Kinship and a counter‐hegemonic social order: former revolutionaries in southern Oman

Abstract

Critical reinterpretations of kinship studies questioned earlier ideas that kinship relations reflect and reproduce a dominant social order. 'New' kinship studies have nevertheless shown how even non-traditional family forms can reproduce traditional ideas about relatedness, values, and social hierarchies. Promising grounds for resisting ongoing tendencies to link kinship with conservative social reproduction arise from better understanding the circumstances under which kinship relations reproduce a counter-hegemonic social order. Kinship practices of former militants of a defeated revolutionary liberation movement in Dhufar, Oman, make visible veterans' networks and relations which transgress dominant tribal, ethnic, racial, and gendered hierarchies. These practices show how, even in inauspicious circumstances of political defeat and marginalization, kinship relations can reproduce a counter-hegemonic social order -as well as a social afterlife of defeated revolution.

After Dobbs: Reflections on political and legal anthropology

“…Other ethnographers find themselves working in communities where their interlocutors are explicit in their counter‐hegemonic purposes and ethical imaginations of change—for example, in the domains of kinship among former revolutionaries in Oman (Wilson, 2020, 316–7), “active citizenship” in the context of audit mechanisms adopted by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (Webb, 2019, 700), the mediatization of Catholic saints in Lima (Norget, 2021, 775), and class‐based “entrepreneurial activism” in Lebanon (İpek, 2023).…”

Writing failure: knowledge production, temporalities, ethics, and traces

“…Again, Fuad Musallam (2020) shows how Lebanese political activists use the experience of collectively narrating their failures to spur future action and maintain cohesion. The revolutionaries of the suppressed Dharfur insurgency refuse the label of defeat and failure; they may not have power in the public realm, but ideals live on, transmitted and enacted through kin (Wilson 2020).…”

Kinship and the politics of responsibility: An introduction

“…For example, social movements often utilize kinship idioms and appeal to kinship-inspired moralities to mobilize and form relationships across divides, in order to constitute community from unexpected sources and in different spaces. Examples range from veterans in Oman creating counterhegemonic solidarities (Wilson, 2020) to transgender kinship NGOs in the USA (Greene, 2021), as well as more traditional kinship discourses as they are lived in diasporic, working-class, political and religious communities (Wekker, 2006).…”