A long tradition of Western political thought included the concepts of a household, the family, and kinship in models of public order, but during the nineteenth century the newly constructed social sciences developed a conceptualization of the West and the Rest and excised family and kinship 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 elsewhere that has been ascribed to it. Exploring the issues that arise once the sharp divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politic 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, from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars expertly place kinship centerstage and reintegrating it with political theory.
Recenzijas
This is a powerful volume that argues for kinship and politics to be studied and analyzed in conjunction and not separately, as is still common within the social and political sciences. What makes the volume particularly strong is that it combines discussions of semantic shifts, political contestations, and philosophy and theory of house(hold), kin, and family relations. Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Politics of Making Kinship
Erdmute Alber, David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, Tatjana Thelen
Part I: Epistemologies
Chapter
1. Quantifying Generations. Peter Damian Develops a New System of
Kinship Calculation
Simon Teuscher
Chapter
2. Kinship Matters: Genealogical and Historiographical Practices
between 1750 and 1850
Michaela Hohkamp
Chapter
3. Race and Kinship: Anthropology and the Genealogical Method
Staffan Müller-Wille
Chapter
4. Kinship Meets Corporation: Perspectives on Kinship and Politics
in the Formative Moment of Social Anthropology
Thomas Zitelmann
Chapter
5. German Kinship: Forming a Political Unit and Epistemic Void
Tatjana Thelen
Part II: Projects
Chapter
6. Making Family and Kinship: Reflections on Hegel and Parsons
David Warren Sabean
Chapter
7. Conceptualizing Kinship in Sixteenth-Century Political Theories.
Bodins and Hotmans Ideas of Monarchy
Julia Heinemann
Chapter
8. Commonwealths of Affection: Kinship, Marriage, and Polity in
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America
Susan McKinnon
Chapter
9. Towards a Political Economy of the Maternal Body. Claiming
Maternal Filiation in Nineteenth-Century French Feminism
Caroline Arni
Part III: Deployments
Outline and summaries
Chapter
10. Inventing the Extended Family in Colonial Dahomey/Benin
Erdmute Alber
Chapter
11. As If Begotten and Born of Feeborn Parents Indicators and
Considerations on Parentalization of Emancipated Slaves in the Post-Roman
Occident
Ludolf Kuchenbuch
Chapter
12. From Natural Difference to Equal Value: The Case of Egg Donation
in Norway
Merit Melhuus
Chapter
13. Family and Kinship in Early Modern Contractarian State Theories
Jon Mathieu
Chapter
14. Translating the Family
Claudia Derichs
Index
Erdmute Alber is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. She co-led the research group on Kinship and Politics at ZIF in Bielefeld. Her books include Transfers of Belonging (Brill 2018) and (with Tatjana Thelen) Re-connecting State and Kinship (2017).
