The need to further refine the concepts of “family” and “household” in kinship studies is suggested by the organization of domestic group life in a peasant village in the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent. Family life in Leeward Village exhibits a variable and changing relation among family /household activities (sexual regulation, reproduction, economic cooperation, co-residence, and commensality) and the structures required to carry them out. It is argued that a form of domestic organization in which various functions and structures are either independent of or variably associated with each other provides poor villagers with much needed manoeuverability in family arrangements.
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