The genealogical model has a long-standing history in Western thought. The contributors to this volume consider the ways in which assumptions about the genealogical model-in particular, ideas concerning sequence, essence, and transmission-structure other modes of practice and knowledge-making in domains well beyond what is normally labeled "kinship." The detailed ethnographic work and analysis included in this text explores how these assumptions have been built into our understandings of race, personhood, ethnicity, property relations, and the relationship between human beings and non-human species. The authors explore the influences of the genealogical model of kinship in wider social theory and examine anthropology's ability to provide a unique framework capable of bridging the "social" and "natural" sciences. In doing so, this volume brings fresh new perspectives to bear on contemporary theories concerning biotechnology and its effect upon social life.

James Leach is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. Published works include Creative Land: Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea (2003), Reite Plants: An Ethnobotanical Study in Tok Pisin and English (2010, with Porer Nombo), and Recognising and Translating Knowledge, 2012 Anthropological Forum Special Issue, ed with R. Davis).

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Pedigrees of Knowledge: Anthropology and the Genealogical Method
Sandra Bamford and James Leach

Chapter 2. Aborescent Culture: Writing and Not Writing Race Horse Pedigrees
Rebecca Cassidy

Chapter 3. When Blood Matters: Making Kinship in Colonial Kenya
Teresa Holmes

Chapter 4. The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine
Gisli Pálsson

Chapter 5. Genes, Mobilities and the Enclosures of Capital: Contesting Ancestry and its Applications in Iceland
Hilary Cunningham

Chapter 6. Skipping a Generation and Assisted Kinship
Jeanette Edwards

Chapter 7. 'Family Trees' among the Kamea of Papua New Guinea: A Non-Genealogical Approach to Imagining Relatedness
Sandra Bamford

Chapter 8. Knowledge as Kinship: Mutable Essence and the Significance of Transmission on the Rai Coast of PNG
James Leach

Chapter 9. Stories Against Classification: Transport, Wayfaring and the Integration of Knowledge
Tim Ingold

Chapter 10. Revealing and Obscuring Rivers's Pedigrees: Biological Inheritance and Kinship in Madagascar
Rita Astuti

Chapter 11. The Gift and the Given: Three Nano-Essays on Kinship and Magic
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Notes on contributors
Bibliography
Index