Système de parenté et histoire sociale : éléments pour un débat

Among recent works in the history of kinship, its ambition distinguished Gérard Delille’s one: its aim is to understand a European system of kinship and alliance between the Middle Ages and modern times, at the crossroads of history and anthropology. This article discusses the main elements of this system and the concept of kinship on which it is based. It presents then the major figures of the alliance who are at work there – consanguineous cycles of alliances, exchanges between alternating lines, replicated alliances with distant relatives, related by descent or by marriage –, in order to question the relationship between this system of alliance and the more general kinship system, which does not go without tensions. The article then discusses the place of kinship in relation to other social structures and the ways of looking at relationships between structures and contexts