Iara Cury
Week#5, Elizabeth Ewart
16/02/2011
Kinship and Idioms of Structure and Freedom
Arguing about semantics, or the meaning of words, often seems to distract academics from
the fundamental or overarching principles involved in a subject of discussion. Yet
particularly because anthropology revolves around the translation of ideas and languages
and the development of cross-cultural understanding, scrutinizing the meaning,
interpretation and use of words is far from a waste of time for anthropologists. In fact, over
the history of the discipline such an exercise frequently elicited problems of methodology
and theoretical gaps or inconsistencies.
In the realm of kinship studies, things have been no different. Up to the mid 20th century,
anthropologists endeavored to investigate the social structure of non-Western societies
through the study of genealogies and descent and alliance systems. The key for these
scholars was to delineate existing patterns of relationships and social roles in order to
understand their influence on the political, religious and social sphere of society. However,
in the past few decades anthropologists have turned to the formation of such social
structures, having foregone the impression that they are simply given social artifacts. This
new approach activates questions about emic systems of meanings and the profound
correlation between notions of personhood, natural connections and kinship practices. It is
here that a critical analysis of idioms of kinship, like descent, alliance, relatedness,
substance and shared corporeality can provide clues to social processes and dimensions
hitherto marginalized in kinship theory.
Accordingly, J. Carsten, in her book chapter, “The Uses and Abuses of Substance”, centers
her analysis on the meaning of the word substance, the definition of which occupies “three
full pages” in the Oxford English Dictionary (2004, p.111). Her argument is that as an
ambiguous idiom substance has been used to describe both sides of many dichotomies
ingrained in academic discourse. What actually emerges from her close analysis is yet a
third function of the word substance, that of representing the still unexplored conceptual
space of conversion or transformability from one discursive domain within kinship studies
(nature, biology, given elements of identity) to the other (nurture, socialization, acquired
elements of identity) (p.133). Carsten concludes that the very ambiguity of meaning
allowed the word substance to highlight an idea that anthropologists had been grasping for
outside the realm of standard analytical frameworks.
In fact Carsten’s in-depth analysis of the concept of substance pays wise recognition to an
idiom that covers much ground in the understanding of systems of kinship both in Western
and non-Western contexts. In Euro-American ideologies of family, the quintessential
substance at the root of kinship is blood, or its modern day affiliate, genetic material. As H.
Ragoné demonstrates through her ethnography of surrogate motherhood, American
families still intensely rely on the notion that biological ties are essential for the creation of
authentic kinship. The “enduring quality of the blood tie” implies a “relationship that can
never be severed” (2004, p.350), relates Ragoné. As a result of the power of this idea, many
parents with infertility problems engage with technologically and psychologically
complicated processes of assisted reproduction to produce a fully or partially biologically
related child.
In examples of non-Western cultures such as Carsten’s Malay ethnography, substance
takes more amorphous and malleable meanings; still, the idea of underlying natural
connections figures in imaginaries of kinship. According to Carsten, “blood has a central
place in ideas about life itself and about relatedness…people both are born with blood and
also acquire it through life in the form of food, which is transformed into blood in the body”
(2004, p.129). Beyond the conceptualization of blood as a mutable substance, the real
significance lies in the power of blood to bind individuals to one another: breast milk is
converted blood and thus fills the child with the same substance as the mother, and “those
who eat the same food together in one house also come to have blood in common” (p.129).
Other examples of kinship systems based on beliefs about the transmission of bone, flesh,
blood, saliva, semen and breast milk abound, as Carsten herself makes reference to the
cases of Indian and Melanesian ideologies of substance (p.126-8).
Transmission of substance <> nurturance=different ideas, but tension arises about which
one is stronger.
Throughout the diversity of the use of the idiom of substance we find hints of the classic
tension between ideas about the transmission of identity through substance and the
shaping or transmission of identity through nurture, or in Schneider’s word, conduct. The
incongruous yet fresh perspective lies in circumstances where conduct alters substance
(Carsten, 2004, p.117), like in the Malay idea that commensality produces shared substance
and kinship. The main point is that these cases allow substance to remain the basis for
identity and kinship, even though nurturance initiates the process of kinship bonding. With
the apparent primacy of the rationality of substance over nurturance in mind, it may be
helpful to visualize the broad work of the word substance in the guise of two other
words—relation and relationship. Defining relation as an existing connection and
relationship as a social and emotional association, we can begin to dissect the interplay
between notions of “natural” shared substance, kinship ties, and non-kinship relatedness.
The more one reads about the prevalence of the idea of substance in kinship ideologies
around the world, the more it seems that the idea that relationships built on certain given
or pre-existing relations are stronger, more authentic, or inalienable is dominant in kinship
practices. M. Strathern states with insight that “unless a relationship is grounded in some
intrinsic or natural connection”, Euro-Americans are likely to think of it as artificial and
uncertain (1992, p. 30). The formulation and formation of relationships of intimacy and
trust, it would seem, depends heavily on the social imaginary of underlying connections or
the relational power of substance. Simply put, if we really imagine ourselves sharing some
substance of whatever quality with another person, it becomes easier to explain, justify and
accept a relationship with that person, or at the very least postulate the possibility of
constructing such a relationship. Yet in the real world of social relations things are not as
neat. Within the set of people sharing substances it is not always the case that relationships
form, and within the set of people in close relationships with one another it is not always
the case that they imaginarily share substance. In these exceptions, as it were, the idiom of
shared substance fails to capture some fundamental dimension of human relationships as
much as the idioms of descent and alliance failed to capture the fluidity of kinship practices.
Ethnographic evidence certainly points to the existence, and depending on the culture,
prominence of affective relationships not anchored in the imaginary of shared substance. F.
Santos-Granero, in his article, “Of fear and friendship: Amazonian sociality beyond kinship
and affinity”, describes the formation of non-kin based networks and friendships among
some Amazonian groups. According to the author, the occurrence of friendships couched in
mutually helping behavior and trust derives in great part from the exercise of personal
choice and agency in the continual search for safe relationships and spaces. He states,
“because they are dependent on personal affinity, relations of friendship frequently
transcend the divisions imposed by such collective mechanisms of inclusion and identity as
kinship ties, settlement membership or ethnic affiliation” (2007, p.13). A. Vilaça, in her
ethnography of Amazonian Wari people, also notes the significance of choice in the making
of kin: “[t]o become kin, it is necessary to desire to be kin and to act as such” (2002, p.352).
Here we encounter two ideas—personal affinity1 and choice—rarely mentioned in
connection with kinship studies, just like the concept of transformability was until recently
missing from the theoretical vocabulary. This is possibly an opportunity for the redemption
of the idiom of relatedness from its impracticable vagueness. By including the dimensions
of affinity and choice in the construction of kin relationships, the idea of relatedness
accomplishes two tasks. First, it validates the full power of nurturance without implicit
recourse to concepts of natural relation. Second, it elicits the sometimes irreverent
interplay between personal rationalization and kinship ideologies. The instrumental use of
terminologies, for example by calling friends brothers or by justifying relationships
originating in personal affinity or desire through the logic of “conduct alters substance” or
“nurture supersedes nature” (i.e. in adoption cases), is a phenomenon to be reckoned with.
On the other hand, personal freedom and preference might also cause the dissolution of
relationships despite enduring natural connections. Again, in these cases the desire and
decision to nurture or not to nurture guides the construction and maintenance of kinship.
Semantic discussions over the past decades have opened the way for new dimensions in
the study of kinship that unequivocally draw on anthropological understandings of gender,
body and personhood. Encouraging is the fact that contemporary researchers not only
recognize the role of social and cultural imaginaries but have also begun to explore the
meaning of personal agency in the shaping of kinship practices and experiences. Coming to
shed its attachment to the hierarchical dichotomy between nature and nurture that
Schneider so deplored, today kinship studies faces a more holistic challenge: to investigate
occurrences of relatedness rooted in “intimacies of care and effort” (Edwards, 2000, p.27).
1
Not to be confused with the relationship of marriage, affinity here means a spontaneous or instinctive liking
towards another person.
Bibliography
Carsten, J. 2004. After Kinship Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, J. 2000. Born and bred: idioms of kinship and new reproductive technologies in
England Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parkin, Robert 1997. Kinship: an introduction to the basic concepts. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ragoné, H. 2004. “Surrogate Motherhood and American Kinship”. In Kinship and Family: An
Anthropological Reader. R. Parkin and L. Stone (eds). Oxford: Blackwell, Ch. 18.
Santos-Granero, F. 2007. "Of fear and friendship: Amazonian sociality beyond kinship and
affinity." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute vol. 13(1): 1-18.
Strathern, Marilyn 1992. Reproducing the future: essays on anthropology, kinship and the
new reproductive technologies Manchester University Press.
Vilaça, A. 2002. ‘Making kin out of others in Amazonia’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute vol. 8(2): 347-62