Kinship is the only journal in the United States, and one of only a few worldwide, dedicated to the study of, and research on, the whole of kinship. Ethnography shows there is no known human group without this universal, uniquely human phenomenon called kinship. Kinship is considered both as an experientially bounded, culturally identifiable sphere of human life differentiated from all other societal relations and as a construct with universal analytical value distinguishable by well-defined criteria. Much of the work done throughout the history of anthropological knowledge building is concerned with the study of kinship theory and kinship systems, and many leading anthropologists have made their names in its study.

The journal offers a scholarly site for research publications dedicated to the ethnography and theory of kinship, using both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. It covers current systematic efforts using new data or new ideas, including revisiting and reworking earlier assumptions in the field and employing new tools such as kinship-related computer applications. The journal welcomes work across anthropology’s four subfields — sociocultural, linguistic, biological, and archaeological — while also engaging broader social, cultural, cognitive, and comparative dimensions of kinship research. Topics covered include a wide range of kinship-based cross-cultural practices, ranging from incest, marriage, and avoidance relationships to kin terms, succession, and contemporary forms of motherhood, fatherhood, and family.

Approached from the perspective of the cumulative building of knowledge grounded in cross-cultural ethnography and comparative theoretical analyses, kinship is of primal importance across multiple dimensions of humankind. The journal is dedicated to the study of kinship in all of its facets, is international in scope, and publishes original work in English, though submissions in other languages may be considered on a case-by-case basis.