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Making Kin not Population: Reconceiving Generations
As the planet’s human numbers grow and environmental concerns proliferate, natural scientists, economists, and policy-makers are increasingly turning to new and old questions about families and kinship as matters of concern. From government programs designed to fight declining birth rates in Europe and East Asia, to controversial policies seeking to curb population growth in countries where birth rates remain high, to increasing income inequality transnationally, issues of reproduction introduce new and complicated moral and political quandaries.
Making Kin Not Population ends the silence on these issues with essays from leading anti-racist, ecologically-concerned, feminist scholars. Though not always in accord, these contributors provide bold analyses of complex issues of intimacy and kinship, from reproductive justice to environmental justice, and from human and nonhuman genocides to new practices for making families and kin. This timely work offers vital proposals for forging innovative personal and public connections in the contemporary world.
Making Kin Not Population ends the silence on these issues with essays from leading anti-racist, ecologically-concerned, feminist scholars. Though not always in accord, these contributors provide bold analyses of complex issues of intimacy and kinship, from reproductive justice to environmental justice, and from human and nonhuman genocides to new practices for making families and kin. This timely work offers vital proposals for forging innovative personal and public connections in the contemporary world.
120 pages, Paperback
Published July 15, 2018
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612 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 9, 2023
A refreshing challenge on mainstream narratives around population control and reproductive justice. Each essay attempts to answer: How do we reimagine relations with kin (ourselves, blood relatives, chosen relatives, and other-than-human relatives) in the context of a heteropatriarchical capitalist white supremacist world?
Thoroughly enjoyed Ruha Benjamin, Michelle Murphy and Kim Tallbear’s essays. Found Donna Haraway’s essay and Yu-Ling Huang + Chia-Ling Wu’s essay insightful at times but also difficult to follow.
Thoroughly enjoyed Ruha Benjamin, Michelle Murphy and Kim Tallbear’s essays. Found Donna Haraway’s essay and Yu-Ling Huang + Chia-Ling Wu’s essay insightful at times but also difficult to follow.
March 29, 2022
I thought the essays to be very uneven in quality and reality in which they are grounded. The ideas discussed in this book, while sometimes way too farfetch'd for my own liking, are worth sharing and discussing over.
Making Kin not Population goes beyond the overpopulation problem and proposes solution that are sourced around taking better care of our next of kin; instead of creating population for population sake, rework the social approach on raising the next generation.
Worth reading and ponder over.
Making Kin not Population goes beyond the overpopulation problem and proposes solution that are sourced around taking better care of our next of kin; instead of creating population for population sake, rework the social approach on raising the next generation.
Worth reading and ponder over.
February 2, 2019
Extremely relevant discussions surrounding the most urgent and pressing questions of our times (in my view) – a clear and sharp critique of the term 'population'. An inspiring and exciting re-imagining of kin making possibilities (non-human exclusive), that resists heteronormativity and the nuclear family, and that challenges the 'need/choice' discourse on child bearing in the age of environmental catastrophe.
June 28, 2020
Let's be clear, Ruha Benjamin's essay deserves all of the stars. It's well-written, thought-provoking, and revolutionary, and carries this whole anthology. Murphy, Huang and Wu, and TallBear also bring up some intriguing points that merit further reflection, while Haraway's article tried to cover too many topics in too few pages and ended up disjointed and unfocused.
April 19, 2023
How might humanity proceed into the next century? This is a question which obsesses me as a futurist. One aspect of that grand question is demographics, the size and nature of our human population. We've exploded for the past century and now seem to be approaching peak numbers, perhaps by 2050.
In that context I greedily red Making Kin not Population. I found my way to this after working through Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble (my review), which contained (among other things) a call for humans to cut down reproduction even more steeply than the developing world is doing now. Instead of making babies or population, we should make kin: close, emotionally intense attachments to people and animals (critters, in Haraway's style). This will reduce humanity's damaging footprint on the earth, improve the status of women, and yield a better life for all.
Making Kin not Population is a collection of essays on the theme, and each makes a very different argument. Let me break them down:
Adele Clark introduces the book and the topic in a long, wide-ranging piece. Key points: separating out a feminist call for fewer babies from state-run population control programs; racism (black women suffering unusually high infant and maternal mortality); intersections of colonialism, racism, and modernity; definitions of reproductive rights; new technologies for birth; the immensely fraught nature of the topic.
Ruha Benjamin (whom I was delighted to host in one of my classes), "Black AfterLives Matter" emphasizes spiritual or imaginary relationships with deceased ancestors. This can take the form of ancestral co-presence (46) and can occur for a range of purposes, including energizing the living into social justice action, providing emotional support, and accumulating knowledge. It can also take the form of material practices, such as recovering and caring for cemeteries. (50-1) Kinship practices can play against present hierarchies and oppressions, like strengthening bonds between those within and outside of prisons. (63)
Donna Haraway, "Making Kin in the Cthulucene" identifies two populations, the Born (mainstream people, animals, organizations) and the Disappeared (the marginal, the repressed), dual populations shaped by modernity. The unevenness of that divide leads the author to imagine a birthing permission scheme, which makes being allowed to reproduce more difficult as a given person is richer, more privileged, in a more developed nation (75-6). Haraway then dives into the problems of calling for women to have fewer children, including the personal impacts on herself, but insists that population is a useful measure and that we need to have less of it.
Michelle Murphy, "Against Population, Toward Alterlife" goes hard against Haraway's use of "population." And this one I had the hardest time with. Murphy judges the term and concept of population to be too compromised by histories of colonialism, racism, sexism, genocide, population control cruelties, etc. to be of use or even recuperation. Instead she recommends we develop the category of "alterlife," which emphasizes quality over quantity and connections between people and the world. Alterlife thinking is asset-based, rather than deficit-, valuing all human beings. It draws on indigenous thought, especially from the peoples around the North American Great Lakes. So far I'm not sure what alterlife is in practice, and lean towards Haraway's use of "population."
Yu-ling Huang and Chia-Ling Wu, "New Feminist Biopolitics in Ultra-low-fertility East Asia" considers the deep demographic transition in that region and how a feminist critique can provide better tools for understanding and reacting to it. They call for population assessments to recognize women's work where it hasn't previously been counted, to expand women's reproductive rights ("seize the reproductive means of production"), and for people to put greater stock in non-biological connections.
Kim TallBear, "Making Love and Relations Beyond Settle Sex and Family" criticizes normative family structures as stemming from colonialism and just not working well. Instead, she recommends drawing on indigenous traditions and embracing polyamory. The latter she ties to kin-making in the spirit of getting beyond the nuclear family.
Overall an intense, short book filled with ideas. Recommended and needs a bigger audience.
In that context I greedily red Making Kin not Population. I found my way to this after working through Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble (my review), which contained (among other things) a call for humans to cut down reproduction even more steeply than the developing world is doing now. Instead of making babies or population, we should make kin: close, emotionally intense attachments to people and animals (critters, in Haraway's style). This will reduce humanity's damaging footprint on the earth, improve the status of women, and yield a better life for all.
Making Kin not Population is a collection of essays on the theme, and each makes a very different argument. Let me break them down:
Adele Clark introduces the book and the topic in a long, wide-ranging piece. Key points: separating out a feminist call for fewer babies from state-run population control programs; racism (black women suffering unusually high infant and maternal mortality); intersections of colonialism, racism, and modernity; definitions of reproductive rights; new technologies for birth; the immensely fraught nature of the topic.
Ruha Benjamin (whom I was delighted to host in one of my classes), "Black AfterLives Matter" emphasizes spiritual or imaginary relationships with deceased ancestors. This can take the form of ancestral co-presence (46) and can occur for a range of purposes, including energizing the living into social justice action, providing emotional support, and accumulating knowledge. It can also take the form of material practices, such as recovering and caring for cemeteries. (50-1) Kinship practices can play against present hierarchies and oppressions, like strengthening bonds between those within and outside of prisons. (63)
Donna Haraway, "Making Kin in the Cthulucene" identifies two populations, the Born (mainstream people, animals, organizations) and the Disappeared (the marginal, the repressed), dual populations shaped by modernity. The unevenness of that divide leads the author to imagine a birthing permission scheme, which makes being allowed to reproduce more difficult as a given person is richer, more privileged, in a more developed nation (75-6). Haraway then dives into the problems of calling for women to have fewer children, including the personal impacts on herself, but insists that population is a useful measure and that we need to have less of it.
Michelle Murphy, "Against Population, Toward Alterlife" goes hard against Haraway's use of "population." And this one I had the hardest time with. Murphy judges the term and concept of population to be too compromised by histories of colonialism, racism, sexism, genocide, population control cruelties, etc. to be of use or even recuperation. Instead she recommends we develop the category of "alterlife," which emphasizes quality over quantity and connections between people and the world. Alterlife thinking is asset-based, rather than deficit-, valuing all human beings. It draws on indigenous thought, especially from the peoples around the North American Great Lakes. So far I'm not sure what alterlife is in practice, and lean towards Haraway's use of "population."
Yu-ling Huang and Chia-Ling Wu, "New Feminist Biopolitics in Ultra-low-fertility East Asia" considers the deep demographic transition in that region and how a feminist critique can provide better tools for understanding and reacting to it. They call for population assessments to recognize women's work where it hasn't previously been counted, to expand women's reproductive rights ("seize the reproductive means of production"), and for people to put greater stock in non-biological connections.
Kim TallBear, "Making Love and Relations Beyond Settle Sex and Family" criticizes normative family structures as stemming from colonialism and just not working well. Instead, she recommends drawing on indigenous traditions and embracing polyamory. The latter she ties to kin-making in the spirit of getting beyond the nuclear family.
Overall an intense, short book filled with ideas. Recommended and needs a bigger audience.
September 6, 2024
I feel like this book did little to talk about 'making kin' as theory or praxis. Perhaps I was too excited by the title but I went in with big expectations.
While there are good ideas and information in this book, the structure did not work for me at all. Each essay was presented as a "part" of the book, essentially as a chapter. This could have worked well if there was an overall thesis and narrative that was being presented by the authors, and good coordination of information, but instead each essay felt like it existed in its own world and was not connected to the others other than by the general topic of population.
This format works well in books that have shorter essays were each essay is focused on one idea that it explores with some depth. But here, again, the essays were long and serving as sort of chapters in the book. They were all sort of meandering and didn't have much of a point. 'Making kin' as an idea was brought up a few times but never explored. The authors did this often - dropping in ideas, words, or references briefly and with little explanation or exploration.
I think it would've worked remarkably better to have the book split into two parts: Not Population and Making Kin. The first part could be a collection of essays focused on exploring "population" as a colonial construct, and then the second section could be a collection of essays focused on "making kin" - ways to do this, ways people have done it, and why it is important for us to do so.
Again, there's important information in here, especially surrounding who is encouraged to create population and who is not. But this was information I already knew and it was very heavy and depressing at points. That doesn't mean it's wrong to talk about, of course, but I thought this book might be a little more joyful and hopeful, exploring the many ways we could 'make kin' and how this has been done in different cultures in the past and today. However, there were only blink-and-you-miss-it references made to non-colonial practices. I read the whole book and still couldn't explain to you what 'making kin' means to the authors.
Worth a read if you read a lot and care about these things but I wouldn't say to go out of your way if you have to be choosy about your books.
While there are good ideas and information in this book, the structure did not work for me at all. Each essay was presented as a "part" of the book, essentially as a chapter. This could have worked well if there was an overall thesis and narrative that was being presented by the authors, and good coordination of information, but instead each essay felt like it existed in its own world and was not connected to the others other than by the general topic of population.
This format works well in books that have shorter essays were each essay is focused on one idea that it explores with some depth. But here, again, the essays were long and serving as sort of chapters in the book. They were all sort of meandering and didn't have much of a point. 'Making kin' as an idea was brought up a few times but never explored. The authors did this often - dropping in ideas, words, or references briefly and with little explanation or exploration.
I think it would've worked remarkably better to have the book split into two parts: Not Population and Making Kin. The first part could be a collection of essays focused on exploring "population" as a colonial construct, and then the second section could be a collection of essays focused on "making kin" - ways to do this, ways people have done it, and why it is important for us to do so.
Again, there's important information in here, especially surrounding who is encouraged to create population and who is not. But this was information I already knew and it was very heavy and depressing at points. That doesn't mean it's wrong to talk about, of course, but I thought this book might be a little more joyful and hopeful, exploring the many ways we could 'make kin' and how this has been done in different cultures in the past and today. However, there were only blink-and-you-miss-it references made to non-colonial practices. I read the whole book and still couldn't explain to you what 'making kin' means to the authors.
Worth a read if you read a lot and care about these things but I wouldn't say to go out of your way if you have to be choosy about your books.
September 21, 2025
Sí, son temas super interesantes, pero me pareció como mucha teoría y nada bajado a la realidad... no sé cómo explicarlo. Capaz que esa era la intención nomás ?
Ni hablar del concepto de "generar parentesco", no DICE NADA! Me compré el libro porque esta categoría me resultaba interesante (con lo poco q habia leido), y con posibilidad de aplicarla a mi profesión, pero sinceramente el libro no brinda nada al respecto. Ni siquiera se puede contextualizar con lo ya desarrollado, no hay mucha correlación.
Ni hablar del concepto de "generar parentesco", no DICE NADA! Me compré el libro porque esta categoría me resultaba interesante (con lo poco q habia leido), y con posibilidad de aplicarla a mi profesión, pero sinceramente el libro no brinda nada al respecto. Ni siquiera se puede contextualizar con lo ya desarrollado, no hay mucha correlación.
November 2, 2023
Loved it very much! A very compelling book composed by five essays from five different feminist profiles, all along trying to go beyond the heteronormative, colonialist and dull kinship making imposed by Christian-European cosmologies. I loved the essays from Donna Haraway, Michelle Murphy and Kim TallBear. Sometimes I wish, though, that Donna would tell us more about the materializing of her extended kinship and response-ability to non-humans. Great book!
January 31, 2021
Very interesting ideas are discussed in this book.
My enjoyment was a rollercoaster ride, as some of the authors had very precise and interesting ideas, whereas others tackled too many concepts in too few pages making the read very bloated.
Still happy to have red this book that try to think out of the box on very concerning issues.
My enjoyment was a rollercoaster ride, as some of the authors had very precise and interesting ideas, whereas others tackled too many concepts in too few pages making the read very bloated.
Still happy to have red this book that try to think out of the box on very concerning issues.
October 31, 2023
A must read — expertly nuanced, thoughtful discussion on how to approach global population in a way that is protective and respectful of indigenous and formerly/currently oppressed people and societies. A consistent undercurrent of anti-rascist, anti-fascist thinking throughout the book, while also presenting different viewpoints from different scholars.
July 5, 2022
Phenomenal and feels particularly apt with the conversations so many of us have recently had about population. Haraway’s and Michelle Murphy’s essays blew me away. Short, compellingly written and thought provoking
September 26, 2019
Interesting focus on fertility in East Asia (Chapter 4). But poor scientific research on LARCs.
October 8, 2020
Fascinating and challenges ideas, presented (for the most part) in stultifying and impenetrable prose.
October 20, 2021
Making Love not Population
September 22, 2022
The way Haraway's mind works...
March 12, 2024
4 in general 2.5-3 for Haraway's
August 26, 2025
Expanded my understanding of kinship in both the application of the term, the practical aspects of it and how we should think about it.
May 7, 2021
Complex. Inside this little book you will find the voices of today, fabulating the voices of tomorrow.
These seven scholars bring us new perspectives and push the discussion about overpopulation, climate issues, birth control and settler sexuality a step forward, tackling issues involving non-occidental, STS-feminist, decolonized points of view.
A fascinating and thought-provoking read.
These seven scholars bring us new perspectives and push the discussion about overpopulation, climate issues, birth control and settler sexuality a step forward, tackling issues involving non-occidental, STS-feminist, decolonized points of view.
A fascinating and thought-provoking read.
September 7, 2023
I read Chapter 5: Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family by Kim TallBear
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews