After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures)

Central as kinship has been to the development of British social anthropology, this is the first attempt by an anthropologist to situate ideas about English kinship in a cultural context. Marilyn Strathern challenges the traditional separation of Western kinship studies from the study of the wider society. If contemporary society appears diverse, changing and fragmented, these same features also apply to people's ideas about kinship. She views ideas of relatedness, nature and the biological constitution of persons in their cultural context, and offers new insights into the late twentieth-century values of individualism and consumerism. After Nature is a timely reflection at a moment when advances in reproductive technology raise questions about the natural basis of kinship relations.