Kinship, Genealogy, Objectivity, and Ethnocentrism
Abstract
This describes the factual and epistemological mistakes leading to the collapse of anthropological interest in the scientific analysis of kinship and social organization in the 1980s, their persistence to the present, and the alternative that avoids them.
The basic argument is that while kinship was and is a challenging topic, the reason for the collapse of kinship studies in response to David Schneider's criticism in 1987 had did not reflect those inherent problems. They reflected self-contradictions and counter-factual assumptions in the conceptions of science, meaning, and objectivity in the approaches that were taken to it, both by those Schneider criticised and by Schneider himself.
The paper details the steps by which those errors accumuluted in this particular line of argument. It does so in part by contrasting this line with my own approach that avoided them, and that Schneider knew about but evidently did not understand.