Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship

Lewis Henry Morgan of Rochester, New York, lawyer and pioneering anthropologist, was the leading American contributor of his generation to the social sciences. Among the classic works whose conjunction in the 1860s gave modern anthropology its shape, Morgan’s massive and technical Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family was decisive. Thomas R. Trautmann offers a new interpretation of the genesis of “kinship” and of the role it played in late nineteenth-century intellectual history. This Bison Books edition features a new introduction and appendices by the author.

Thomas R. Trautmann is a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of several books, including Dravidian Kinship, Aryans and British India, The Aryan Debate, and Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras.