Our understanding of what makes a person a relative has been transformed by radical changes in marriage arrangements and gender relations, and by new reproductive technologies. We can no longer take it for granted that our most fundamental social relationships are grounded in "biology" or "nature." Examining the idioms of relatedness in other societies, and ways in which relationship is symbolized and interpreted in our own society, this book challenges established analytic categories of anthropology, and brings into question the received wisdom at the heart of the study of kinship.