Gutman s examination of other facets of kinship also produces important findings. Gutman discovers that cousins rarely married, an exogamous tendency that contrasted sharply with the endogamy practiced by the plantation owners. This preference for exogamy, Gutman suggests, may have derived from West African rules governing marriage, which, though they differed from one tribal group to another, all involved some kind of prohibition against unions with close kin. This taboo against cousins marrying is important, argues Gutman, because it is one of many indications of a strong awareness among slaves of an extended kinship network. The fact that distantly related kin would care for children separated from their families also suggests this awareness. When blood relationships were few, as in newly created plantations in the Southwest, fictive kinship arrangements took their place until a new pattern of consanguinity developed. Gutman presents convincing evidence that this extended kinship structure which he believes developed by the mid-to-late eighteenth century provided the foundations for the strong communal consciousness that existed among slaves.
In sum, Gutman s study is significant because it offers a closely reasoned and original explanation of some of the slaves achievements, one that correctly emphasizes the resources that slaves themselves possessed.
20. According to the passage, Fogel, Engerman, Genovese, and Gutman have all done which of the following?
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