What is the impact on anthropology of recent studies of reproductive technologies, gender, and the social construction of science in the West? What is the significance of public anxiety about the family to anthropology's analytic approach? Janet Carsten presents an original view of the past, present, and future of kinship in anthropology which will be of interest to anthropologists as well as to other social scientists.
Author(s): Janet Carsten
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 232
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 7
Copyright......Page 8
Dedication......Page 9
Contents......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 13
ONE Introduction: After Kinship?......Page 17
Redoing Kinship......Page 22
Kinship in the Mid-Twentieth Century......Page 26
Points of Departure......Page 32
After Schneider......Page 36
The Old and the New......Page 38
The Chapters......Page 42
TWO Houses of Memory and Kinship......Page 47
Houses and Kinship......Page 51
Houses and Hearths......Page 53
Houses and Marriage......Page 57
Houses, Bodies, and Persons......Page 60
Social Distinctions of the House......Page 62
Houses and History......Page 66
The Meanings of Kinship......Page 71
THREE Gender, Bodies, and Kinship......Page 73
The Anthropology of Gender......Page 76
Sex and Gender......Page 78
Gender among Hungarian Gypsies......Page 82
Sameness and Difference......Page 85
Women and Men in Langkawi......Page 87
Gender and Kinship – a Classic Case......Page 91
Reconstituting Gender, Bodies, and Kinship......Page 94
Conclusion......Page 97
FOUR The Person......Page 99
Two Types of Person......Page 100
The Non-Western Joined-Up Person......Page 104
The Partible Person......Page 109
On Not Being a Crocodile, and Posthumous Conception......Page 112
Joined-Up Western Persons......Page 117
Conclusions......Page 123
FIVE Uses and Abuses of Substance......Page 125
Substance in American Kinship......Page 127
Substance in India......Page 132
Substance in Melanesia......Page 137
Melanesian and Indian Substance and Personhood Compared......Page 142
Malay Substance......Page 145
Conclusion......Page 147
SIX Families into Nation: The Power of Metaphor and the Transformation of Kinship......Page 152
Dissolving the Boundaries: Fostering as Transformation......Page 153
Unraveling the Fiction......Page 157
Adoption Reunions......Page 162
From Substance to Metaphor?......Page 169
Conclusion......Page 177
SEVEN Assisted Reproduction......Page 179
From Sexual Procreation to Scientific Knowledge......Page 180
The New, the Old, and the Not-So-Old......Page 183
Naturalizing Technology; Technologizing Nature......Page 188
Recognizing Relations......Page 192
New Kinds of Relations? New Modes of Reckoning?......Page 194
EIGHT Conclusion......Page 200
Bibliography......Page 207
Index......Page 223
