The Politics Of Kinship

Politics and Kinship: A Reader offers a unique overview of the entanglement of these two categories in both theoretical debates and everyday practices. The two, despite many challenges, are often thought to have become separated during the process of modernisation. Tracing how this notion of separation becomes idealized and translated into various contexts, this book sheds light on its epistemological limitations. Combining otherwise-distinct lines of discussion within political anthropology and kinship studies, the selection of texts covers a broad range of intersecting topics that range from military strategy, DNA testing, and child fostering, to practices of kinning the state. Beginning with the study of politics, the first part of this volume looks at how its separation from kinship came to be considered a 'modern' phenomenon, with significant consequences. The second part starts from kinship, showing how it was made into a separate and apolitical field - an idea that would soon travel and be translated globally into policies. The third part turns to reproductions through various transmissions and future making projects. Overall, the volume offers a fundamental critique of the epistemological separation of politics and kinship, and its shortcomings for teaching and research. Featuring contributions from a broad range of regional, temporal and theoretical backgrounds, it allows for critical engagement with knowledge production about the entanglement of politics and kinship. The different traditions and contemporary approaches represented make this book an essential resource for researchers, instructors and students of anthropology.

In Kinship, Islam, and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan, Geoffrey Hughes sets out to trace the "marriage crisis" in Jordan and the Middle East. Rapid institutional, technological, and intellectual shifts in Jordan have challenged the traditional notions of marriage and the role of powerful patrilineal kin groups in society by promoting an alternative ideal of romantic love between husband and wife. Drawing on many years of fieldwork in rural Jordan, Kinship, Islam, and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan provides a firsthand look at how expectations around marriage are changing for young people in the Middle East even as they are still expected to raise money for housing, bridewealth, and a wedding. Kinship, Islam, and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan offers an intriguing look at the contrasts between the traditional values and social practices of rural Jordanians around marriage and the challenges and expectations of young people as their families negotiate the concept of kinship as part of the future of politics, family dynamics, and religious devotion

In Political Kinship in Pakistan, Stephen M. Lyon illustrates how contemporary politics in Pakistan are built on complex kinship networks created through marriage and descent relations. Lyon points to kinship as a critical mechanism for understanding both Pakistan’s continued inability to develop strong and stable governments, and its incredible durability in the face of pressures that have led to the collapse and failure of other states around the world.

Politics and Kinship: A Reader offers a unique overview of the entanglement of these two categories in both theoretical debates and everyday practices. The two, despite many challenges, are often thought to have become separated during the process of modernisation. Tracing how this notion of separation becomes idealised and translated into various contexts, this book sheds light on its epistemological limitations. Combining otherwise-distinct lines of discussion within political anthropology and kinship studies, the selection of texts covers a broad range of intersecting topics that range from military strategy, DNA testing, and child fostering, to practices of kinning the state. Beginning with the study of politics, the first part of this volume looks at how its separation from kinship came to be considered a ‘modern’ phenomenon, with significant consequences. The second part starts from kinship, showing how it was made into a separate and apolitical field – an idea that would soon travel and be translated globally into policies. The third part turns to reproductions through various transmissions and future-making projects. Overall, the volume offers a fundamental critique of the epistemological separation of politics and kinship, and its shortcomings for teaching and research. Featuring contributions from a broad range of regional, temporal and theoretical backgrounds, it allows for critical engagement with knowledge production about the entanglement of politics and kinship. The different traditions and contemporary approaches represented make this book an essential resource for researchers, instructors and students of anthropology.

An introduction to how belonging and identity have been reflected, modified, and rearticulated in crucial moments throughout history.

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory. Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes, or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state sanctioned institution while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the generation of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today. On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, as to feminists, anthropologists and social scientists in general.

Edward Schatz explores the politics of kin-based clan divisions in the post-Soviet state of Kazakhstan. Drawing from extensive ethnographic and archival research, interviews, and wide-ranging secondary sources, he highlights a politics that poses a two-tiered challenge to current thinking about modernity and Central Asia. First, asking why kinship divisions do not fade from political life with modernization, he shows that the state actually constructs clan relationships by infusing them with practical political and social meaning. By activating the most important quality of clans - their "concealability" - the state is itself responsible for the vibrant politics of these subethnic divisions which has emerged and flourished in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Subethnic divisions are crucial to understanding how group solidarities and power relations coexist and where they intersect. But, in a second challenge to current thinking, Schatz argues that clan politics should not be understood simply as competition among primordial groups. Rather, the meanings attributed to clan relationships - both the public stigmas and the publicly proclaimed pride in clans - are part and parcel of this contest. Drawing parallels with relevant cases from the Middle East, East and North Africa, and other parts of the former USSR, Schatz concludes that a more appropriate policy may be achieved by making clans a legitimate part of political and social life, rendering them less powerful or corrupt by increasing their transparency. Political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, policy makers, and others who study state power and identity groups will find a wealth of empirical material and conceptual innovation for discussion and debate.