Kinship Networks, Local Government, and Elections in a Town in Southwest Germany, 1800-1850

Abstract

1 Carola LippThis article is based on the thesis that kinship structures were an important element of communal politics and were thus inscribed into the political system of even early constitutionalism. The investigation presented covers an important change in the political culture from the Ancien Régime to the modern constitutional state in southwest Germany, and it raises the question of whether election processes affected traditional structures of representation based on kinship relationships and the ascription of political competence to an elite of notables. The analysis of kinship networks within the city council and city deputation, however, comes to the opposite conclusion-that kinship networks survive even in a system where each year people were newly elected. The analysis of voters' alignments along kinship lines also demonstrates the power and persistence of kinship structures in the early nineteenth century and reflects the differences between kinship mobilization within agriculturally bound and urban artisan groups.Many kinship studies in historical cultural anthropology focus on the internal structure of families, households, and coresident kin 2 and analyze kinship as a configuration with its own "meaning." 3 They are interested in strategies of marriage and social placement, in the formation of alliances through interlinking kin, and in the transmission of property in the form of dowries, patrimonies, and other forms of inheritance. 4 Their 347 Carola Lipp is Professor at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Goettingen. Her major field is the study of political culture in communities and different social groups. Her research also includes structured network analysis, demographic methods, and gender-related approaches to culture. Her most recent publications deal with networks in complex societies and with civil society and political mobilization.

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