Even the most superficial observer would not make the mistake of thinking that kinship is unimportant to West Indians. Much has been written about the ‘looseness’ of family relations, about sexual promiscuity and about the inadequacies of child rearing, but it is generally acknowledged that family ties are both strong and extensive. Before we try to resolve the seeming paradox of coexistent strength and looseness it is necessary to get a clearer idea of the way in which our informants think and talk about kinship. What is a relative? How do kinship ties arise? What are the obligations of kinship and how do they vary? It is commonly assumed that there are differences in family structure as between classes and races, but there has been no attempt to discover whether the concepts of kinship and family are uniform throughout these societies, and whether the same terms mean the same thing to different sections of the population.