Politics and Kinship

Erdmute Alber is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Tatjana Thelen is Full Professor in the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Austria.

"Politics and Kinship, with a superb introduction by Thelen and Alber, enables us to understand contemporary societies through the entanglement of politics and kinship. The editors are to be lauded for providing the conceptual tools with which we can overcome the theoretical loss much social theory has suffered by leaving unquestioned the specific modernist differentiation of politics and kinship that travelled the world in the service of specific governmental projects. The encompassing perspective presented in this collection ought to enrich many fields of research."Julia Eckert, University of Bern"Kinship and politics are incommensurable concepts, yet equally salient for anthropology. The chapters in this lively and wide-ranging collection show the enduring interest in thinking through – and with – the shifting conceptual, empirical, and ideal relations between them."Michael Lambek, University of Toronto"Volume editors Thelen and Alber have imaginatively assembled a series of texts to document anthropology’s enduring fascination with the mutual entanglement of kinship and politics. Their daring mix of respected classics with exciting new scholarship should prompt new, valuable, and perhaps disconcerting reflections on the historical genealogy and future trajectory of the political in the discipline."Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University"Politics and Kinship displays the impact of a core disciplinary boundary beyond the academy. With a collection that ranges from classic anthropological works to recent writings, from marriage to schooling, and from western nations to non-western groups., Politics and Kinship takes the subject beyond debates over definitions, pointing a way to "future-making" in research and in social action." Judith Schachter, Carnegie Mellon University"This creative and skillful curation of texts from different eras productively illuminates the multiple entanglements of kinship and politics. Interrogating the legacies and futures of anthropological knowledge, the juxtapositions assembled in this volume will revitalise contemporary debate, taking it in new and exciting directions."Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh

• Politics and Kinship: An Introduction Part I. Starting from Politics: Partitions and boundaries 1. Introduction to African Political Systems 2. Kinship within and beyond the ‘Movement of Progressive Societies’ 3. Kinship Weaponized: Representations of Kinship and Binary Othering in U.S. Military Anthropology 4. Father State, Motherland, and the Birth of Modern Turkey 5. The Village Headman in British Central Africa: Introduction 6. State Kinning and Kinning the State in Serbian Elder Care Programs Part II. Starting from Kinship: Technologies and travels 7. General Results 8. Doubt is the Mother of All Invention: DNA and Paternity in a Brazilian Setting 9. The Algebra of Genocide 10. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power. Gender and Morality in the Making of Race 11. Genomics en Route: Ancestry, Heritage and the Politics of Identity across the Black Atlantic12. Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste Part III. Reproductions: Transmissions and future making 13. The Origins of the Family, Property, and the State 14. Including Our Own 15. Parenthood and Social Reproduction 16. No School without Foster Families in Northern Benin: A Social Historical Approach 17. Defining Parents, Making Citizens: Nationality and Citizenship in Transnational Surrogacy