Within the Thicket of Intergenerational sibling Relation : A Case Study from Northern Benin.

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Alber, Erdmute:
Within the Thicket of Intergenerational sibling Relation : A Case Study from Northern Benin.
In: The Anthropology of Sibling Relations : Shared Parentage, Experience, and Exchange. - New York : Palgrave Macmillan , 2013 . - pp. 73-96
ISBN 978-1-137-33122-9

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Abstract in another language

Acting as a brother or a sister provides people with rights, but it also creates obligations and role expectations. Experiencing the powerful decesions of siblings (or parents' siblings) can be a painful experience als well. But at the same time, siblings can maintain close and warm mutual relations, as often mentionde in the literature, as well as remain resources to be mobilized in difficult moments of the life course. Thus sibling relations have to be seen as integral and powerful parts of the web of kinship that were often overlooked in the classical anthropological literature. And, as I want to show, it is sometimes sibling relations that make the web of kinship, as it was named by Meyer Fortes, a real thicket.