Kinship : a guide to library resources

Contents:

• Starting points
• Finding books
• Finding journal articles
• Web resources

Starting Points

When you need to define your topic and/or get some background reading try consulting a dictionary or encyclopedia on kinship. The guide to Anthropology dictionaries/encyclopedias will help if you need explanations of anthropological terminology or theory.

To find overviews on the subject try the following:

Anthropological perspectives on kinship (1996) [print]
[Introductory text which considers kinship within the wider debates in contemporary anthropology. A book review is linked here]

Family gender and kinship in Australia (2006) [print]
[An ethnographically-based exploration which draws on sociological, historical and demographic data to provide a comprehensive analysis of family, gender and kinship in Australia]

Kinship and family: an anthropological reader (2004) [print]
[Traces the history of the anthropological study of kinship from the early 1900s to the present]

Kinship and marriage: an anthropological perspective (1967) [print]
[Introductory text on kinship and marriage.  A book review is linked here]

Kinship and marriage: an introduction [web access]
[An on-line tutorial from the Minnesota State University which serves as an introduction to the cultural understanding of kinship]

Kinship studies in late 20th century anthropology (1995) [electronic]
[Examines the state of kinship studies in late 20th century anthropology. Published in vol.24 of the Annual review of Anthropology. Also available in print format]

New directions in anthropological kinship (2001) [print] 
[A collection of essays on the directions kinship studies have taken in anthropology. A book review is linked here]

 Another starting point is the Cross-cultural CD-ROM  which is a series of citations and full text files extracted from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). The library has available volume 1 which covers 'Human sexuality and marriage'. Note that this non-networked CD-ROM is only available for viewing in the library.

Finding Books Using The Library Catalogue

Books can be found by searching the library catalogue. Keyword searching is probably the best way of identifying material and your results will be maximised by using keyword searching techniques such as truncation and Boolean searching, and by incorporating subject headings into your search where appropriate. Here are some examples on how to construct searches:

tribes and india

kinship and adoption

kinship and aborigin?

(kinship or "marriage customs") and africa

Finding Journal Articles Using Databases & Bibliographies

Journal articles can be found through databases listed in the Electronic Databases for Anthropology guide - Sociological Abstracts,  Anthropology Plus, Academic OneFile and Academic Search Premier are probably the best starting points for finding articles written on kinship studies.

For Australian topics try FAMILY (Australian Family & Society Abstracts), MAIS (Multicultural Australia and Immigration Studies), and APA-FT (Australian Public Affairs Information Service). Mura (the online catalogue of Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) is a major resource for Aboriginal Australians

In addition, there are printed bibliographies of books & journal articles held by the library which are probably most useful for identifying earlier material on kinship topics.

Web Resources

The following are starting points for resources on the Web

INTUTE: Ethnographic studies of peoples and communities 
[Provides access to quality Web-based information sources]

The Linkages Project
[The Linkages Project is an effort to assemble a large database of kinship datasets and genealogies from around the world, as recorded by anthropologists & others]

Last update: 17 June 2009 Helen Attar