One family: defining kinship in the neighbourhoods of Kumasi, Ghana

What is it about?

Using interviews and a case study, this paper explores how Asante people's ideas about what it means to be family and what it means to be good neighbours are connected in Kumasi, Ghana.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

This paper shows two things: first, that people can use claims of shared kinship as ways of creating kinship in contentious or new relationships. What allows these claims to make sense is their reference to the matrilineal Asante kinship system. Thus, the second thing this paper shows is that the critique of lineal kinship theory as the product of anthropologists' ethnocentric imposition of British kinship is overstated.