Network structure and the kinship perspective

Abstract

Structural kinship analysis in the Radcliffe‐Brown tradition shares many important features with much contemporary formal social network analysis in anthropology and other disciplines. Although the kinship studies lack the mathematical formalism of other approaches, substantive results are of a high order. Using Fortes's Tallensi analysis as a representative of these works, the kinship method is formalized and generalized; the results help clarify some unresolved problems in Fortes's studies and illuminate the close relationship between this kind of kinship work and contemporary network analysis. [social structure, kinship, social network, Tallensi, Fortes, mathematical anthropology]