Since the publication of Philippe Ariès' book, 'Centuries of Childhood', there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. The essays in this text explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the 18th century.

"In this volume the authors examine the history of the family during the twentieth century in the context of political struggles over the welfare state, gender roles and parental authority. They ask how far political measures have contributed to changes in family life, and whether these should be understood as a weakening, or as a redefinition of traditional kinship roles."--

Introduction : rethinking European kinship : transregional and transnational families / David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher -- The historical emergence and massification of international families in Europe and its diaspora / Jose C. Moya -- The medieval and early modern experience -- Mamluk and Ottoman political households : an alternative model of "kinship" and 'family' / Gabriel Piterberg -- From local signori to European high nobility : the Gonzaga family networks in the fifteenth century / Christina Antenhofer -- Property regimes and migration of patrician families in western Europe around 1500 / Simon Teuscher -- Trans-dynasticism at the dawn of the modern era : kinship dynamics among ruling families / Michaela Hohkamp -- Marriage, commercial capital, and business agency : transregional Sephardic (and Armenian) families in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mediterranean / Francesca Trivellato -- Those in between : princely families on the margins of the great powers : the Franco-German frontier, 1477-1830 / Jonathan Spangler -- Spiritual kinship : the Moravians as an international fellowship of brothers and sisters (1730s-1830s) / Gisele Mettele -- Modernity -- Families of empires and nations : Phanariot Hanedans from the Ottoman Empire to the world around it (1669-1856) / Christine Philliou -- Into the world : kinship and nation-building in France, 1750-1885 / Christopher H. Johnson -- German international families in the nineteenth century : the Siemens -- Family as a thought experiment / David Warren Sabean -- The culture of Caribbean migration to Britain in the 1950s / Mary -- Chamberlain -- Exile, familial ideology, and gender roles in Palestinian camps in Jordan since 1948 / Stephanie Latte Abdallah -- Mirror image of family relations : social links between patel migrants in Britain and India / Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel.

An original theory asserts that this distinctive form of kinship system developed in the northern Mediterranean around the fourth century A.D., and that its subsequent growth can be attributed to the efforts of the early Christian Church to acquire property formerly held by domestic groups.

Instead of seeing the family as a 'monolithic' entity, as though separate from its surroundings, this new approach draws attention to assemblages of various types that in different constellations and through different transactions relate people to each other as families and kin.

Explains why successful states and empires have developed by fostering collaboration between families and dynasties, and the state.

This handbook provides a meaningful overview of topical themes within family sociology as an academic field as well as empirical realities in various societal contexts across Europe. More than sixty prominent European scholars’ original texts present the field’s main theoretical and methodological approaches in addition to issues such as families as relationships, parental arrangements, parenting practices and child well-being, family policies in welfare state regimes, family lives in migration, and family trajectories. Presenting cutting-edge research on findings, theoretical interpretations, and solutions to methodological challenges, it is a timely tool for researchers, teachers, students, and family practitioners who wish to familiarise themselves with the state of family sociology in Europe.

While kinship is among the basic organizing principles of all human life, its role in and implications for international politics and relations have been subject to surprisingly little exploration in International Relations (IR) scholarship. This volume is the first volume aimed at thinking systematically about kinship in IR – as an organizing principle, as a source of political and social processes and outcomes, and as a practical and analytical category that not only reflects but also shapes politics and interaction on the international political arena. Contributors trace everyday uses of kinship terminology to explore the relevance of kinship in different political and cultural contexts and to look at interactions taking place above, at and within the state level. The book suggests that kinship can expand or limit actors’ political room for maneuvereon the international political arena, making some actions and practices appear possible and likely, and others less so. As an analytical category, kinship can help us categorize and understand relations between actors in the international arena. It presents itself as a ready-made classificatory system for understanding how entities within a hierarchy are organized in relation to one another, and how this logic is all at once natural and social.

Recently considerable interest has developed about the degree to which anthropological approaches to kinship can be used for the study of the long-term development of European history. From the late middle ages to the dawn of the twentieth century, kinship - rather than declining, as is often assumed - was twice reconfigured in dramatic ways and became increasingly significant as a force in historical change, with remarkable similarities across European society. Applying interdisciplinary approaches from social and cultural history and literature and focusing on sibling relationships, this volume takes up the challenge of examining the systemic and structural development of kinship over the long term by looking at the close inner-familial dynamics of ruling families (the Hohenzollerns), cultural leaders (the Mendelssohns), business and professional classes, and political figures (the Gladstones)in France, Italy, Germany, and England. It offers insight into the current issues in kinship studies and draws from a wide range of personal documents: letters, autobiographies, testaments, memoirs, as well as genealogies and works of art.