Politics of Making Kinship

Erdmute Alber is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. She co-led the research group on Kinship and Politics at ZIF in Bielefeld. Her books include Transfers of Belonging (Brill 2018) and (with Tatjana Thelen) Re-connecting State and Kinship (2017).

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Politics of Making KinshipErdmute Alber, David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, Tatjana ThelenPart I: EpistemologiesChapter 1
. Quantifying Generations. Peter Damian Develops a New System of Kinship CalculationSimon TeuscherChapter 2. Kinship Matters: Genealogical and Historiographical Practices between 1750 and 1850Michaela HohkampChapter 3. Race and Kinship: Anthropology and the “Genealogical Method”Staffan Müller-WilleChapter 4. Kinship Meets Corporation: Perspectives on Kinship and Politics in the Formative Moment of Social AnthropologyThomas ZitelmannChapter 5. German Kinship: Forming a Political Unit and Epistemic VoidTatjana ThelenPart II: ProjectsChapter 6. Making Family and Kinship: Reflections on Hegel and ParsonsDavid Warren SabeanChapter 7. Conceptualizing Kinship in Sixteenth-Century Political Theories. Bodin’s and Hotman’s Ideas of MonarchyJulia HeinemannChapter 8. Commonwealths of Affection: Kinship, Marriage, and Polity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century AmericaSusan McKinnonChapter 9. Towards a Political Economy of the Maternal Body. Claiming Maternal Filiation in Nineteenth-Century French FeminismCaroline ArniPart III: DeploymentsOutline and summariesChapter 10. Inventing the Extended Family in Colonial Dahomey/BeninErdmute AlberChapter 11. “As If Begotten and Born of Feeborn Parents” – Indicators and Considerations on Parentalization of Emancipated Slaves in the Post-Roman OccidentLudolf KuchenbuchChapter 12. From Natural Difference to Equal Value: The Case of Egg Donation in NorwayMerit MelhuusChapter 13. Family and Kinship in Early Modern Contractarian State TheoriesJon MathieuChapter 14. Translating the FamilyClaudia DerichsIndex

“This is a powerful volume that argues for kinship and politics to be studied and analyzed in conjunction and not separately, as is still common within the social and political sciences. …What makes the volume particularly strong is that it combines discussions of semantic shifts, political contestations, and philosophy and theory of house(hold), kin, and family relations.”
 • Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology