Kinship as Ethical Relation: A Critique of the Spiritual Kinship Paradigm

Seeman, Don

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-48423-5_4

Cited by 18 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Scholars of conversion, anthropologists included, have documented heightened, and often anxious, engagement with sincerity (Keane 2002;Kravel-Tovi 2012b;Luria 1996;Seeman 2003;Spyer 1996). The social and political benefits possibly packaged together with conversion -immigration and citizenship rights, recognition, and ultimately integration -can barely leave an idealized notion of religious sincerity intact.…”

Section: Religious Conversion Sincerity and Self-suasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Against the grain of these discussions, a more nuanced and less dichotomous discussion of power, structure, agency, and choice has made inroads into the study of conversion (e.g. Roberts 2012;Seeman 2003;Smilde 2007).…”

Section: Religious Conversion Sincerity and Self-suasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In any event, the aspects of Jewish kinship and relatedness and those of spirituality and religious law are essentially inseparable (e.g. Seeman 2017), in a way that complicates not only any narrative dichotomy between national and religious Jewishness, but also, for that matter, Jewish conversion itself. And, finally, while the oppositional juxtaposition of ‘the religious’ and ‘the national’ in the context of the national mission assumed a particular urgency and relevance for the state, this tension is neither new nor unique to the Zionist project.…”

Section: Jewish Conversion As a Zionist Missionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Self‐suasion: agents of Jewish conversion in Israel in search of religious sincerity

Kravel‐Tovi

2024

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The title of this essay is intended as ironic. The irony resides in the fact that while the agents of state‐run Jewish conversion in Israel are preoccupied with the sincerity of conversion candidates, they are also troubled by the sincerity of their own religious belief and conduct. This essay will explore ethnographically how these religiopolitical actors engage with semiotic and interactive strategies of self‐suasion in order to reconcile their Zionist and religious commitments with the moral toll that they pay for knowingly facilitating less‐than‐ideal conversions. The essay demonstrates that while these actors embody the Israeli state's national missionary impetus to convert newcomers, they rely on a variety of communicative practices that help them project the constructed sincerity of converts onto their own self‐suaded religious sincerity.

show abstract

Section: Religious Conversion Sincerity and Self-suasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Religious Conversion Sincerity and Self-suasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Jewish Conversion As a Zionist Missionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Self‐suasion: agents of Jewish conversion in Israel in search of religious sincerity

Kravel‐Tovi

2024

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Chapters in New directions in spiritual kinship (Thomas, Malik & Wellman 2017), in which Cannell's work on collective salvation appears, emphasize kinship as ethical relationship. Don Seeman's chapter (2017) builds on Sahlins's work by questioning what kinship as mutuality entails, and Rose Wellman's chapter (2017) responds that kinship as mutuality is an ethical project, exemplified in how Iranians cultivate an ethical family through prayer and food. The nature of kin relationships in Mormon northern Utah similarly involves mutual ethical responsibility and ethical fashioning.…”

Section: Relational Values In Mormonism and The Anthropology Of Chris...mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘They have shown me what I need to know’: spirits, the eternal family, and collective ethical responsibility in Utah Mormonism

Stiles

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ResumenVisits from spirits are common among Latter‐day Saints (Mormons) in northern Utah, and most involve positive interactions with the spirits of helpful kin: the spirits of the deceased and of children not yet born. The spirit visits show that the Mormon cosmological notion of the eternal family is not simply abstract or something to imagine and long for in the afterlife. Rather, spirit members of the family are active in the world of the living, and both spirit and living members of the family are involved in the mutual project of salvation. The living and the spirits coexist in a relationship of mutual ethical responsibility centred on assisting one another with spiritual progress. Mormon notions of the eternal family are manifest in the mutual responsibility between the spirit world and the mortal world. An exploration of Mormon spirit interactions contributes to recent work in the anthropology of Christianity that emphasizes relationalism as a value by extending an understanding of this concept to include active ethical obligations between living and spirit kin.

show abstract

Kinship, World Religions, and the Nation-State

Cannell¹

2019

The Cambridge Handbook of Kinship

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Kinship as Ethical Relation: A Critique of the Spiritual Kinship Paradigm

Cited by 18 publications

References 24 publications

Self‐suasion: agents of Jewish conversion in Israel in search of religious sincerity

Self‐suasion: agents of Jewish conversion in Israel in search of religious sincerity

‘They have shown me what I need to know’: spirits, the eternal family, and collective ethical responsibility in Utah Mormonism

Kinship, World Religions, and the Nation-State

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About