This innovative book takes a look at the anthropology of kinship and the comparative study of relatedness. Kinship has historically been central to the discipline of anthropology but what sort of future does it have? What is the impact of recent studies of reproductive technologies, of gender, and of the social construction of science in the West? What significance does public anxiety about the family, or new family forms in the West have for anthropology's analytic strategies? The study of kinship has rested on a distinction between the 'biological' and the 'social'. But recent technological developments have made this distinction no longer self-evident. What does this imply about the comparison of kinship institutions cross-culturally? Janet Carsten gives an approachable view of the past, present, and future of kinship in anthropology, which will be of interest not just to anthropologists but to social scientists generally.
Malays on the island of Langkawi become complete persons, that is, kin, through living and consuming together in houses. Identity and substance are mutable and fluid. These perceptions suggest a processual view of kinship and personhood. They challenge anthropological definitions of kinship, which focus on procreation and which assume a universal division between the “biological” and the “social. ” [Malay, kinship, personhood, feeding, social, biological]
This article, based on research in Scotland, discusses reunions between adults who have been adopted in infancy, and their birth kin. Although the distinction between ‘biological’ and ‘social’ kinship, which is central to the anthropological analysis of kinship, is clearly relevant to experiences of reunions, as it is to adoption more generally, this analytic focus is disrupted by issues of temporality, biographical completion, and memory, which both motivate and are raised by reunions. Narratives about adoption reunions can be used to illuminate the connections between these different themes. I explore the implications of these both for experiences of kinship in the West more generally and for the anthropological analysis of kinship.
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