James D. Faubion (Ed.) the Ethics of Kinship: Ethnographic Inquiries (Book Review‪)‬

James D. Faubion (ed.) The Ethics of Kinship: Ethnographic Inquiries. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 277 pp. This is a book about the ethics of affect as manifested in kinship relations. James Faubion asked a number of one-time doctoral students of anthropology at Rice University (Texas) and two like-minded colleagues to write essays about their own personal experiences of kinship. The resulting collection is very welcome as it not only constitutes an interesting read in its own right but is also a contribution for the present renewal of debates in the anthropology of kinship. Each of the contributors chose to focus on some aspect of their own kinship history which they somehow problematized. The result is a number of fascinating essays dealing with what one might call the margins of kinship: (1) forgotten' relatives, manipulations of the law of kinship, clandestine "adoptions," love and hate, class and kinship, sibling cooperation and rivalry, sexual preference and legal family, etc., all accumulate to bring out a marvellously varied picture of middle-class kinship in the United States.