Kinship

Abstract

This chapter urges critical agrarian studies to pay more analytical attention to kinship, currently either ignored or inadequately analyzed and theorized. This concern emerges from African agrarian studies, though it is as relevant in other regions. Two cases in African agrarian studies show how misrepresentations and misconceived conclusions derive from lack of analysis of kinship and descent relations. A sample of evidence beyond Africa shows how kinship and descent interact with differences of gender, age/seniority, ethnicity, wealth and class, and with broader political economic processes in shaping agrarian life, from rural livelihoods to state formation.