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Kinship and Politics

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Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer
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Convenors

Prof. Dr. Erdmute Alber (University of Bayreuth, GER)

Prof. Dr. David Warren Sabean (University of California, USA)

Prof. Dr. Simon Teuscher (University of Zürich, SUI)

Prof. Dr. Tatjana Thelen (University of Wien, AUT)

Coordinator at ZiF

Jennifer Rasell

Kinship and Politics: Rethinking a Conceptual Split and its Epistemic Implications in the Social Sciences

2016/2017

For a long time the decline of kinship in the course of Western history seemed so certain that there was little interest in research on this topic outside the study of "traditional" societies in anthropology and history. Central to Western self-understanding in the twenty-first century is that kinship plays no role in politics. This separation has a long genealogy and enormous consequences for research and policy-making. Particularly in the domain of modern politics the presence of kinship was (and is) seen as something to be exorcised in order to establish rational administrative systems, mobilise colonial populations and even destroy terrorist infrastructures. It is behind distinctions between modern and traditional, between Western and "Other" societies.

The aim of our research group is to revisit this conceptual division between kinship and the state. Our research begins with a re-examination of the categories of "politics", "kinship" and "family" in anthropology and history. Both disciplines have contributed decisively to the opposition of state and kinship, change and structure, the West and the Rest. Yet recently both disciplines have been questioning the epistemological foundations of these oppositions, each in its own way. The results of their critiques have largely remained within the respective discipline, while a broader interdisciplinary setting is needed to develop their implications for the social sciences at large.

We wish to explore the implications of viewing non-Western societies through the lens of kinship, and of excluding kinship from the analysis of Western societies, as has been common since the nineteenth century. A critical examination of the epistemological history of disciplinary categories will be combined with empirical findings about the work that these categorisations still do today. Within this frame we intend to develop new approaches for using kinship as an analytical tool in the study of current questions of belonging and the making and remaking of political order.

Members

Prof. Dr. Erdmute Alber

Universitiy of Bayreuth (GER)

Prof. Dr. David Warren Sabean
University of California (USA)

Prof. Dr. Simon Teuscher
University of Zurich (SUI)

Prof. Dr. Tatjana Thelen
University of Vienna (AUT)

Franz-Josef Arlinghaus
Bielefeld University (GER)

Caroline Arni
Universität Basel (SUI)

Astrid Baerwolf
University of Vienna (AUT)

Nathalie Büsser
University of Zurich (SUI)

Claudia Derichs
Philipps-Universität-Marburg (GER)

Jeanette Edwards
University of Manchester (GBR)

Michaela Hohkamp
Leibniz University Hannover (GER)

Eric Hounshell
University of California (USA)

Signe Howell
University of Oslo (NOR)

Christof Lammer
Universität Wien (AUT)

Jeannett Martin
Universität Bayreuth (GER)

Jon Mathieu
Universität Luzern (SUI)

Susan McKinnon
University of Virginia (USA)

Staffan Müller-Wille
University of Exeter (GBR)

Kirsten Rüther
Universität Wien (AUT)

Judith Schachter
Carnegie Mellon University (USA)

Andre Thiemann
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (GER)

Thomas Zitelmann
Freie Universität Berlin (GER)

Publications

Measuring Kinship: Gradual Belonging and Thresholds of Exclusion

Christof Lammer and Tatjana Thelen (eds.)

Politics and Kinship: A Reader

Erdmute Alber and Tatjana Thelen (eds.)

Transfers of Belonging. Child Fostering in West Africa

Erdmute Alber

Age-Inscriptions and Social Change

Erdmute Alber and Cati Coe

Transfers of Belonging. Child Fostering in West Africa in the 20th Century

Erdmute Alber

Reconnecting State and Kinship

Tatjana Thelen and Erdmute Alber (eds.)

Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State.

Tatjana Thelen, Larissa Vetters and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (eds.)

 

Political belonging through elderly care: Temporalities, representations and mutuality

Tatjana Thelen (with Cati Coe)

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