Vertical and Horizontal Approaches to Kinship and Ways of Doing Anthropological Fieldwork in Siberia1

Abstract

Abstract The study of kinship has occupied a central role in anthropological scholarships for more than a hundred years. In the 1970s, after the deconstruction of kinship as the inherent logic of social structure, studies on kinship faced a number of new epistemological issues. Based on experiences gained during subsequent fieldworks in Yakutia, the author tackles a few of them in this article. Due to the legacy of Soviet-type ethnography in Yakutia, people even in the remotest villages usually have a firm idea of what anthropological fieldwork is about. Reflecting on his fieldwork strategies in Yakutia while studying local kin relations, the author argues that anthropologists should not neglect to consider the expectations local communities have of the goals and means of the fieldwork. In the case of kinship research in Yakutia, local communities are interested in reconstructing the vertical aspects of kin relations instead of unfolding horizontal relations for the anthropologist.