After Kinship

New Departures in Anthropology

by Janet Carsten

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.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Gender Studies

232 pages, Paperback

First published November 24, 2003

Reviews

[Skog]

Kurslitteratur

[Margarida]

"The imagination that ordinary people put to work when they participate in new forms of kinship – whether it be donating eggs, searching for birth kin, or ascribing motherhood – involves a subtle and sophisticated articulation of the many factors that may create kinship. That the results of this imaginative work are sometimes quite unpredicted and sometimes throw into relief concerns that seem more familiar may be faintly reassuring. Both the surprises and the familiarities offered by new forms of kinship in the West should encourage anthropologists not to retreat from the non-Western cultures that have been so central to the comparative study of kinship. For it is in defamiliarizing what seems most familiar about the new kinship and by illuminating the unexpected that the analytical inspiration provided by comparison will give new scope to the study of kinship."