SOC1016A - Lecture 03

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SOC1016A - Lecture 03

• Family and Kinship (2)

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• 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

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Peter Rivère on marriage

• Ethnographic evidence shows that marriage can
  serve very different purposes. There isnt 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 is for 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)

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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

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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.

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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)

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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

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• Rivière on the Warnock Report
• AI artificial insemination
• AIH husbands semen acceptable
• AID donors 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.

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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)