Description
Clarendon Press The Heat of the Hearth The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community by Janet Carsten
In this text, the author offers a very personal investigation of the nature of kinship in Malaysia, based upon her own experience of life as a foster daughter in a family on the island of Langkawi. She shows that Malay kinship is a process, not a state: it is determined partly by birth, but also throughout life by living together and sharing food. She provides the reader with an "anthropology of everyday life", including a compelling view of gender relations. She also urges reassessment of recent anthropological work on gender, and a new approach to the study of kinship.