Normally, social anthropology seems to be weak in its theory building. However, there are some areas which are rich in this regard. These areas include culture, evolution and kinship.
Recently, the area of social structure has also been theoretically strengthened. Social structure has reached the status of structuralism. The field of kinship has also witnessed radical changes during the last century.
It was Lewis Henry Morgan who took a keen interest in developing an elaborate classificatory kinship system.
He was the founding father of kinship terminology. Morgan’s theory was discovered by the British anthropologist, W.H.R. Rivers. Acknowledging the contribution of Rivers in properly interpretation kinship Meyer Fortes writes:
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It was a British anthropologist, W.H.R. Rivers, as all student of the subject know, whose rediscovery of Morgan restored him to his rightful place in the mainstream of anthropological scholarship and this was the beginning of a method and theory of research which took deep root in British anthropology.
Morgan’s kinship theory was further put to new heights by Levi-Strauss. We will in this section discuss the contributions of Morgan, Levi-Strauss and others to theoretical development of kinship.