This chapter suggests that gender provides a link between studies of kinship and studies of honour and shame, and that by integrating these fields progress can be made towards generating new proposals for anthropological research. It examines some of the limitations of the Mediterranean literature on honour and shame in order to propose a broader comparative perspective than that offered by the concept of 'the Mediterranean'. The chapter considers the study of kinship, which, as anthropologists inevitably point out, has been central to the discipline since the nineteenth century. Anthropological research in the Mediterranean has been largely concerned with small-scale communities and traditional cultural values. Many anthropologists have felt uncomfortable with the constraints and limitations of the dominant anthropological discourse on the Mediterranean. The importance of Catholicism at both institutional and individual levels should not be underestimated. Peristiany identified family structures as a central area of Mediterranean research.