Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship

Bringing together the work of anthropologists and historians, this volume, first published in 1984, challenges the notion that interests and emotions are polar opposites, and questions how far the history of the family in Europe and America can be organized around the central trend of 'sentimentalization'. Individual chapters examine in a comparative perspective the use of kin; property relations inheritance; family exploitation of labor; claims, demands, and expectations with respect to kin; the emotional economy of familial obligations; and family and the reproduction of social and class relations. Several chapters discuss relations among close family members, examining the ways in which property and labor organization are related to conflicts, personal interest, and the patterning of emotional response.