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Carol Stack

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description Carol Stack Overview

Carol B. Stack is an American anthropologist whose research addresses African American communities, kinship, poverty, women and youth. Her 1974 book All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community is an ethnography of relationships and mutual support among Black residents living in poverty in an urban community. The study challenged interpretations that treated poverty as evidence of deficient family structure, and her later book Call To Home examined African Americans reclaiming the rural South.

[Yale News](https://news.yale.edu/2009/04/24/event-examine-how-book-all-our-kin-shaped-understanding-inequality-us)

help Carol Stack FAQ

What is Carol Stack's All Our Kin about?

All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community, published in 1974, describes kinship, friendship, and mutual support among African American residents of a poor urban community. Stack calls the community The Flats and shows how people managed daily needs through networks of exchange. [Source](https://books.google.com/books?id=4N91AAAAMAAJ)

What does swapping mean in All Our Kin?

Swapping refers to reciprocal exchanges of food, money, child care, clothing, and other practical help among people connected through kinship and friendship. Stack presents these exchanges as organized survival strategies rather than random acts of charity. [Source](https://lawlib.nyls.edu/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=270114)

How does Carol Stack describe child-keeping?

Child-keeping describes the way children could be cared for across a wider network of relatives, friends, and neighbors rather than only by a single nuclear household. In All Our Kin, this arrangement helped families respond to unstable work, housing, and income.

What argument did Stack make about poverty and family life?

Stack argued that close support networks should not be mistaken for evidence of disorder or family failure. Her 1974 ethnography showed how people created flexible domestic and kinship arrangements in response to economic insecurity. [Source](https://books.google.com/books?id=4N91AAAAMAAJ)

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