Contemporary Perspectives on Family and Kinship (5 credits)

The course consists of reading materials, lectures and a final essay.

Kinship has been a central concept in anthropology from its very onset, one of the few which anthropology managed to make its own. Radical shift in kinship studies came in 1970s and 1980s. The traditional approach has been challenged as too static, too fixed, too algebraic. The analytical feasibility of the very category of kinship has been undermined. The aim of this course is to shed light on these new critical developments. We will look at the demise of kinship studies brought about by the argument on their essentially Western ideas of biological reproduction, and their subsequent revitalization. This would include introduction of the Schneider’s critique and the feminist anthropologists’ works on kinship, gender and power; motherhood and fatherhood; concept of relatedness; studies on new reproductive technologies, genetics and heredity; gay and lesbian kinship; new family forms emerging as a consequence of divorces, separation, domestic and transnational adoptions and migration. We will discuss how recent theoretical and empirical works reformulated kinship, putting stress on process, flexibility negotiation, human agency, local meanings and symbols. How they countered the notions of “naturalness” of marriage, sex, procreation and parenthood; kinship obligations and duty. We will deconstruct the notion of biology and nature and discuss them as culturally-constructed categories. After the course students are expected to identify central trends in the contemporary studies of kinship, and in a critical manner look at the folk assumptions on the family present in a public Euro-American discourse.

Time & place:

The course will be held on Tuesdays (10-12) and Fridays (14-16) on the time period from Sept 17th to Oct 25th. Last two classes (Oct 22nd, Tuesday, and Oct 25th, Friday) will be held exceptionally at 12-14.

22nd October - guest lecture by Uyi Osazee: ‘MIXED PARENTAGE’ CHILDREN’S ACCOUNTS OF FAMILY AND KINSHIP

The priority is given to students of social anthropology, sociology, social psychology and social policy.