Kinship Knowledge and the State: The Case of Argentina’s Adult “Living Disappeared”

Vaisman, Noa

doi:10.1017/9781139644938.012

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Concerning politics, many anthropologists have considered the conceptual-indeed often cosmological-relation between forms of kinship and marriage and the ways in which a nation, citizenship, and post-colonial sovereignty movements have been imagined and brought into being, for instance, through ideas about paternity (Delaney 1995;Heng and Devan, 1992); through concepts of genealogy, inheritance, marriage, adoption, and other forms of making kin (Bear, 2007;Borneman, 1992;Carsten, 2004;Cott, 2000;Freeman, 2017;Kahn, 2000;Kim, 2010;McKinnon and Cannell, 2013;Monnig, 2008;Nash, 2008Nash, , 2017Pepi, n.d.;Schachter, 2008;Shever, 2012Shever, , 2013Sutton, 1997;Wellman, 2021;Williams, 1995); and through the relation between forms of marriage and forms of political governance (Gordon, 2002;McKinnon, 2019aMcKinnon, , 2019bMcKinnon, , 2022. Others have explored the intricate relations between the centrality of kinship and marriage and the constitution and power of the state (Lambek, 2013;Mody, 2008;Pepi, n.d.;Schatz, 2004;Thelen and Alber, 2018;Thelen et al, 2018;Vaisman, 2019). Scholars have also explored how ideas about spiritual (if not also substantial) kinship and marriage are integral to most religious cosmologies, congregations, communities, nations, and states in so-called modern societies (Cannell, 1999(Cannell, , 2013Cott, 2000;Delaney, 1995;Gordon, 2002;…”

Section: Challenging the Divide Between Kin-based And State-based Soc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

What kinship is and is not in the work of Marshall Sahlins … and beyond

McKinnon

2023

Anthropological Theory

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This essay explores how anthropological assumptions about the differential place of kinship in kin-based and state-based societies shaped the work of Marshall Sahlins. On the one hand, I show how his expansive excursions into what kinship is, means, and does within the scope of kin-based societies clearly motivated some of his major contributions to anthropological theory: his critique of Western economic and biological determinisms; his exploration of the cultural dynamics of kinship as they articulate relations of hierarchy, power, and sovereignty; his rethinking of anthropological theories of structure; and his formulation of the concept of “performative” kinship. On the other hand, I analyze how these assumptions about the distinction between kin-based and state-based societies ultimately limited the scope of inquiry in his book, What Kinship Is—And Is Not. I then look beyond these limitations to more recent work in kinship studies that challenge the distinction between kin-based and state-based societies, and I end by arguing that, with regard to kinship studies, this distinction should best be left behind.

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Section: Challenging the Divide Between Kin-based And State-based Soc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

What kinship is and is not in the work of Marshall Sahlins … and beyond

McKinnon

2023

Anthropological Theory

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“…These efforts have also introduced new ethical and political questions around how the state produces knowledge about and mobilizes kinship to address human rights violations, which Vaisman (2019) explores around the infants and children, who are termed "the living disappeared," abducted in Argentina during the Dirty War period and who as adults may be searching for knowledge of their biological families. This case introduces tensions between the role of the state in intervening in people's intimate lives by collecting and managing DNA samples to identify the relatives of abducted children-even as part of a human rights and justice effort spurred by the Abuelas-and, by implication, reasserting the primacy of biological kinship.…”

Section: Disappearance Families and The Global Southmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a sociology of family movements: Lessons from the Global South

Zarrugh

2022

Sociology Compass

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Research on forced disappearances, which refer to state-orchestrated abductions and disappearances of men and women, has long emphasized the roles of families, specifically mothers, in contesting state violence. However, the family as the locus of social movements resisting inequality and state-related violence remains underexamined in the broader field of social movement study. In this article, I provide an overview of research in areas of the Global South, specifically Latin America and the Middle East, related to family-based activism around disappearance to highlight how turning our analytical lens towards the family enriches our understandings of gender, power, and resistance to systemic inequality. In the discussion, I outline a burgeoning literature around other forms of state violence, such as incarceration and immigrant deportation, that centers the family as a site to critique structural inequality. I conclude by identifying future directions for sociological inquiry into family-based movements that can enrich our understandings of social movements.

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“…Second, themes that were taboo in earlier periods, such as the sexual assaults that took place in the clandestine camps, were discussed openly (Jelin 2012). Third, around the fortieth anniversary of the coup (2016), a dramatic expansion of voices depicting complex and unsettling positions emerged (see Vaisman 2019 for the case of the ‘living disappeared’). Among these were the voices of children of perpetrators (see Arenes & Pikielny 2016; Colectivo Historias Desobedientes 2019), some of whom have been struggling to defend the Armed Forces’ actions and historical narrative and others who have testified to the tense existence between affective ties to kin and a critical moral stance towards the dictatorship and its crimes.…”

Section: On Reconciliation and The Argentine Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are an estimated 500 individuals who were abducted and appropriated or illegally adopted as babies during the dictatorial rule. Their origins were kept secret and, to this day, many of them are still unaware of their biological identities, real names, and correct dates of birth (Vaisman 2019). Explaining choices he has made throughout his life to engage with the search for his brother or sister, my interlocutor stopped to reflect.…”

Section: Everyday Impunity and A Torqued Sense Of Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ecology of irreconciliation does not encompass revenge or violence (a point made repeatedly by human rights activists), neither does it aim for healing or closure; instead, it entangles a demand for information (truth) and for institutional (legal) accountability with long‐term education for collective action and vigilance against impunity. Moreover, particularly in recent years, it has implied an openness to ambiguity, tensions, and contradictions in individual relations and social worlds (for an example, see Vaisman 2019).…”

Section: Irreconciliation As Vigilance and ‘Poner El Cuerpo’ As A Pub...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Irreconciliation as practice: resisting impunity and closure in Argentina

Vaisman

2022

Royal Anthropological Inst

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In Argentina, irreconciliation is created through everyday practices of vigilance against closure and collective struggles against impunity. In this essay, I show how over several decades since the fall of the dictatorial regime , human rights activists and laypeople have devised ways to keep the past alive while attending to injustices through embodied collective engagements with the country's history and its legacies. By examining large protests, the everyday experiences of impunity, and a filmic exploration of kinship bonds and their entanglement with civilian complicity in the repression, the essay illustrates the ways in which irreconciliation is materialized and enacted as a form of social reconstruction many years after state terrorism.Within a few hours of the Argentine Supreme Court ruling in the Muiña case on 3 May 2017, Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with messages of rage and disbelief. Old and new slogans appeared almost instantaneously calling 'Never Again' and 'No to 2×1' (i.e. the so-called 2 for 1 law -see below), and human rights activists and politicians alike used every available public channel to express their dismay at the ruling and its possible implications.Luis Muiña, whose case the Supreme Court deliberated, is a convicted criminal. He was tried for perpetrating horrendous human rights violations, including kidnapping, torture, and assassination, during the last military dictatorship in the country . The application of the so-called 2 for 1 law, which stated that after two years in pre-trial detention the time spent in prison before a conviction would count as double time towards the period of imprisonment, was, in effect, a way to set him free. The public outcry against this sentence was immediate and lasting. Exactly one week after the ruling, around half a million people gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires to denounce the Court's decision (Pertot 2017). Similar demonstrations were held across the country (Meyer 2017) and abroad (e.g. Spain, France), all making the same claim: 'Señores Jueces: Nunca Más. Ningún Genocida Suelto [Your Honours: Never Again. No Genocida Free]' . 1

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Kinship Knowledge and the State: The Case of Argentina’s Adult “Living Disappeared”

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

What kinship is and is not in the work of Marshall Sahlins … and beyond

What kinship is and is not in the work of Marshall Sahlins … and beyond

Toward a sociology of family movements: Lessons from the Global South

Irreconciliation as practice: resisting impunity and closure in Argentina

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