A Reflection on the Gendered Implications of What Kinship Is

Kinship, 2022

The world of anthropology has witnessed a recurring rhetorical title:"What Is Kinship All About?" and now this article titles itself "What is Kinship All About? Again." Why? Whereas we have over a century's worth of ethnography and theory focusing on the centrality of kinship in human society and in anthropological theory, in 2019 a Handbook is published that names itself "Kinship" but, despite its claim and to the contrary, it is not about kinship at all. The Handbook editor explicitly states that it is about "conceiving kinship," with kinship reduced to gendered social relatedness. In response, we reaffirm the centrality of kinship as a domain universal in human societies by way of a critique of the Handbook and a comprehensive review of its contributing chapters. Countering the Handbook's denialist-or in Harold Scheffler's famous term, dismantling-position, we bring to the fore the already determined universal properties that define the boundaries of the kinship domain and the logical properties that universally define the category of kinship.

Kinship, 2022

The world of anthropology has witnessed a recurring rhetorical title:"What Is Kinship All About?" and now this article titles itself "What is Kinship All About? Again." Why? Whereas we have over a century's worth of ethnography and theory focusing on the centrality of kinship in human society and in anthropological theory, in 2019 a Handbook is published that names itself "Kinship" but, despite its claim and to the contrary, it is not about kinship at all. The Handbook editor explicitly states that it is about "conceiving kinship," with kinship reduced to gendered social relatedness. In response, we reaffirm the centrality of kinship as a domain universal in human societies by way of a critique of the Handbook and a comprehensive review of its contributing chapters. Countering the Handbook's denialist-or in Harold Scheffler's famous term, dismantling-position, we bring to the fore the already determined universal properties that define the boundaries of the kinship domain and the logical properties that universally define the category of kinship.

Kinship and Behavior in Primates (Chapais & Berman, eds.), 2004

On the Politics of Kinship, 2022

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory. Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state-sanctioned institution, while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the generation of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble, and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today. On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, feminists, anthropologists, and social scientists in general.

2019

With the emergence of modern reproductive technologies, issues of kinship and family relations have returned as objects of controversial sociocultural, political and juridical debates. Current societal interest in genetics, epigenetics and DNA research indicates a trend to renaturalising kinship and subjecthood based on genetic bonds and genealogy. In various academic disciplines, this trend has been received critically. The interdisciplinary conference, organised by Inge Kroppenberg, Nikolaus Linder and Barbara Schaff (all Göttingen), brought together various researchers from the fields of anthropology, bioethics, law, political science, literature, gender and sociology to unfold the versatile facets of how Western kinship was and is negotiated. The first panel Concepts and Theories, chaired by Barbara Schaff, was opened by SUSANNE LETTOW (Berlin) who outlined historical and philosophical considerations on kinship concepts. Initiated by the transformation of family structures in th...

Czech Sociological Review

Two major positions have emerged in the debate about the nature of kinship. One argues that kinship can only be analysed from the framework of the biological necessities of human reproduction. The other argues that this position is nothing more than ethnocentric view of kinship derived from European culture and that only a broader cultural approach can provide a meaningful analysis of kinship. In this approach it is necessary to analyse kinship around the world from a perspective derived from within each different culture. Recent developments have pointed out the inadequacies of both of these positions and call for a new approach to kinship. This article suggests one possible approach that goes beyond the debate between biology and culture. It based upon the complementarity of human social behaviour.

Social Anthropology, 2008

The claims of the so-called 'constructionist' position in kinship studies are examined with reference to a recent article by Susan McKinnon. McKinnon's analysis is shown to be deeply flawed, primarily because she pays no attention to the phenomenon of focality, now widely established in cognitive science. Instead, she is trapped in unsupportable collectivist models of human kinship. It is argued that these models are part of a misguided critique of the Western European Enlightenment.

The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality, 2023

Focusing on key themes, this chapter highlights how kinship and relatedness constitute a vital lens for understanding gender. First, the everyday is the principal ground for examining relatedness. It illumines how gender shapes our lives and is, in turn, formed, maintained, and altered over time. The borders between gender and other aspects of life can be porous. Second, the seemingly merely domestic or intimate can be generative – a theme that builds on earlier feminist insights. Kinship has wider consequences, including for politics or economics. Finally, kinship is imbued with the potential for hierarchy and inequality, ambivalence, ruptures, and failure. Its generativity includes its less amiable aspects. Gendered inequities and enmities arise from these aspects. Breaks in the fabric of kinship, however, imply the possibility of repair, which may depend on gendered forms of labor. Threading through these themes is care, a key aspect of everyday life and relatedness alike. Care encompasses whole economies and traverses national borders. Care speaks, too, to the vulnerability that is at the heart of what it means to be human. It mirrors, and at times heightens, the difficulties inherent in kinship.