A.B. De Haan - In The Shadow Of The Three

ISBN
   

Soort boek
Paperback

In the Shadow of the Tree explores the contradictory relations between kinship and commodities. Henk de Haan focuses on the lifeworlds of farm families, exemplifying their paradoxical position as owners and producers of highly valued commodities, on the one hand, while dismissing the significance of markets in their behavior toward property and labor on the other. This argument is illustrated by an in-depth study of inheritance patterns in the Netherlands. The author shows that property transactions in a kinship context express ideas about blood and home. He also shows that cultural and economic changes are potentially disruptive to indigenous exchange systems. This book is a highly relevant contribution to anthropological debates on the symbolic meaning of the material, the interrelations between production and kinship, the cultural construction of moral economies, and the meaning of tradition in a modern world.