Introduction to the Science of Kinship

Humans organize systems of social ideas through structures of kinship. In Introduction to the Science of Kinship, Murray J. Leaf and Dwight Read describe what those ideas are, how they are used, and what this implies for the science of human social organization.

In Introduction to the Science of Kinship, Murray J. Leaf and Dwight Read show how humans use specific systems of social ideas to organize their kinship relations and illustrate what this implies for the science of human social organization. Leaf and Read explain that every human society has multiple social organizations, each of which is associated with a distinct vocabulary. This vocabulary is associated with interrelated definitions of social roles and relations. These roles and relations have four specific logical properties: reciprocity, transitivity, boundedness, and imaginary spatial dimensionality. These properties allow individuals to use them in communication to create ongoing, agreed-upon, organizations. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and mathematics.

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments and Who Did What

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Path to the Kinship Apocalypse

Chapter 3: Theory of Organizations

Chapter 4: Kinship and Biology

Chapter 5: Kinship Maps

Chapter 6: Ideas Attached to Kinship Maps

Chapter 7: Domestic Group Organizations

Chapter 8: The Hopi

Chapter 9: The Purum

Chapter 10: The Dravidian Problem Transformed

Chapter 11: Kinship, Logic, and Mathematics

Chapter 12: Conclusion

Glossary

References

Index

About the Authors