Within the Thicket of Intergenerational Sibling Relations

Abstract

Acting as a brother or a sister provides people with rights, but it also creates obligations and role expectations. Experiencing the powerful decisions of siblings (or parents’ siblings) can be a painful experience as well. But at the same time, siblings can maintain close and warm mutual relations, as often mentioned 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.