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Close Marriages and Distinct Lives: Kinship and Gender in the European Countryside
| Two striking statistical findings from the KASS research project are (i) that women’s responsibility for domestic labour (an indicator of their association with the domestic realm) is particularly marked in localities where kinship ties are spatially clustered, and (ii) that spatially clustered kinship ties are most common in rural areas and, particularly, among families involved with farming.
This combination of themes has a long history in anthropology. It was first highlighted by Germaine Tillion and has since diverged into two theoretical streams – one, characteristically Mediterraneanist, associated with the much criticised paradigm of honour and shame and the other, following on Goody’s work, connected with ideas of property and inheritance strategies.
In this paper I ask whether and why these paradigms might still be relevant to contemporary Europe – and draw on ethnography to suggest some tentative answers.
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