
Index 363
