Sibling-Workshop: “Brother- and Sisterhood from an Anthropological Perspective”
From 5 November to 7 November 2009 Prof. Erdmute Alber and Prof. Sjaak van der Geest
hold a BIGSAS workshop about siblings which took place at the castle of Thurnau. During
this workshop, titled “Brother- and Sisterhood from an Anthropological Perspective”, sixteen
scholars and PHD students discussed the presented papers about a variety of topics
concerning siblings and their relations. The topics ranged from kinship as friendship in Ghana
to the relation of brothers in north China or brother/sister incest discourses. The participants
came from Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States.
After its heydays in the fifties of the previous century, kinship has been widely neglected in
anthropology, until recently. We are now witnessing a new interest in kinship, but brothers
and sisters, the longest kinship relationship in human life-cycle, have received very little
attention in that kinship revival. This conference was an attempt to correct this oversight.
The conference was called 'workshop' because of its special character: there were no formal
presentations of papers by the authors; the purpose was to discuss and exchange views. All
participants had read the papers before the workshop. Authors had only five minutes to
present themselves and raise one or two points concerning their paper. Two discussants then
gave constructive brief comments about content and argument of the paper, which was
followed by a general discussion of about 30 minutes.
In total ten papers were discussed in this way. They dealt with various aspects of brother- and
sisterhood, in the present time as well as in the past. Fieldwork for the papers had been carried
out in Ghana, Tajikistan, Benin, China, Burkina Faso, Germany, Namibia, and Mexico.
Themes that came up, both in the papers and in the animated discussions, included love and
affection as well as competition, conflict and avoidance among siblings, changing views on
incest through history, fostering and siblinghood, siblinghood in fairytales, support of siblings
in times of hardship, and the intergenerational role of siblinghood.
It is the aim of the conveners of the workshop to publish the best contributions in a special
issue of an international journal.
Conference pictures: