Since the publication of Philippe Arièss book,Centuries of Childhood, in the early 1960s, there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. A central aspect of the debate relates the story of the family to implicit notions of modernization, with the rise of the nuclear family in the West as part of its economic and political success. During the past decade, however, that synthesis has begun to break down. Historians have begun to examine kinship - the way individual families are connected to each other through marriage and descent - finding that during the most dynamic period in European industrial development, class formation, and state reorganization, Europe became a kinship hot society. The essays in this volume explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the eighteenth century - in an effort to reset the agenda in family history.
Glossary
Preface
Chapter 1. Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long-Term Development
David Warren Sabean andSimon Teuscher
Chapter 2. Bringing it All Back Home: Kinship Theory in Anthropology
Sylvia J. Yanagisako
TRANSITION 1: FROM MEDIEVAL TO EARLY MODERN KINSHIP PATTERNS
Outline and Summaries
Chapter 3. Lordship, Kinship, and Inheritance among the German High Nobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Karl-Heinz Spiess
Chapter 4. Politics of Kinship in the City of Bern at the End of the Middle Ages
Simon Teuscher
Chapter 5. Sisters,Aunts, and Cousins: Familial Architectures and the Political Field in Early Modern Europe
Michaela Hohkamp
Chapter 6. Political Power, Inheritance, and Kinship Relations: The Unique Features of Southern France (SixteenthEighteenth Centuries)
Bernard Derouet
Chapter 7. The Making of Stability: Kinship, Church, and Power among the Rhenish Imperial Knighthood, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Christophe Duhamelle
Chapter 8. Rights and Ties that Bind: Mothers, Children, and the State in Tuscany during the Early Modern Period
Giulia Calvi
Chapter 9. Kinship, Marriage, and Politics
Gérard Delille
TRANSITION 2: FROM EARLY MODERN TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY KINSHIP PATTERNS
Outline and Summaries
Chapter 10. Kinship and Mobility: Migrant Networks in Europe
Laurence Fontaine
Chapter 11. Kin Marriages: Trends and Interpretations from the Swiss Example
Jon Mathieu
Chapter 12. Kinship and Gender: Property, Enterprise, and Politics
Elisabeth Joris
Chapter 13. Kinship, Civil Society, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Vannes
Christopher H. Johnson
Chapter 14. Middle-Class Kinship in Nineteenth-Century Hungary
Gábor Gyáni
Chapter 15. Kinship and Class Dynamics in Nineteenth-Century Europe
David Warren Sabean
Notes on Contributors
Index
