The journal is dedicated to the study of kinship in all of its facets, is international in scope, and will publish original work in English, though publications in other languages will be considered on a case-by-case basis. It offers a scholarly site for research publications dedicated to the ethnography and theory of kinship and covers current systematic efforts using new data or new ideas, including revisiting and reworking earlier assumptions in the field, in its four sub-disciplinary components - the biological, the sociocultural, the archeological and the linguistic.

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. 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.

Approached from the perspective of the cumulative building of knowledge that is grounded in cross-cultural ethnography and comparative theoretical analyses, kinship is of primal importance in the four subfields – the sociocultural, the linguistic, the biological, and the archeological. The Journal is dedicated to the study of kinship in all of its facets, is international in scope, and will publish original work in English, though publications in other languages will be considered on a case-by-case basis.