Reading the abstract of David McKnight's "Going the Whiteman's Way: kinship and marriage among Australian Aborigines", I got the impression that kinship rules as a dominat way to organise cultures are going to be outdated. Therefore the anthropology of kinship seemed like an oldfashioned way of studying cultures. But in a recent debate, I came to the conclusion that maybe kinship rules turn out to be inappropriate only in areas of classical anthopological fieldwork (like the study of the Aborigines in Australia) but seem to be very up to date if we turn our focus on new areas of fieldwork such as the political system of the United States: The Kennedys and the Bushs are extremly rich families, who established members of their families in leading positions. That raises the question if kinship is a dominant way of establishing power in a political system like the United States? And more: Is it worth looking at such families and analyze them with the tools of classical kinship anthropology ? Any anthropologists known who have done that ? Going the Whiteman's Way

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