ABSTRACT
For much of this book we have been adducing examples of kinship structures, and customary patterns of conduct associated with them, that might seem relatively remote to readers brought up in North America or parts of Europe. The Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea are indeed very distant from Essex in England, the Lowlands of Scotland, or Pennsylvania and its environs in the United States. The primary reason for studying kinship in parts of the world such as Papua New Guinea, Africa, and Southeast Asia is that extended kin relations are very prominent in them. By contrast, kin relations in industrialized nations are often said to be truncated in scope, that is, kinship is seen as no longer the basis of social structure and consequently is not of major importance as a topic. Moreover, even in places where kinship was previously the centerpiece of anthropological investigations, the emphasis for a while shifted elsewhere: to modernization and development, political identities, religious movements, and the like.
