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SOC1016A - Lecture 03

SOC1016A - Lecture 03. Family and Kinship (2). Last week: Kinship as part of a culture Kinship as a social institution Today: ■ The case of marriage and parenthood ■ How to apply anthropological insights about marriage and parenthood to our own society. Peter Rivère on marriage.

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SOC1016A - Lecture 03

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  1. SOC1016A - Lecture 03 Family and Kinship (2)

  2. Last week: • Kinship as part of a culture • Kinship as a social institution Today: ■ The case of marriage and parenthood ■ How to apply anthropological insights about marriage and parenthood to our own society

  3. Peter Rivère on marriage • Ethnographic evidence shows that marriage can serve very different purposes. There isn’t any universally valid jural definition. “Marriage has to do with the male/female categories” (and these categories change through time and space) • To understand what marriage isfor any given people, we have to understand their cultural construction of gender relationships and their system of exchange and political allegiance. (e.g. see Shaw on the Pakistani community in Oxford)

  4. Marriage as a “social institution” • Natural kinds/social kinds • In the case of social kinds, the acts of reference refer to social status rather than to intrinsic properties • The practice constitutes its own object. The acts of reference have a performative character, and are self-referential • The meaning of marriage depend on collective patterns of behaviour

  5. Case-studies • Euro-American notion of kinship as primarily related to blood ties • Ethnographic fieldwork: cases where kinship, descent and lineage are conceptualised differently. Biological facts may be irrelevant: - Trobrianders/Mardu of Australia - Lakher of Myanmar - Temanambondro of Madagascar - Corsican Mafia ■ Kin does not derive automatically from natural links, it must be created socially.

  6. New Reproductive Technologies (NRT) • Technologically assisted conception, through manipulation of gametes • These techniques force us to face our assumptions about the distinctions: pater/genitor, mater/genitrix • In the case of a “surrogate mother” we need to distinguish between three different notions: mater/genitrix/? (rearing/conception/gestation)

  7. Case-studies • Jeanette Edwards: an ethnography on perceptions of NRT in an English town. Importance of “roots”, dangers of NRT – analogies with known situations (adoption, divorce…) • Peter Rivière: anthropological analysis of the Warnock Report (1984). Main issue: the split between social paternity/biological procreation

  8. Rivière on the Warnock Report: AI artificial insemination AIH husband’s semen: acceptable AID donor’s semen: problematic. The child is “illegitimate”, but should be treated as legitimate. IVF: problematic if semen or egg are donated If both are donated: “least satisfactory case” Why? Implicit assumption: adopted children are at a disadvantage (no empirical evidence to support this claim) Surrogate motherhood (split for the first time “genetic” and “carrying” mother): strong dissent Implicit assumption: a bond of some kind occurs when the child is in the uterus (again, no empirical evidence is provided) Freezing Human Embryos: strong dissent “Naturally right” = depends in fact on specific cultural constraints. Science can provide evidence, but the final decisions depend on cultural and social factors.

  9. Follow-up on Rivière work • Articles by Chris Shore and Emily Martin (see module outline and tutorial reading list) • P. Loizos and P. Heady (eds.), Conceiving persons: ethnographies of procreation, fertility, and growth (London: Athlone, 1999)

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