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Child Fostering in West Africa: New Perspectives on Theory and Practices . Edited by Erdmute Alber , Jeannett Martin , and Catrien Notermans . Leiden, Netherlands : Brill , 2013. Pp. xii + 250. $82/[euro]59, paperback (ISBN 9789004250574 ).
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This volume had its genesis in a workshop on child fostering held in Bayreuth, Germany, in 2007. The editors and majority of the contributors are social anthropologists, concerned to unite theoretical and empirical studies of child fosterage (the term they favour, although not exclusively) in West Africa. The book is divided into two main sections, preceded by an editors' Introduction. In Part One, 'Perspectives on Theories', two classic papers are reprinted, representing the British structural-functional, descent-school of kinship studies and French structuralist, alliance theories. These are Ester Goody's 1982 chapter, 'A Framework for the Analysis of Parent Roles' from her book Parenthood and Social Reproduction. Fostering and Occupational Roles in West Africa and a translation from the original French of Suzanne Lallemand's 1988 article 'Adoption, Fosterage, and Alliance'. In the third and final chapter in Part One, 'The Transfer of Belonging: Theories on Child Fostering in West Africa Reviewed', Erdmute Alber...