What's in a Relative Household and Family in Formentera [Hardcover]

In this ground-breaking study based on ethnographic research in Formentera, in the Balearic Islands, the author demonstrates that European kinship can become central to anthropological explanation once it is understood from a symbolic and cultural perspective. This book is an outstanding example of ethnographic analysis which is sensitive to the findings of demographic and historical research.

Joan Bestard-Camps Lecturer in Social Anthropology,University of Barcelona

Translated from the Spanish by Robert Pitt

Preface
Josep Llobera

I
Introduction
Kinship in Formentera
Paradoxes in the study of kinship
Family history
The complex structures of kinship

II
Systems of Classification
Names and naming ritual
Genealogies, names and family memory
The name of the house
Ideas about kinship and the language of community

III Household Forms
The model of the peasant family
Family and residence: morphology and functions
The structure of the residential group (1875-1955)
a) Household composition
b) Types of kin beyond the conjugal nucleus
The domestic cycle
a) Household composition and age of Ego
b) Phases in the domestic cycle
c) Transformations in household composition

IV
Ways of Living: Past and Present
The domestic space
The houses of emigrants
Continuity: the `porxo', multifunctional space
The break in the present: family time and social time

V
Household Reproduction
The house as social representation
Patrimonial lines and the conjugal fund
The matrimonial domain
Marriages between consanguine kin and the significance of matrimonial prohibitions
Close matrimonial strategies
Appendix
Census of surnames on Formentera in 1934
Bibliography
Index

...[a] finely crafted study...suitable for advanced undergraduates and up. Choice

...this is surely a seminal work in the canon of Spanish ethnography. Britisló½