European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology

by Jeanette Edwards (Editor), Carles Salazar (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845455736
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	03/01/2009
Series:	Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives , #14
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jeanette Edwards is Professor of Social Anthropology at Manchester University. She has published widely on the implications of new reproductive technologies for kinship both ethnographically and theoretically. She is author of Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies in England (Oxford UniversityPress, 2000), co-author of Technologies of Procreation: Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception (Routledge 2nd ed., 1999) and co-editor of Recasting Anthropological Knowledge: Inspiration and Social Science (Cambridge UniversityPress 2011). She directed the European-funded project ‘Public Understanding of Genetics: a Cross- Cultural and Ethnographic Study of the “new genetics” and social identity’.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Matter in Kinship
Jeanette Edwards

Chapter 1. Knowing and Relating: Kinship, Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the New Genetics
Joan Bestard

Chapter 2. Imagining Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Family, Kinship and ‘Local Thinking’ in Lithuania
Auksuole Cepaitiene

Chapter 3. Eating Genes and Raising People: Kinship Thinking and Genetically Modified Food in the North of England
Cathrine Degnen

Chapter 4. The Family Body: Persons, Bodies and Resemblance
Diana Marre and Joan Bestard

Chapter 5. The Contribution of Homoparental Families to the Current Debate on Kinship
Anne Cadoret

Chapter 6. Corpo-real Identities: Perspectives from a Gypsy Community
Nathalie Manrique

Chapter 7. Incest, Embodiment, Genes and Kinship
Enric Porqueres i Gené and Jérôme Wilgaux (France)

Chapter 8. ‘Loving Mothers’ at Work: Raising Others’ Children and Building Families with the Intention to Love and Take Care
Eniko Demény

Chapter 9. Adoption and Assisted Conception: One Universe of Unnatural Procreation. An Examination of Norwegian Legislation
Marit Melhuus and Signe Howell

Chapter 10. Fields of Post-human Kinship
Ben Campbell

Chapter 11. Are Genes Good to Think With?
Carles Salazar

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index

Editorial Reviews

This superb anthology extends the emphasis on technology that has become such a prominent feature of much recent anthropological work on kinship…In this richly ethnographic text, the most familiar problems produce the most unusual answers…Each chapter brilliantly combines kinship as a matrix with kinship as a tool, using ethnographic examples that leap off the page.”  ·  Journal of Anthropological Research

From the Publisher