The Matrifocal Family: Power, Pluralism and Politics

Raymond T. Smith is Professor and Chairman in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He has studied kinship, class and race in Guyana, South America, Jamaica and Ghana, and has taught at universities in the West Indies, Canada and the United States, where he has been Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago since 1966. He is the author of Kinship and Class in the West Indies (1988), and co-author of Class Differences in American Kinship (1978).

Chapter 1 Introduction; Part 1 Kinship and Family Structure; Chapter 2 Hypotheses and the Problem of Explanation (1956); Chapter 3 Culture and Social Structure in the Caribbean (1963); Chapter 4 The Matrifocal Family (1973); Chapter 5 Hierarchy and the Dual Marriage System in West Indian Society (1987); Chapter 6 Family, Social Change, and Social Policy in the West Indies (1982); Part 2 Conflict and Difference: Race, Culture, and Politics; Chapter 7 Plural Society Theory (1966); Chapter 8 Caste and Social Status Among the Indians of Guyana (1967); Chapter 9 Race and Class in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean (1982); Chapter 10 Living in the Gun Mouth: Race, Class, and Political Violence in Guyana (1995); Chapter 11 On the Disutility of the Notion of “Ethnic Group” for Understanding Status Struggles in the Modern World (1995);