Reading: Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan
Radcliffe-Brown, "The Study of Kinship Systems"

Note on the Wolf reading: While you are responsible for the entire book, Chapter 3 is absolutely crucial, as this is where Wolf presents her idea of the uterine family. Pay attention as well to chapters 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, and 14.

1. What is Radcliffe-Brown's approach to studying kinship? What does he see as the relationship between kin terms and kinship as experienced in society? What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses to his approach?

2. According to Wolf, what is the uterine family? How does it relate to Chinese/Taiwanese patriarchy? Why does Wolf claim it poses a "near-fatal" weakness to the dominant kinship system? Do you agree?

3. Wolf argues that the uterine family "has no ideology, no formal structure, and no public existence, ...but it is no less real for all that" (37). If Taiwanese don't consciously acknowledge the existence of the uterine family, is Wolf justified in claiming that it does exist? Why or why not?

 

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