This book is the first of a projected three-part work that examines West Indian kinship, and the studies that have been made of it, over the past thirty or forty years. In this initial volume I present the findings of a number of genealogical studies carried out in Jamaica and Guyana, using them to question certain orthodox assumptions about class differences in West Indian kinship. In order to interpret these data adequately it has been necessary to consider some aspects of the historical development of kinship, and of kinship studies, in the West Indies, and to touch upon a number of theoretical issues that underly the direction taken by this analysis. In the second part of the projected work I shall present material derived from a twenty-five-year longitudinal study of two villages in Guyana – one Afro-Guyanese and one Indo-Guyanese – a study that also leads to a reconsideration of many accepted ideas about lower class kinship in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The final work will review the development of kinship studies in the Caribbean over the period since the ending of World War II and suggest some of its implications for kinship theory generally, and for the study of Afro-American kinship in particular.

I am indebted to many people who have contributed to the making of this book. To the National Science Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Lichtstern Memorial Fund Committee who provided funds at various stages that made possible the field research and writing.