Genealogical Relatedness: Geographies of Shared Descent and Difference

Abstract

This paper explores genealogy through a focus on what I describe as the idea of genealogical relatedness. This is a model of human relations which emphasizes relationships between people defined through the reckoning of connections based on birth and parentage. I offer a geographical analytical framework for exploring both popular genealogy and ideas of genealogical relatedness, shared descent and difference. It is one that both attends to the variety of ways that collective identity is defined or explored through genealogy and is alert to the troubling nature of genealogical categorizations and differentiations especially those which are figured in terms of concepts that seem to be most progressive, including ideas hybridity, diversity, and universal humanity.Keywords: genealogy; kinship; difference; descent The Trouble with GenealogyIn a context in which the genealogy has come to be an enormously popular cultural practice both in terms of personal family history research and interest in the family histories of others on TV, and is increasingly the subject of scholarly interest, it might seem odd to suggest that it is a cause of any kind of "trouble." However, the trouble I suggest here is twofold. One is the challenge to adequately address the complex, contrasting and multiple dimensions of genealogy, as both a mode of understanding human relationships and social orderings and as a popular practice. This means attending to the historical and geographical contingencies with shape these understandings, orderings and practices and their implications and elucidating what can be generalized about genealogy in this broad sense. My reference to "trouble" here is about "going to the trouble" to develop an analytical framework that fosters careful attention to the complexities of genealogy and provides the conceptual tools to explore the broad and specific effects of genealogical imaginaries and practices on the ways in which individuals and groups understand themselves and their relationships with others.The second trouble with genealogy is more specific. It is the problem of the model of relatedness that is at the heart of genealogy. Genealogy can be usefully understood as both a description of a set of relationships, as in someone "having a genealogy," and a practice of researching and recording those relationships. The relationships that constitute genealogy are relationships between people defined through the reckoning of connections based on birth and parentage. The trouble I allude to here, and will address in what follows, is the way in which extended genealogical relationships and shared ancestry have defined and continue to affect categories of collective identity, and the implications of assuming a natural correlation between these genealogical relationships and social and cultural closeness and distance. This is particularly a concern about the continued power idea of the nation as a community of shared descent even if inflected by multicultural discourses of diversity. However, as I will argue in...

Receiving, or ‘Adopting’, Donated Embryos to Have Children: Parents Narrate and Draw Kinship Boundaries

“…Genealogical techniques have rarely been employed in social science research (Nash 2017). When discussing the absence of genealogy in research studies, Nash noted the tension between the radical demographic potential of genealogical research and the traditional pull of essentialist ideas about kinship, which might be emphasized in visual depiction.…”

Family Genealogy’s Contributions to the Philosophical Problem of Birth

“…Although knowledge of the culture, local history, religion, politics, and so on, may be a factor in eliciting such connections, this is not necessary and certainly not sufficient for these kinds of connections. This is not the same as viewing a place as a badge of honor or ticket for club membership, power, or honorifics (Nash 2017). Additionally, although place attachment may have played a vital role in the lives of ancestors, the genealogist cannot hope to catch more than an inkling of this unless she has resided in the same place.…”

Family History: Fact versus Fiction

“…Bella's Legacy is a fictional family saga, covering four generations in Midwestern America from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries (see Figure 1). Geography was a defining feature in their lives as emphasized by (Nash 2017) in her discussion of the profound impact that places have on family history. As she points out, whether staying or moving between places, these locations are as important to family history as dates.…”