Abstract
An examination of the custom of cousin marriage in Dongyang County in the late premodern and modern period suggests a critique of Lévi‐Strauss's formulations regarding generalized exchange in China. While the analysis takes account of Bourdieu's critique of structuralism (1977), it stops short of dispensing altogether with the notion of elementary structure. The article rather proposes a model of Chinese kinship in which protein chains of structure, both more diverse in kind and more limited in scope than the classification generalized exchange would imply, exist in a context of otherwise diversified ties between households. In the Chinese kinship universe, all nonagnatic cousins within three generations are marked by the designation biao as potential nodes upon which such chains may be constructed. [marriage strategies and patterns, conceptions of kinship space, cousin marriage, elementary structures of kinship, China]
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