Janet Carsten After Kinship Ch 3

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Janet CarstenAfter Kinship Ch 3

• Gender, Bodies, and Kinship
• pgs 59-105

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Anthropological Studies In the Past

• What does Carsten say about past studies of
  kinship and gender?

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Anthropological Studies In the Past

• Question What does Carsten say about past
  studies of kinship and gender?
• Answer Both kinship and gender studies in
  anthropology were based upon Western theories of
  biological reproduction.

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• What does Carsten propose be done with kinship
  and gender studies in anthropology?

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION What does Carsten propose be done with
  kinship and gender studies in anthropology?
• ANSWER Carsten says that kinship studies need
  to be brought back into the picture. She says an
  analysis of gender needs to happen with an
  analysis of kinship.

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION Why does Carsten use the Rom as an
  example in the reading?
• ANSWER

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION Why does Carsten use the Rom as an
  example in the reading?
• ANSWER She is saying that those beliefs and
  practices that occur in the house have
  implications in the public world.

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION What does Carsten say about sameness
  and difference?

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION What does Carsten say about sameness
  and difference?
• ANSWER She gives the example of a culture (the
  Malay) who stress similarities between men and
  women (not differences).

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION Why does Carsten bring up the
  Druvidian kinship system in Southern India?

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION Why does Carsten bring up the
  Druvidian kinship system in Southern India?
• ANSWER She is arguing that there are varying
  gradations of sameness and difference, conceived
  in terms of kinship and gender. Kinship and
  gender should be studied together because they
  are linked.

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION In Ch 3 what is Carstens main
  argument?

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Carsten - After Kinship Ch 3 Gender, Bodies,
and Kinship

• QUESTION In Ch 3 what is Carstens main
  argument?
• ANSWER conceived in the broadest sense,
  relatedness (or kinship) or gender, or race, or
  class is simply about the ways in which people
  create similarities or differences between
  themselves and others.

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• QUESTION What is gender-bound labor?
• What does Mallon have to say about it?
• Do heterosexual couples differ from homosexual
  couples?

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• QUESTION What did Mallon have to say about gay
  parents and overcompensation?

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• QUESTION How did the gay parents social life
  change after adopting?

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• QUESTION Do most of the gay couples stay
  together in Mallons study?

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• QUESTION In chapter two (Creating Family) of
  Gerald Mallon's book Gay Men Choosing Parenthood
  the main argument was
• ANSWER

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• QUESTION In chapter two (Creating Family) of
  Gerald Mallon's book Gay Men Choosing Parenthood
  the main argument was
• ANSWER the fatherhood narratives dispel the
  myth of "men can not nurture children" and
  "father is breadwinner"

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch
2Creating a Family

• Yes, you know, I have seen the way gay men have
  been challenged in this new parenting role. Its
  just a female, mommy-driven culture, early
  childhood. And the lack of welcome for gay men
  in that culture has got to be painful and extra
  challenging and extra scary. Ive seen that.
  Ive been on those park benches and playgrounds
  were its all the women, the nannies and the moms,
  and a man comes in, and there is this kind of
  distrust and bristling.

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch 2 -
Creating a Family

• PARENTING
• Adoptive or foster parents have a different
  approach to parenting.
• They take it more seriously, according to
  Mallons subjects.
• Dividing roles and duties negotiating gender
  and parenting
• One parent has legal rights, the other might not
• The legal status of parent often makes him the
  primary care giver.
• The other partner gets left out of many of the
  decisions or is de facto secondary.

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Mallon - Gay Men Choosing Parenthood, Ch 2 -
Creating a Family

• INVISIBLE DAD
• In some ways I think I have gotten used to being
  unrecognized, the invisible dad. But I hate
  feeling that way, because, god knows, I do my
  share of parenting. I really hate it when
  someone asks, Which one of you is the real dad?
  The kids have my partners last name, so in some
  ways it is already set. Its also becomes a
  challenge when I have to sign something for the
  kids from school or the doctors office- it
  really gets to me (Mallon 78)

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TERMS - ethnocentrism

• The belief in the inherent superiority of ones
  culture.
• The belief that one's own race or ethnic group is
  the most important and/or that some or all
  aspects of its culture are superior to those of
  other groups.
• Within this ideology, individuals will judge
  other groups in relation to their own particular
  ethnic group or culture, especially with concern
  to language, behavior, customs, and religion.
  These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve
  to define each ethnicity's unique cultural
  identity

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TERMS - Biologism

• Use of biological principles in explaining human
  especially social behavior
• The general tendency in western cultures to
  constituting and conceiving human character,
  human nature and human behavior in biological
  terms.

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TERMS - Hegemony - Gramsci

• According to Antonio Gramsci the ruling classes
  will use whatever means available to ensure its
  status.
• A hegemonic position is legitimized as a common
  sense
• This consent is achieved through science and the
  control of morality in society
• Scientific validation is a powerful form of
  social control that ensures the continuation of
  hegemonic structures

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TERMS - genetization

• A term coined by Abby Lippman
• Describes the trend in American society toward a
  reductionist view of humanity as a collection of
  genes
• Lippmans definition Genetization refers to an
  ongoing process by which differences between
  individuals are reduced to their DNA codes, with
  most disorders, behaviors and physiological
  variations defined, at least in part, as genetic
  in origin

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TERMS - naturalization

• Naturalization are cultural practices that reify
  categories as essential, different and discrete
• Gender
• Race
• Family
• Sex
• Kinship is an example of naturalization as
  knowledge because kin ties are seen as natural
  and primordial facts.

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TERMS - New Reproductive Technologies

• Frozen donor sperm has been available to
  infertile couples since 1949.
• Men can bank sperm prior to undergoing chemo or
  radiotherapy that might effect gametogenesis.
• Sperm banking when American servicemen were about
  to depart for an uncertain fate during the war in
  Iraq with potential exposure to chemicals and
  radiation.
• Harvest immature eggs from ovarian biopsies
  similar procedures for women who must undergo
  radiation or chemotherapy
• Successful freezing of eggs remains challenging
  and a technique that needs refinement.

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TERMS - Reproductive Technologies

• Artificial insemination by donor
• Super ovulation
• In vitro fertilization
• Embryo flushing
• Transfer and surrogate motherhood
• Sex predetermination

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TERMS - Designer Baby

• Donor sperm, eggs, and embryos have been employed
  to avoid transmission of serious genetic
  disorders.
• Sex preselection useful to avoid certain types of
  sex linked genetic disorders such as Duchenne's
  muscular dystrophy and hemophilia
• Gestational surrogacy has been employed for women
  who are born without a uterus or in whom the
  peculiar risks of pregnancy pose serious threats
  to their own health.

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TERMS - designer baby

• The term "designer baby" has been used in popular
  scientific and bioethics literature to specify a
  child whose hereditary makeup (genotype) can be,
  using various reproductive and genetic
  technologies, purposefully selected ("designed")
  by their parents.
• The term is usually used with derision, although
  some social theorists.
• Transhumanist not only consider the notion of a
  designer baby to be a responsible and justifiable
  application of parental reproductive rights but
  also an important next step in human evolution.

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Research Papers

• New Reproductive Technologies
• DUE AUGUST 14

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Research Papers - General Instructions

• Locate media coverage on one new reproductive
  technology.
• You must locate several (3-5) news stories so
  that you can compare the coverage.
• The comparison of the different representations
  is key to the analysis. For example, compare how
  the Christian Science Monitor represents the
  story of egg donors versus Oprah or Newsweek.
• Your paper should focus on one issue such as
  prenatal testing, genetic screening,
  invitro-fertilization, surrogacy, or sex
  selection technology.

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Your paper must address the following

• Apply theories learned in class.
• How would a particular theorist interpret
  specific newspaper and magazine articles or the
  events described within them?
• Choose 5 concepts from our readings and films
  apply to your analysis.
• Changing ideas. How are new technologies
  reforming ideas about family, community and
  kinship?
• Short personal reflection. How do the arguments
  presented in the readings add to or change your
  own perspective on the issues represented in the
  media?

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Research

• Layne, L. ed. Transformative Motherhood On
  Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture. NYU
  Press.
• Franklin, S and Helena Ragone eds. Reproducing
  Reproduction Kinship, Power and Technological
  Innovation. U Penn Press.
• Becker, Gay The Elusive Embryo How Women and
  Men Approach New Reproductive Technologies. U
  Cal. Press.
• Kahn, Susan Reproducing Jews A Cultural Account
  of Assisted Conception in Israel. Duke.

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Discourses of Reproduction

• In Western culture social constructions of
  maternity have been firmly anchored in the idea
  of womens vulnerability.
• Giving birth was deemed as manifestation of a
  womans need for assistance.
• Emily Martin argues that the human body- the
  uterus is compared to a mass-produced product
  such as a car.
• Martin views the body as an information
  processing system with a hierarchical structure
  for purposes of continuous production.
• Medical texts describe the process of birthing as
  work in progress.

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In Vitro Fertilization

• 1980s the introduction of methods such as in
  vitro fertilization (IVF) and gamete
  intrafallopian transfer (GIFT)
• Media representations reflected a bias towards
  the technological perspective of the treatment,
  investing physicians with control over their
  patients since these procedures are all
  lab-based.
• Physicians life givers

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Press Coverage

• In her study of newspaper and magazine coverage
  of reproductive technologies in the late 1980s,
  Celeste Michelle Condit writes about the manner
  in which the press constructed the images of
  physicians as life givers, and even as parents
  to these children.
• Press position women as dependent on others when
  it comes to making medical decisions, unlike the
  framing of abortion as a womans choice, free
  of constraints.
• According to the press coverage, woman cannot
  make decisions about life for herself but are
  portrayed usually as the sole responsible party
  for killing (the fetus).
• Condit CM. Media Bias for Reproductive
  Technologies. In Parott RL, Condit CM, eds.
  Evaluating Womens Health Messages. Thousand
  Oaks Sage, 1996.

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Our House
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Growing up with Gay parents

• Our House challenges to growing-up with gay
  parents.
• How society normalizes certain relationships and
  pathologizes others.
• What are some examples of daily, mundane
  practices that are hetero-normative.