European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology

European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology PDF

Author: Jeanette Edwards

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9781845455736

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Interest in the study of kinship, a key area of anthropological enquiry, has recently reemerged. Dubbed 'the new kinship', this interest was stimulated by the 'new genetics' and revived interest in kinship and family patterns. This volume investigates the impact of biotechnology on contemporary understandings of kinship, of family and 'belonging' in a variety of European settings and reveals similarities and differences in how kinship is conceived. What constitutes kinship for different publics? How significant are biogenetic links? What does family resemblance tell us? Why is genetically modified food an issue? Are 'genes' and 'blood' interchangeable? It has been argued that the recent prominence of genetic science and genetic technologies has resulted in a 'geneticization' of social life; the ethnographic examples presented here do show shifts occurring in notions of 'nature' and of what is 'natural'. But, they also illustrate the complexity of contemporary kinship thinking in Europe and the continued interconnectedness of biological and sociological understandings of relatedness and the relationship between nature and nurture.

Relations

Relations PDF

Author: Marilyn Strathern

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-04-17

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1478009349

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The concept of relation holds a privileged place in how anthropologists think and write about the social and cultural lives they study. In Relations, eminent anthropologist Marilyn Strathern provides a critical account of this key concept and its usage and significance in the English-speaking world. Exploring relation's changing articulations and meanings over the past three centuries, Strathern shows how the historical idiosyncrasy of using an epistemological term for kinspersons (“relatives”) was bound up with evolving ideas about knowledge-making and kin-making. She draws on philosophical debates about relation—such as Leibniz's reaction to Locke—and what became its definitive place in anthropological exposition, elucidating the underlying assumptions and conventions of its use. She also calls for scholars in anthropology and beyond to take up the limitations of Western relational thinking, especially against the background of present ecological crises and interest in multispecies relations. In weaving together analyses of kin-making and knowledge-making, Strathern opens up new ways of thinking about the contours of epistemic and relational possibilities while questioning the limits and potential of ethnographic methods.

Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction

Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction PDF

Author: Tabitha Freeman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-08-14

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1107038286

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This multidisciplinary book addresses the nature and meaning of relationships and identity in assisted conception families.

The Politics of Making Kinship

The Politics of Making Kinship PDF

Author: Erdmute Alber

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1800737858

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The long tradition of Western political thought included kinship in models of public order, but the social sciences excised it from theories of the state, public sphere, and democratic order. Kinship has, however, neither completely disappeared from the political cultures of the West nor played the determining social and political role ascribed to it elsewhere. Exploring the issues that arise once the divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politics of Making Kinship demonstrates how political processes have shaped concepts of kinship over time and, conversely, how political projects have been shaped by specific understandings, idioms and uses of kinship. Taking vantage points from the post-Roman era to early modernity, and from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars place kinship centerstage and reintegrate it with political theory.

Social and Cultural Perspectives on Health, Technology and Medicine

Social and Cultural Perspectives on Health, Technology and Medicine PDF

Author: Ciara Kierans

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1317377508

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Developments in health, science and technology have long provided fertile analytical ground for social science disciplines. This book focuses on the critical and enduring importance of core concepts in anthropology and sociology for interrogating and keeping pace with developments in the life sciences. The authors consider how transformations in medical and scientific knowledge serve to reanimate older controversies, giving new life to debates about relations between society, culture, knowledge and individuals. They reflect on the particular legacies and ongoing relevance of concepts such as ‘culture’, ‘society’, ‘magic’, ‘production’, ‘kinship’, ‘exchange’ and ‘the body’. The chapters draw on the work of key historical and contemporary figures across the social sciences and include a range of illustrative case studies to explore topics such as transplant medicine, genetic counselling, cancer therapy, reproductive health and addiction. Of particular interest to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, and science and technology studies, this volume will also be a valuable resource for those working in the fields of health and medicine.

Invisible Labours

Invisible Labours PDF

Author: Aimee Louise Middlemiss

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2024-02-02

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1805392115

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Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events are positioned as less ‘real’ or significant when the foetal being does not, or will not, survive. Invisible Labours describes the reproductive politics of this category of pregnancy loss in England. It shows how second trimester pregnancy loss produces specific medical and social experiences, revealing an underlying teleological ontology of pregnancy. Some women then use an alternative understanding of pregnancy based on kinship with the second trimester foetal being or baby to resist the erasure of their experience.

Relative Strangers: Family Life, Genes and Donor Conception

Relative Strangers: Family Life, Genes and Donor Conception PDF

Author: Petra Nordqvist

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-01-02

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1137297646

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With reproductive medical technologies becoming more accessible, assisted donor conception is raising new and important questions about family life. Using in-depth interviews the authors explore the lived reality of donor conception and offer insights into the complexities of these new family relationships.

Reconnecting State and Kinship

Reconnecting State and Kinship PDF

Author: Tatjana Thelen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0812249518

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Reconnecting State and Kinship seeks to overcome the traditional dichotomy between state and kinship, asking whether concepts associated with one sphere surface in the other, tracking the evolution of these concepts through time and space, and exploring how this binary is reinforced within the social sciences.

Anthropos and the Material

Anthropos and the Material PDF

Author: Penny Harvey

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2019-05-09

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1478003316

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The destructive effects of modern industrial societies have shaped the planet in such profound ways that many argue for the existence of a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene. This claim brings into relief a set of challenges that have deep implications for how relations between the human, the material, and the political affect contemporary social worlds. The contributors to Anthropos and the Material examine these challenges by questioning and complicating long-held understandings of the divide between humans and things. They present ethnographic case studies from across the globe, addressing myriad topics that range from labor, economics, and colonialism to technology, culture, the environment, agency, and diversity. In foregrounding the importance of connecting natural and social histories, the instability and intangibility of the material, and the ways in which the lively encounters between the human and the nonhuman challenge conceptions of liberal humanism, the contributors point to new understandings of the capacities of people and things to act, transform, and adapt to a changing world.

Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India

Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India PDF

Author: Anindita Majumdar

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-29

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0199091420

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As commercial surrogacy in India dominates public conversations around reproduction, new kinds of families, and changing trends in globalization, its lived realities become an important aspect of emerging research. This book maps the way in which in vitro fertilization (IVF) specialists, surrogacy agents, commissioning couples, surrogate mothers, and egg donors contribute to the understanding of interpersonal relations in the process of commercial surrogacy. In this book, Majumdar draws from a context that is enmeshed in the local–global politics of reproduction, including the ways in which the transnational commercial surrogacy arrangement has led to an ongoing debate regarding ethics and morality in the sphere of reproductive rights. In weaving together the diverse, often conflicting experiences of individuals and families, the transnational commercial surrogacy arrangement comes alive as a process mirroring larger societal anxieties with reference to technological interventions in intimate relationships. It is these anxieties, dilemmas, and their negotiations to which the book is addressed.

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