A. L. Kroeber and the New Kinship Studies

In his classic 1909 article, ‘Classificatory systems of relationship’, A. L. Kroeber argued for a universal procreative or genealogical grid that is largely independent of external causation and therefore directly revelatory of the structure of the human mind. Kroeber's argument is brought to bear upon the so-called ‘new kinship studies', particularly upon the lack of such a grid posited in these studies, and is shown to be ethnographically more sensitive. It is, moreover, philosophically more liberating, precisely because it posits the mind's independent activity.