Rosalie Stolz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Anthropology at Heidelberg University. In her ethnographic research, focused on Southeast Asia (and Laos in particular), she specializes in the topics of houses, kinship, sociality and socio-economic change. As well as being published recently on kinship, spirits and houses, she is co-editor of a volume on Being a Parent in the Field.
Books by this author
Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits
Sociality among the Khmu of Northern Laos
- An intimate study of how kinship and sociality is lived on the ground in rural Laos today.
- Bridges the knowledge and conceptual heritage of classical ethnography and the concerns and questions of new kinship studies with rich findings from extensive fieldwork.
- Significant addition to the field of Khmu (Kammu) studies with the first ethnographic study of kinship among this upland minority group.
How can we conceive of kinship and sociality in the rapidly transforming uplands of mainland Southeast Asia? How to write about kinship in a way that neither falls into the trap of taking for granted kinship phenomena nor ignores the body of knowledge from earlier research? This in-depth study uses its rich findings from extensive fieldwork among the Khmu, upland dwellers of northern Laos, to bridge the divide between classical ethnography and modern approaches to kinship studies.
Here, the author offers a fresh perspective on kinship by, first of all, stepping backwards and delving into how it is actually lived locally in northern Laos. She highlights that not only the beginning of life but also its ending deserves our attention when considering the relevance of kinship. Indeed, to a considerable extent, living kinship is about death. The context of kinship and sociality among the Khmu is significant here, these being framed by ties of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage and patrilineal descent – concepts on which this study casts new light.