4 Kinship and Family

In the docuseries Babies (2020), the first episode “Love” features several interviews with families and scientists who discuss how bonds are forged between caregivers and children. One of the families includes Josh and Isaac and their son Eric who was born via surrogacy. Isaac shares how “AJ gave us the ultimate gift of being able to form a family. Now she’s part of our family.” Isaac goes on to describe how unique this gift was given the fact that commercial (i.e., paid) surrogacy is illegal where AJ resides. The process involved submitting a case and waiting for a surrogate to choose the family. AJ explains, “In Canada, it is illegal to get paid for surrogacy. But I think that, because of how intimate surrogacy is, money cannot be the reason to do this. And I wanted to help. I mean, I can’t do much, but this is something that I can do.” In this brief snapshot of how family is made through relationships and policies, love is described not only as the love between parent and child but also between the adults that helped to make the conditions of parenthood possible. This is just one example of how we see modern day policies and practices shaping kinship.

Across the history of the discipline, anthropologists have recorded a vast array of kinship types and related practices. For example, Anindita Majumdar writes about kinship and surrogacy in in her book, Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India (2017). In her interview on the accompanying podcast to this textbook, Majumdar describes how commercial surrogacy can be a way for women to stay empowered in the process of negotiating their role in kinship, declaring their own agency in the process of choosing to become a surrogate, and discovering the limitations of potential policy changes that move away from commercial surrogacy to altruistic surrogacy.

Surrogacy is just one of many ways in which the nuances of kinship can be explored in contemporary anthropology. Surrogacy itself is not a new phenomenon; however, in more recent decades, the convergence of new policies, transnational flows, and assisted reproductive technologies bring to the forefront examples that build upon classic models of kinship and destabilize oversimplified theories of kinship. Additionally, parent-child relationships are just one means of understanding how ‘kin’ is defined and constructed within broader social contexts.

The relationships that matter to our social lives and individual identities are a rich topic for exploration. Families of origin might refer to the families into which we are born, adopted, or raised. Meanwhile, chosen families refer to the kin we find and make as young adults to complement and/or compensate for any challenges or limitations we may have experienced with families of origin. This chapter provides an overview of the history of kinship studies in anthropology, including its original definitions and some of the ways in which those models have been critiqued and revised over time. We then turn to more recent studies to better understand how anthropological perspectives illuminate our understanding of kinship.

Defining and Describing Kinship

Marshall Sahlins once described kinship as the “mutuality of being” and added, “kinsmen are persons who belong to one another, who are members of one another, who are co-present in each other, whose lives are joined and interdependent” (Sahlins 2011, 11). This definition may seem straightforward at first glance, but in actuality, it opens us up to imagine an infinite number of ways that someone might become kin. Among other critiques of Sahlins’ theory and methods (Gillison 2013), one critique has been that this definition of the mutuality of being is “too vague to be meaningful” (Kronenfeld 2012, 678). Still, many anthropologists continue to ask what it means to have mutual relationships with other human beings.

In this chapter, we will examine the concepts and practices that come with kinship or kin relations. We will review how understandings of kinship have evolved within the discipline as well as define some basic models and ways of illustrating those models using diagrams. We will then explore beliefs and practices that come with kinship, ranging from adoption and marriage to traditions and taboos. Along the way, we will review a variety of examples that have pushed anthropologists to think about how kinship is continuously in flux depending on ever-changing local and global contexts.

Kinship is a specific way of describing the relationships between people, initially conceptualized to include blood kin as well as kin relations created through marriage or similar bonds. To begin understanding how family relationships are defined, we can begin with some common terms. Family can include ties that are consanguineal (blood) as well as affinal (partnerships sometimes referred to as marriage ties). Over time, anthropologists have acknowledged the limitations of these terms and definitions in describing meaningful relationships such as friend communities, other kin communities, and the dynamics of developing and maintaining ties in a world where people are on the move and not always residing in close proximity to each other for their entire lives. Popular culture as well as scholarship have drawn attention to this broader notion of kinship. Books like Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close and television shows like Pose highlight the meaningful relationships that create bonds between kinfolk who “live each other’s lives and die each other’s deaths.” In understanding kinship in fuller terms, we can better understand the diverse, vital supports needed for human wellbeing and social connectedness.

Relationships matter for a variety of reasons, including their representation as a “system of meaning and power that cultures create to determine who is related to whom and to define their mutual expectations, rights, and responsibilities” (Guest 2016, 236). How relationships are configured and understood among individuals has implications in daily activities as well as in milestone responsibilities. This can include everything from expectations about who has primary and secondary childrearing responsibilities to who attends rites of passage such as communion, bar mitzvah, or weddings. We begin by reviewing some basic concepts around kinship including a variety of systems or models and how they might be drawn using diagrams. And perhaps more importantly, we dive into the meaning behind the relationships depicted in those diagrams as we look at the social expectations and acknowledgement that comes with different ways of belonging to a group. While models and diagrams can help us understand some of the basic components of kinship systems, it is important to remember that “most of our talk about families is clouded by unexplored notions of what families ‘really’ are like” (Collier, Rosaldo, and Yanagisako 1997).

Kin relations and a sense of belonging to a group are built on collective understanding. For example, a person might reflect, “”Who do I see as my mother and is that the same or different from who others see as my mother?” Such understandings go beyond naturalized, inherent notions that one is born simply knowing who to call what and who will provide a great sense of belonging and connectedness.

Recall our earlier discussions of Bronislaw Malinowski in earlier chapters. Malinowski also explored notions of family and kin relations during his time on the Trobriand Islands. Malinowski’s argument was that “family” was a universal human institution. His work was then challenged by other theorists who took the opposite stance.

Much of what we know about kinship in the history of American anthropology comes from the 19^th century. Lewis Henry Morgan drew his insights from conducting research among the Haudenosaunee (whom he refers to as the Iroquois in his writings). Morgan noticed that relationships between individuals looked different from those he had grown up with and defined as family. He then recorded these observations in League of the Iroquois (1851). Decades later, Morgan who was a lawyer by trade recounted the words that Haudenosaunee used to describe family members and explained how they relate to right and responsibilities, both legally and socially. Morgan went on to record kinship systems among Indigenous groups in other parts of the world.

While we will spend some time reviewing some classic definitions and models of kinship systems from around the world as they were described initially by anthropologists, readers should keep in mind that definitions of family and how people are related to one another are neither simple nor static. As societies, nation-states, and biocultural flows are always in transition, so too are ideologies and practices around family ties. In examining the evolution of kinship charts, it is also possible to revisit the history of anthropology, noting what was recorded and what was not. This allows us to look at archived knowledge while also noticing and critiquing its limitations as artifacts produced and curated within systems of power rather than as neutral facts that simply exist for learners to memorize.

Before we dive into kinship diagrams, a way of depicting different models of understanding family ties, let us take a few moments to describe some basic terms and definitions. Adding to consanguineal and affinal, we introduce two other terms: matrilineal and patrilineal. Matrilineal means that descent follows the mother’s line whereas patrilineal descent follows the father’s line.

In “Don’t Even Talk to Me if You’re Kinya’áanii [Towering House]”: Adopted Clans, Kinship and “Blood” in Navajo Country,” Kristina Jacobsen and Shirley Ann Bowman examine ideologies around k’é or the Diné kinship system which connects people through “an elaborate matrilineal descent network of systems of obligation and reciprocity, otherwise known as the clan system (dóone’é). As elsewhere, kinship in Diné contexts is culturally specific, cultivated through daily use, and not a given, natural fact” (2019, 43).

Jacobsen and Bowman attend to the ways in which clan systems have incorporated non-Navajos into Navajo Nation and how varying practices have been impacted by settler colonialism. They also reflect on the nuances of historical and contemporary kinship and how they are related to the politics of citizenship (44). There are over 80 active clans, organized into nine groups: this organization influences taboos around marriage and dating. “If a Diné person has four Navajo grandparents, then they will have four Diné clans—maternal, paternal, mother’s father, and father’s father, and typically presented in this order. The first or maternal clan is considered to be the most important in being identified (and identifying oneself) as Diné…Sharing kinship means that everywhere one travels where there are other Navajos, one gains not only a relative but also a sense of belonging” (47). In understanding kinship systems where there may be some common organizing beliefs and practices, it should be noted that variation exists as do multiple understandings and practices that resist homogenizing assumptions about the entirety of any group. For example, Diné is sometimes considered preferable to “Navajo” which is not a word that exists within the language. In 1993, Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah was quoted in the Los Angeles Timesas stating, “We were called Diné by the Great Spirit…By changing our name, we are simply exercising self-determination and tribal sovereignty” (Sahagun 1993). Despite this advocacy, Legislation No. 0395-16 did not receive enough support from the Navajo Nation Council to change the group’s name from Navajo Nation to Diné Nation. This is one example among many that shows how perspectives and preferences can vary within a group of people who share aspects of identity.

Members of a society may choose to adopt different beliefs such that they no longer follow or know about their clans over time. Additionally, as Jacobsen and Bowman emphasize, there is much more fluidity when adoptive practices exist than are depicted in rigid kinship charts. They write, “Outside groups merged with Diné society, retained their own clans, merged clans, left for long periods of time, and returned, and adoption was not an overnight process. So the boundaries of Diné society, while cohesive and coherent, were also porous” (50).

In matrilineal systems, a man who marries typically becomes a member of his wife’s clan and goes to live with his wife’s (his new) clan. This is an illustration of being both matrilineal and matrilocal. Where people live depending on family ties is defined as patrilocal (living with the father’s side of the family) or matrilocal (living with the mother’s side of the family). Though locality has historically followed lineal systems, residential conventions have morphed over time to be less rigidly followed.

Patrilineage or matrilineage does not mean that relatives are limited to that line but rather, that linkages across generations (e.g., through surnames) might follow one line over another as will certain responsibilities such as caring for elders or inheriting land. Depending on the context (e.g., locality and how far family villages or residences are from one another), one might grow up with deeper relationships with one’s lineal descent and hardly any with the other side. It is also possible that one might be equally familiar with both lines of descent in terms of daily or weekly interactions. In a patrilineal context, children may bear the name of the father’s line as well as distinguish names for describing relatives on the father’s side and the mother’s side. Aunts, uncles, and in-laws will denote whether they are relatives via the father or the mother. There are also descriptors that indicate age and birth order. For example, someone might call an older brother and younger brother by two different names that denote birth order rather than using a singular term like “brother.”

It is important to note that matrilineal or patrilineal is about descent and not necessarily about gendered power. For example, one can live in a patriarchal society where landownership and leadership (e.g., kings) are male but determined through the mother’s line. That is to say, one can find themselves in a patriarchal and matrilineal society. Both matrilineal and patrilineal descent are examples of unilineal (one line or one side) descent. By contrast, when kinship follows both sides of the family, it is defined as bilateral descent.

Kinship charts or genograms can account for spousal death as well as divorce using a slashed line on symbols, for example over the shape symbolizing the individual who passed or over the double bars between previously married individuals. Even while examining the diverse range of ways kinship can be depicted in the history of anthropology, we can also see limitations in how charts are written including practices such as divorce or adoption. The assumptions that are both evident in what is visible and invisible can help to stimulate further examination of what sociocultural norms are present and how people may be treated if they live outside of those norms.

Another type of descent is sometimes referred to as “ropes.” This term was popularized by Margaret Mead when she was documenting kinship among the Mundugumor in Papua New Guinea. If you imagine a rope comprised of interwoven strands, you might begin to get a sense for what rope descent might look like. With rope descent, relationships are based on cross-sex ties such that a sister and brother will not belong to the same line. The sister will belong to her father’s line while the brother belongs to his mother’s line. Each of these types of descent can be incredibly diverse in terms of how relatives are described and how roles and responsibilities align according to those relationships.

To get acquainted with reading these diagrams, we begin with “ego” who is the lens or starting point from which a chart will define and depict relations. In early kinship diagrams, triangles were typically used to indicate males and circles for females. Two parallel bars or lines denotes marriage, single vertical lines birth or parent/child relationships and single horizontal lines marked sibling relationships. While these kinship systems are named by societies that are examples of each, there are other societies that follow similar conventions. Additionally, images include labels used in the original charts but are accompanied with critiques and relevant updates to names. (Note: images for kinship system diagrams have been made available under the Creative Commons, where authors have waived rights so that the work might be available in the public domain. These depictions of different systems are associated with particular groups but as with most examples, are not meant to assume homogeneity across diverse and nuanced practices of any group of people.) In contemporary kinship charts, we see a range of symbols on kinship charts including triangles for males, circles for females, and squares for gender nonbinary individuals.

The kin relations depicted in this chart describe a system where a person might be labeled aunt or uncle regardless of whether someone is related to either parent. All children of parents’ siblings are considered cousins. Originally referred to under a different name in early documents within anthropology, this system was meant to describe kinship among Inuit people and within societies where names of parents’ siblings in this system are distinguished only by gender. “Inuit” is often used to encompass several groups of people so there are additional nuances. A recommended practice, especially for those who do not have lived experience and are outsiders to a group, is to defer to ways people within the group identify and name. (See Alaska Native Language Center.)

In the Haudenosaunee (previously referred to as Iroquois in historical documents) kinship systems, your parents’ same-sex siblings would also be considered your father or mother. Originally, the Iroquois Confederacy was a term used to describe six related tribes (initially five tribes: the Kanienkehaka or Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) who called themselves the Haudenosaunee or “the people of the longhouse.” Iroquois appears to have been generated from French adaptations of a variety of indigenous words. In this type of kinship system, your father’s brother would also be considered your “father” and your mother’s sister would also be considered your “mother.” Meanwhile, your parent’s opposite-sex siblings (e.g., your father’s sister and mother’s brother) would not be considered similar to your father or mother; they would, instead, be considered to be more like “aunts” and “uncles.”

In general, in kinship diagrams, cross-cousins are considered to be the children of your parents’ opposite sex siblings (e.g., father’s sister’s children and mother’s brother’s children) while parallel cousins are the children of your parents’ same sex siblings (e.g., father’s brother’s children and mother’s sister’s children). In this type of kinship system, cross-cousins would be called “cousins” while parallel cousins would be considered “brothers” and “sisters.”

In the Hawaiian kinship system, all members of the same generation are considered similar. This system is now sometimes referred to as a generational system. In this generational system, in addition to ego’s mother and father, all siblings of both parents who are female are “mother” and all siblings of both parents who are male are “father.” Cousins are not called cousins at all but rather, brothers for males and sisters for females.  The terms Kanaka Maoli and Kanaka ‘Ōiwi are the original terms that were later popularized into the term Native Hawaiian. Kanaka maoli is the “appropriate indigenous term for Native Hawaiian by advocates of Native Hawaiian sovereignty and independence” and the term ‘Ōiwi refers to the literal translation “of the ancestral bone” according to Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor and Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie (2014).

The Haudenosaunee kinship system was originally labeled as the Iroquois system to describe a kinship system that distinguishes between same or cross-sex siblings of parents. In this chart, ego’s father’s brother is considered father and his children are considered brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, ego’s father’s sister is an aunt, and her children are considered cousins. Following this same naming convention, ego’s mother’s sister is considered mother and her children are brothers and sisters whereas ego’s mother’s brother is an uncle, and his children are cousins.

While some generational systems utilize fewer categories of distinguishing relations and their names, the kinship system historically referred to as the Sudanese system differs in that words for relations range based on distance from ego as well as gender and relationship. In this system, nearly every relationship has a different name.

In what was referred to as the Crow system, distinguishing differences exist depending on the same or cross-sex sibling relationship. For example, ego’s father’s brother is father, and his children are therefore brother and sister; ego’s mother’s sister is mother, and her children are brother and sister to ego. However, ego’s father’s sister is an aunt equivalent, and her children are cousins. Ego’s mother’s brother is mother’s brother or uncle equivalent, and his children are cousins.

Like the Haudenosaunee and Crow, the kinship system initially described as the Omaha system also distinguishes between same and cross sex sibling lines.

While each of these charts may be antiquated, they are summarized here as part of the record of disciplinary history. Limitations exist because of methods used at the time as well as in reflecting knowledge today. People and populations are constantly changing and as a result relationships and structures of relation also evolve. No person or people are stuck in time, nor can the be captured for all time in a static diagram. However outdated they may be today, they are presented here as an illustration of a method (how to quickly diagram how someone describes themselves in relation to others) and a visual depiction of anthropologists presenting multiple ways in which family and belonging might look beyond a singular worldview.

Kinship in Social Context

Practices sometimes play out in the affirmative—things you are expected to do or might have the responsibility of doing, such as making decisions about childrearing, naming, or providing for in economic terms. But practices can also play out in the negative—things you should avoid doing. These beliefs and behaviors are sometimes encompassed by recognizing taboos. One illustration of the importance of understanding who is related and in what ways is in Juǀʼhoansi kinship (referred to as the !Kung in some ethnographies). Anthropologists described the Juǀʼhoansi as having very strict rules regarding incest and marriage taboos such that it was important to note who was a first cousin or second cousin on either side of the family to avoid marriage taboos.

Kinship was described in three different ways: 1) bilateral; 2) names (people who have the same name as a kin relation will also be treated as family); and 3) wi (where an older person may “wi” a younger person, somewhat similar to the concept of adoption). Marrying someone further away from their family as defined by internal/external to one’s band not only avoids taboos but also increases knowledge of resources.

Another way to think about “marrying further away” is exogamy, the practice of marrying outside of one’s group. Conversely, another culture may practice endogamy which would be the practice of marrying inside the group. While exogamy and endogamy refer to marriage practices external and internal to groups, poly- and mono- refer to the number of partners. In classic kinship terms, monogamy indicates the practice of having one partner at a time. Differentiations can be made between lifetime monogamy and monogamy in a given moment of time or season of life (e.g., serial monogamy). Polygamy indicates the practice of having more than one partner at a time. This can indicate multiple variations from one husband with many wives (polygyny), one wife with many husbands (polyandry), or multiple wives and husbands. In today’s terms, more common or nuanced terms such as polyamory or ethical non-monogamy might be used to describe non-exclusive relationships without necessarily aligning with the context of marriage or long-term partnerships.

Families and cultures might practice arranged marriage for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from economic or financial reasons to social ties and religious norms that indicate where families have similar things in common. The degree of formality in the arrangement also varies. Two people might meet as the result of an arrangement through a mutual friend, family member or relative or through someone who is a matchmaker.

Whether through arrangement or not, additional practices may help to forge ties between two families. A dowry refers to a bride’s family giving gifts to either the bride or the groom’s family at the time of marriage. Bride service is different from a dowry in that the first few months of marriage include living with the bride’s family and the groom (now husband) provides for his wife’s family for a period of time.

As with all cultures and societies, adaptations and shifts occur over time sometimes as a result of internal dynamics and at other times, a result of external pressures that can range from environment and climate to government policies and global flows. Kinship and ownership practices related to kinship structures have long been an area of study in anthropology, with many case studies focusing on the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania or the Nuer of Sudan. More recent anthropological contributions have shown, though, that it is important to be aware of how groups have changed their systems to meet the evolving needs of their group. Additionally, changes may come about because of popular and academic narratives that then impact how local and international interventions are constructed with regard to land allocation. In Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development, Dorothy Hodgson (2001) emphasizes the impact of transnational factors ranging from colonialism to international development interventions. The limitations and failures of various development interventions, argues Hodgson, can often be rooted in inaccurate and static understandings of Maasai culture as pastoralist and patriarchal when, in fact, the Maasai have changed a great deal over the course of the last 80 years. Hodgson opens her text with a critique of letters published in the New York Times during the late 1980s, reflecting on images floating in popular discourse linking Maasai ethnic identity to either a romanticized “once free and beautiful” narrative or to a highly gendered narrative of pastoralism being inherently a male activity and means of organizing society. Images and narratives of the Maasai have limited perspectives circulating in the world in such a way that nongovernmental organizations as well as other administrative agencies have developed interventions based on outdated information that are inaccurate or inadequate in informing how present-day issues are addressed.

Other research such as the work of Winnie Wairimu and Paul Hebinck (2017) emphasize that the Maasai should not viewed as passive receivers of land tenure policies passed by the Kenyan state. Instead, they are agents in devising a varied number or responses to how land is divided among groups and to individual families. One of the actions that emerged in response to land subdivision is the cultivation of crops by women while men chose to aggregate smaller pieces of land to continue pastoral lifestyles. Among the Maasai, both traditional practices such as pastoralism might continue while also creating space for other practices such as horticulture (both of which we will delve into in more detail in an upcoming chapter on economics but named here for the ways in which they intersect with practices that weave together kinship, gender, and economic strategies).

Kinship also continues to morph and challenge notions of fixed definitions of family. For example, Caroline Archambault’s ethnographic work with families that have gone through the process of adoption shows how parents and children create ties. In particular, she stresses the perspective that children are active participants in how kinship is made and unmade (2010). Archambault writes, “In the Kenyan primary school syllabus the biological, nuclear and monogamous family model is by far the most popular textbook representation of family life. For most Maasai children, such a family model does not correspond to their lived reality. Throughout the school, dozens of children will make their way back to non-natal homes” (230). Moving across families as adopted children/“children given” or fostered children/ “children borrowed” supports the idea that family itself is a dynamic form of organizing relationships and that children do not belong to single set of parents in contrast to more rigid nuclear models. Dynamic practices also underscore the idea that adoption is not limited to a singular event but part of a process wherein acceptance and attachment are created and recreated over a span of years.

In one example, survey results from residents of a community organized by units called an enkang or a patrilocal residential unit reported that 28.4% of wives were living with at least one non-natal child (232). In this context, children often circulate within and across homesteads for a variety of reasons including the convenience of being closer to schools as well as through adoption or fostering. This is rooted in the belief that children are gifts “not made and ‘owned,’ but given into human care” (Lienhardt 1961, 22 as cited in Archambault 2010, 232). Archambault traces how this belief and practice of communal support for children is changing and leaning toward the increased nuclearization of families because of factors like land privatization policies introduced in the 1990s. These policies allocated parcels of land to individual male family heads (rather than via communal group allocations), influencing the emphasis on nuclear units. Additionally, exposure to Euro-American ideals of nuclear families and biological parenthood (which itself are not representative of European and American societies but often circulate through institutional discourse) also impacted the increased emphasis on nuclear units.

A classic example of kinship and social context comes from the work of E.E. Evans-Pritchard who wrote The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940) and Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (1951). At the time, Evans-Pritchard’s contributions helped challenge the notion that parent-child relations as well as marriage followed definitions that assigned a single person to a single role (e.g., a romantic partner also being a legally and socially recognized partner). In his ethnography, Evans-Pritchard described how various roles might play out in Nuer society, including differentiated definitions such as the following:

• The genitor as the biological father
• The pater as the socially recognized father
• The legal marital partner as the person responsible for caring for a woman and her children
• Ghost marriages, described as a situation wherein a man dies without marrying so that one of his male relatives steps in to fulfill the duties of the ghost. This might be a brother or cousin of the deceased. The male relative or pro-husband then has a child with the widow and helps to raise the children. In this context, a woman states that her husband is the ghost (deceased person) and the children take the name of the ghost who is recognized as their father. Thus, the relative might be a genitor and legal marital partner but not the pater. The ghost of the deceased is considered to be the pater. The pro-husband and relative might have another wife with whom their children and kinship relations are socially recognized as pater among other roles such as genitor.
• A leviratic marriage is when a widow goes to live with a kinsman or close relative of her deceased husband. The kinsman becomes her pro-husband. If the widow is still young, the pro-husband will reproduce with her, but the children are considered to be the children of the dead husband. Because the widow establishes a relationship with her deceased husband who exchanged bridewealth, any of her children would always be his children and he would be the socially recognized father or pater. The biological father or genitor in this context is less important because the social relationship had already been recognized through the exchange of bridewealth.

In these examples, various marriage practices and beliefs around parent-child relationships ensured that lineages continued even in the event of death.

Decades later, Evans-Pritchard’s work was both upheld as classic contributions to kinship theory and deeply critiqued for its limitations. Aidan Southall (1986) writes about the “real paradox of Evans-Pritchard’s Nath [i.e., Nuer] analysis was that he stimulated some of the most productive work in social anthropology by formulating a brilliant theory that applied well to many other societies but not to the one in which it was conceived” (Southall 1986, 17 as cited in McKinnon 2000, 36). One way this played out was in his noting of differences that occurred depending on class status but its exclusion in his theoretical framework of societal structure (which was depicted as egalitarian). In this way, Evans-Pritchard serves as an example of many figures in the history of anthropology who simultaneously observed different ways of being outside of Western contexts and raised awareness of diverse configurations of social belonging while also falling into their own limited perspectives and constructs such as the separation (i.e., non-integration) between domestic and political domains (Collier and Yanagisako 1987).

As we look at different kinship systems and how gender roles play out in different societies, we quickly see that there are no universally standardized norms about who counts as family and how being related to each other influences beliefs and practices. Recall Malinowski’s focus on the Trobriand Islands in his ethnographic research. Malinowski described Trobrianders as a matrilineal society, tracing descent through mother’s side. However, most of Malinowski’s work focused on men. During the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, anthropologist Annette Weiner conducted research specifically on women’s roles in the Trobriand Islands. Weiner noted how women had a tremendous amount of political and social influence and were not limited to domestic roles such as childrearing. One practice that illustrated women’s power in political and socioeconomic spheres was the sagali. Sagali occurred about one year after a person dies. It was an important period of feasting and gift exchange, led and organized by women. In preparation for this event, goods were made by women and exchanged by women. Goods included banana leaf bundles and grass skirts. Both items required many hours of work and were indicators of social prestige. The person who gave away the most goods (rather than the person who accumulated the most) was therefore seen as more socially powerful. While men were involved, it was women who had the power to establish social status and power during sagali.

Weiner’s work shined a light on the labor provided by women in Trobriand society. The intersections of gendered roles, specifically labor, and the social contexts of kinship can be seen in societies around the world. Women’s work has been recorded in both public and private spheres. Micaela di Leonardo provides an overview of kin work across a variety of cultural contexts (1987). One area where women labor outside of the marketplace includes housework and caregiving for family members within the home. In her fieldwork among Italian-Americans, di Leonardo defines kin work as “the conception, maintenance, and ritual celebration of cross-household kin ties, including visits, letters, telephone calls, presents, and cards to kin; the organization of holiday gatherings; the creation and maintenance of quasi-kin relations; decision to neglect or to intensify particular ties; the mental work of reflection about all these activities, and the creation and communication of altering images of family and kin vis-à-vis the images of others, both folk and mass media” (442-443). While the specific details of duties like writing holiday cards takes place in a specific place and time, the concept that there is work associated with maintaining kinship ties and how that work is designated or assumed in gendered ways is applicable to diverse contexts. One thing to note here is that there is an assumption of who kin are, based on socio-cultural constructs (e.g., who even gets or expects a holiday card—is it who is recognized as a relative through birth or law? Is it kin based on friendship and other relational ties that are meaningful?). On top of understanding who your kin are, there is work done to maintain those ties. Some of that work might be expected and can upheld or transgressed and others are further strengthened and cemented through regular work and practice.

Kinship, Transnationalism and Technology

We have discussed some examples of kinship systems both in the US and in other countries and become familiar with some of the terms and how concepts like lineage are woven into the texture of everyday life and milestones like marriage and having children. We have discussed scenarios that include widowhood and connections between life and death, gender and family, and political and economic power. The late 20^th century and early 21^st century in particular have surfaced additional questions and insights about kinship as it intersects with transnational flows, immigration, and technology. These add additional factors to ever-changing landscapes that, to large degree, have long contended with transnational flows via colonialism and imperialism as well as the circulation of norms related to “family” and the ways in which it plays out both in domestic and political domains.

Kin relations converge with a wide range of other topics of interest such as economic and political power. One example of contemporary complexities in kinship is in Christine Ward Gailey’s Blue Ribbon Babies: Labors of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in US Adoption Practice. In her research on adoption, she notes how white couples pursuing adoption via independent or private agencies seek out “healthy white babies” or “blue ribbon” babies. They often seek out international adoption and avoid open adoption, denoting perceptions of the quality of the babies themselves as well as the severing of ties from biological parents and biological links to lineage. Meanwhile, single Black and white women as well as middle class Black couples and working class white married couples choose a different route, often pursuing foster adoption. What is highlighted in this book is both the differing preferences for types of adoption (e.g., international vs domestic and closed vs open) as well as how those preferences are inextricably tied to parents’ perception of children, their backgrounds and needs, and how that impacts integration into the life and lineage of the adoptive family.

Transnational flows or international contexts introduce additional factors to how kinship is defined and how that plays out in terms of economic and social expectations. For example, a family that immigrates from one country to another may create and expand their kin relations to include “relatives” in their new country of residence, making and cementing ties where they might not have been included in the context of the country of origin. One simple way this plays out is when “aunties” and “uncles” are included as family, with the bonds of social support as well as the concrete supports that can come from roles such as assistance in childrearing or connections to employment opportunities, even without the requisite lineal ties that might have been part of the criteria for defining aunt and uncle relationships in a non-immigrant community contexts. Immigrant and migrant communities and the context of economic and political challenges reframe kinship ties, roles and responsibilities in new ways often adding additional pressures to provide economic support to family from one direction to the other. Sacrifice is defined on both sides of the lines crossed and blurred through the migration process.

Zooming in on the practice of transnational or international adoption, we see how kinship can become complex in the context of global flows and the sometimes productive, sometimes tenuous relationship between national identity and globalization. Eleana Kim is an anthropologist who has studied transnational adoption of babies from South Korea to the US and the implications of those babies returning to visit Korea as adults. In “Our Adoptee, Our Alien: Transnational Adoptees as Specters of Foreignness and Family in South Korea,” Kim recounts how adopted Koreans are welcomed back to their birth country under the legal designation of “overseas Koreans” under a state-sponsored globalization project (2007). She writes:

Designed to build economic and social networks between Korea and its seven million compatriots abroad, this policy projects an ethnonationalist and deterritorialized vision of Korea that depends upon a conflation of “blood” with “kinship” and “nation.” Adoptees present a particularly problematic subset of overseas Koreans: they have biological links to Korea, but their adoptions have complicated the sentimental and symbolic ties of “blood” upon which this familiarist and nationalist state policy depend. Because international adoption replaces biological with social parenthood and involves the transfer of citizenship, to incorporate adoptees as “overseas Koreans,” the state must honor the authority and role of adoptive parents who raised them, even as they invite adoptees to (re)claim their Koreanness (2007, 497).

In this example of transnational adoption, we see the complex relationship between birth and adoptive ties in the making of kin as it intersects with macro-level projects in nationhood and in global flows. Legal and social bonds converge and diverge with the complexities of racial identity. For example, Korean American adults who return to Korea to reunite with their birth families discovered that their rights to sponsor Korean relatives’ entry into the U.S. are nullified or forfeited. This is an example of how the severing of kin relationship from birth to and through adoption changes the definition of “relative” and the legal rights that can be attached to the sponsorship of relatives joining family through immigration.

In this scenario, adoptive parents are the only legally recognized genitors as well as socially recognized parents in the U.S. context. The reason for the shift in genitor (or birth parent) designation is because, historically, babies were designated as “orphans” before going through the adoption process. This plays out in the context of the major rise in adoption out of Korea in a post-war context. Decades after the war in a time when Korea’s economic and global status as a “developed” nation places new and emerging challenges on family definitions, choices, and population demographics. Kim documents how more and more adults are choosing to have fewer children or no children at all. In 2006, Korea had a birthrate of 1.08 which was the lowest among developed nations at that time, adding context to a history of overseas adoption that takes on new shape, building on post-war landscapes to a present-day population health discourse among national policymakers concerned with not having enough babies to sustain the nation.

The geopolitical context of adoption, immigration, and kin relations is indeed complex. Technology also introduces pathways for kin relations to be defined and redefined. For example, building on the writings of Marilyn Strathern (1992), Charis Thompson’s “Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship in an Infertility Clinic” (2001) reflects on her fieldwork in infertility clinics in California in the 1990s. Thompson reveals insights into contemporary notions of kinship. She points to the clinic as a site where notions of kin relationships are made and remade, and how that plays out in the context of reproductive technology clinics where biological definitions of being related and social definitions of parenthood sometimes collide, converge, and conflict. She writes, “In the process, the meaning of biological motherhood is somewhat transformed; in particular, biological motherhood is becoming something that can be partial. This work is thus about ‘doing’ kinship, as opposed to simply ‘being’ a particular and fixed kind of kin” (175). In particular, Thompson raises questions about the need to understand kinship in the context of donors and surrogates who are close friends or family members (vs. contracted individuals). Kinship is not just about who is defined and designated as a parent but also includes all of the implications that come from parental roles as well as the need to be explicit about relationships in order to avoid possibilities of incest. Through a range of case studies, Thompson suggests several ways of understanding kinship in the context of reproductive assistance. Stages in the establishment of pregnancy are determined to be “relational” when they implicate kin relations whereas the stage is called “custodial” if it enables relatedness but does not itself become part of kinship understandings. For example, in a custodial stage, a woman might be instrumental in the conception or bearing of the child (i.e., biologically involved) but not a part of the kinship network (i.e., not implicated as mother).

Technologies (both biomedical and legal) have influenced the making of kin. Examples range from birth control and in vitro fertilization to surrogacy and artificial insemination. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp have explored the impact of assisted reproductive technologies on kinship and society. For example, medical technologies have helped children with disabilities to survive in ways that they may not have in the past (Ginsburg and Rapp 2011). Ginsburg and Rapp argue that such “disruptions of reproduction” are inextricably tied to rises in learning disabilities and that the politics of reproduction therefore have an indelible mark on the contemporary context of developed nations. Learning disabilities doubled each decade after the 1970s, resulting in a 15% rate among US students. In addition to the development of new technologies, policy changes and disability rights legislation and portrayals of more nuanced or positive representations of children and adults with disabilities in the media have also increased in recent decades. They converge to transform the American context of children and parenthood to be more inclusive of people with disabilities and to bring together family relationships, technology, and social justice. Ginsburg and Rapp emphasize, “With nearly every interview, we heard stories about how families have had to reimagine everything from household budgets to school careers, to sibling relations, to models of humanity that take into account life with a difference. We argue that the stories our respondents told us about living with disability—from the moment of birth onward—collectively constitute a ‘new kinship imaginary’ with temporal and social implications” (2011, 3).

Another example of kin-making in a contemporary context is the defining of hope and loss in both surrogacy and adoption. Christa Craven writes about kinship and “de-kinning” in LGBTQ communities in the context of reproductive loss. Reproductive loss can include failed adoption or miscarriage. After conducting interviews with LGBTQ parents in the US, Canada, Belgium, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, New Zealand and Scotland, Craven finds how reproductive loss can be de-kinning by marking the lack of family formation while new kinships can also be formed through practices such as creating physical memorials, having religious or spiritual services, or remembering kin-making experiences through tattoos and art.

Adoption, surrogacy, and assisted reproductive technologies underscore what many have called new kinship studies or the second coming of kinship studies. Motherhood disaggregates into categories such as genetic, birth, adoptive and surrogate, distinguishing between social and biological parenting (Strathern 1992, 27). For example, Janet Carsten discusses the evolution of anthropological thought on kinship from Levi-Strauss to today (Warburton and Edmonds 2016). Thinking about the topics of global flow alongside surrogacy and technology in the context of more recent events, we see how quickly kin relations are made, interrupted, and remade. News stories marked with headlines such as “Israeli Dads Welcome Surrogate Born Baby in Nepal on Earthquake Day” (Harris 2015) illustrate how policy, sexual orientation, circulation of people and things across borders, and natural disasters come together. In this particular story, two dads who are barred from adoption in their home country of Israel due to their sexual orientation fly to Nepal to meet their child, trying to find their surrogate in the middle of earthquake recovery. In this journey to make kin, the story begins with sperm in Israel that is frozen and flown to Thailand where a South African donor supplied her egg for fertilization. The embryo was then flow to Nepal where it was implanted in an Indian woman who had agreed to be the surrogate. Whether the egg donor and surrogate were paid and to what degree they were able to negotiate the terms of their labor are not details explicitly included in the news report.

Surrogate labor and its relationship to social power structures have led to discussions about women, particularly poor women, are relegated to “womb renting” for wealthy foreigners. Added reflection also comes from researchers who provide important critiques of commercial surrogacy based on these power differentials as well as calls to analyze limitations in these debates such as essentializing narratives of surrogates as agency-less individuals. Bronwyn Parry acknowledges that commercial surrogacy can indeed be exploitative but also cautions against fetishized, exceptionalist narratives that define it as inherently so when other forms of bodily labor are also spaces of potential and real exploitation. Parry writes:

One of the powerful implications of perpetuating racialized and gendered accounts of surrogacy that characterize the practitioners (the surrogates) as an oppressed and exploited minority is that they actively prohibit such women from occupying the role of benefactor of reproductive labour to the more privileged Indian or white Western women and men who avail themselves of their services. Keeping them in this role, whilst simultaneously denying the significance of their labour, works to strip them further of both power and self-respect (2018, 228).

Better regulation that encourages or mandates more information sharing and the building of structures for more equitable negotiation are distinguished from exceptionalist narratives that might require the entire act of commercial surrogacy to be banned because the entire practice is seen as inherently exploitative. Parry cautions against falling into narratives of agency-less women that might address some inequities while further perpetuating others.

In examples like these, we see how marginalization and power might play out in one locale (gay men in Israel who want to be fathers) but also position them to interact in other locales (such as in Thailand and Nepal) in ways that leverage the power and privilege that accompanies the financial means to pursue assisted reproductive technologies and international travel. In this way, the complexities of kinship are mediated, facilitated, and disrupted by law, social and economic power, as well as unforeseen events that connect many countries and people of different cultural backgrounds to one another in the making of this family.

Recall our opening chapter where the context of COVID-19 brings anthropological issues to the forefront. Within this context, we also see how surrogacy and transnational flows take shape in the midst of a global pandemic (Maynes 2020). BioTexCom operates a center in Ukraine and released footage of surrogate babies born and awaiting their meeting with their parents but facing delays due to travel restrictions put in place as result of COVID-19 response. The center has been criticized for some of its practices in the past, and as an example of the complications of the transnational reproductive “market” for surrogacy and for lack of regulations. For example, parents who are one of the more frequently represented customers of BioTexCom may rely on its presence in Ukraine because surrogacy is not legal in their country of residence. This is further complicated by socioeconomic and class divisions that allow only certain would-be parents to travel to far away locales where surrogacy is permitted. For example, not all people in Spain (where surrogacy is illegal) who want to be parents through surrogacy have the option or means to travel internationally to Ukraine. Local and state-specific laws thus collide with financial resources and class status when it comes to this modern-day configuration of parenthood.

These are just some of the ways in which technology, policy and transnational contexts impact the shifting definitions of kinship and family. Over the years, anthropologists have grappled with the ways in which human beings make meaning out of our mutual relations. From a world where simplified concepts of kinship helped to broaden narrow definitions of family to a more critical and reflexive discussion about how those early endeavors also had negative repercussions in the way they upheld static and homogenizing notions of kinship in non-Western societies, anthropology as a discipline continues to evolve in its study of kin relations. Lessons from the discipline now integrate key themes such as the role of technology and state policy and stratifications that exists due to persistent race, gender, and class-based barriers in access to resources (Inhorn 2020).

Conclusion

Kinship sits as a foundational principle in cultural anthropology, but it is a foundation that has shaped and shifted over time. How anthropologists think and write about kinship itself as universal or particular or as static versus in flux has itself evolved over time. Some historically understood notions of kin relations may remain cogent today but none remain “stuck” in the past or limited to definitions provided in a singular diagram. In a world where people, things, and ideas flow across group, clan, and nation-state borders, relationships between people have and will continue to shift.

By introducing some concepts and how they play out in different cultural contexts, we hope to underscore the fact that there is a wide range of diversity—and that there are no obvious givens when it comes to who relates to whom. Migration, transnational adoption, assisted reproductive technologies, and the converging spheres of legal, political, economic, and social contexts all challenge us to continuously interrogate how we think of our mutual relationships. Any changing roles, rights, and responsibilities must then be examined in all the ever-changing ways they impact kin relations in ways that underscore the diversity of ways human beings find belonging and community with one another.