All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community

Carol Stack’s All Our Kin is the best analysis I have seen of family and kinship organization in a ghetto black community in the U.S. It shows how inadequate most writings on the subject have been, even by social scientists, and demonstrates the importance of the anthropological approach which emphasizes living with people, learning their way of seeing things, and learning how to operate acceptably in accordance with their standards for dealing with one another. Her book should be widely read by the general public and is ideally suited for use in introductory anthropology and sociology courses.