Redefining Kinship: Exploring Boundaries of Relatedness in Late Medieval New Romney

Abstract

This article employs anthropological theory to revisit historical approaches to the study of social relations—not solely in terms of family, kinship, and household but within the whole range of interactions that make up people’s lives. It focuses on the affective and reciprocal nature of relationships: encompassing notions of symbolic capital and reciprocal values to highlight distinctions between discourse and practice within inheritance strategies. Using testamentary material for the small Cinque Port town of New Romney during the late medieval period, it utilizes a single case study. By adopting the concepts of micro-history, it explores, qualitatively, the cultural construction of identity and thus seeks to gain a more informed understanding of the complexities of relatedness.