ABSTRACT
A ground-breaking ethnographic study of suckling in the Arabian Gulf , this book reenergises the study of kinship. It analyses the misunderstood and marginalized phenomenon of suckling drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Qatar over a seven-year period.
Fadwa El Guindi situates suckling (often given other names or subsumed under misleading classifications) squarely in the analytical category of kinship, with recognition that kinship is necessarily biological, societal and cultural. The volume takes kinship study beyond origins, nature-culture debates, and social nurturing and relatedness, and challenges claims of deterministic, reductionist formulas.
As well as key reading for those involved in milk kinship research, this book is valuable for
anthropologists, Middle East scholars and others with an interest in breastfeeding, family and social organisation, and religion.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |46 pages
Introduction
part I|30 pages
Metaphors from nature or naturalization of culture?
part II|40 pages
Kinship more fluid
part III|29 pages
Properties of kinship structure
part Reflections|6 pages
Reflections