Paper short abstract:

This paper builds on earlier surveys of fosterage and milk kinship in western Eurasia, indicating how historiographies and ethnographies of such adoptive kinship may crucially elucidate otherwise imperceptible processes of structural assortment underpinning feudatory power relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper builds on a series of historical surveys of fosterage and adoptive kinship in western Eurasia, published in "Comparative Studies in Society and History" and in "Social Anthropology" over the past five years.*

*Parkes, P. 2001. Alternative Social Structures and Foster Relations in the Hindu Kush: Milk Kinship Allegiance in Former Mountain Kingdoms of Northern Pakistan. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43: 4-36.

----- 2003. Fostering Fealty: A Comparative Analysis of Tributary Allegiances of Adoptive Kinship. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45: 741-82.

----- 2004a. Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend: When Milk was Thicker than Blood? Comparative Studies in Society and History 46: 587-615.

----- 2004b. Milk Kinship in Southeast Europe. Alternative Social Structures and Foster Relations in the Caucasus and the Balkans. Social Anthropology 12: 341-58.

----- 2005. Milk Kinship in Islam. Substance, Structure, History. Social Anthropology 13: 307-29.

----- 2006. Celtic Fosterage: Adoptive Kinship and Clientage in Northwest Europe. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, 2.