Verwandtschaft als Verfassung

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Abstract

How could anthropos obtain public order without bureaucracy? Historical and presently submerged communities indicate guidelines legitimized by seemingly natural rules of ‘kinship’. However, a worldwide comparison identifies ‘kinship’ as an extremely variable complex which is easily manipulated as exemplified by numerous ethnographic examples. Thus certain hunter-gatherers permit incest. Other communities consist of fluctuating groupings and yet others organize themselves by marriage rules. Beyond these anarchic cases, certain ‘conical’ patterns of pedigrees decree leadership of the ‘eldest’, while others combine rules of descent and marriage. By reference to sexuality, birth, aging and death, the logic of natural individual relations is applied to the postulates of variable social ones.

The book is based on English language sources of socio-cultural anthropology and addressed to all humanities and social sciences. The author has conducted extended social research in South Asia over years.