Description
This module will introduce students to the study of gender, relatedness (and kinship) and race from an anthropological perspective â i.e. with a focus on the cross-cultural comparison of ethnographic material. The module will complement existing courses within the broader MA GSR programme by focusing on anthropological approaches, and by examining the interrelationship between gender, relatedness and race in a wide range of cultural contexts across the world. Students will be encouraged to use cross-cultural comparison to challenge assumptions about the universality of such categories as âkinshipâ or âraceâ, and will learn how to use ethnography to reflect on the extent to which binary notions of gender are socially constructed.
The module will also equip students with conceptual and ethnographic tools to engage with a wide range of contemporary issues and debates, from the ethics of assisted reproductive technologies to the issues raised by transnational adoption or states restricting migration by branding certain relationships as âshamâ.
Weekly topics:
- Gender, kinship and race in anthropology
- Relatedness, adoption and âkinningâ
- Kinship, race and gender
- Changing sex and bending gender
- Assisted reproductive technologies
- Sex, Love and Money
- Transnational marriage and intimate relationships
- Migrants and their families
- Human-non human kinship
- Bringing it all together
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Selected readings for the module:
Abotsi, E. 2020. âNegotiating the âGhanaianâ way of schooling: transnational mobility and the educational strategies of British-Ghanaian familiesâ. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(3): 250-263
Busby, C. 1997. âPermeable and partible persons: gender and body in South India and Melanesiaâ. JRAI 3: 261-278.
Carsten, J. (ed.) 2000. Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cole, J. 2004. âFresh contact in Tamatave, Madagascar: sex, money, and intergenerational transformationâ. American Ethnologist 31(4): 573-588.
Inhorn, M. C. 2006. âMaking Muslim babies: IVF and gamete donation in Sunni versus Shiâa Islamâ, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 30 (4): 427â450.
Kim, E. 2010. Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kwon, J. H. 2015. âThe work of waiting: love and money in Korean Chinese transnational migrationâ, Current Anthropology 30(3): 477-500
Lewin, E. and L. M. Silverstein (eds). 2016. Mapping Feminist Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Salazar Parreñas, R. 2005. âLong distance intimacy: class, gender and intergenerational relations between mothers and children in Filipino transnational familiesâ. Global Networks, 5 (4): 317-336.
Song, M. 2010. âDoes âraceâ matter? A study of âmixed raceâ siblingsâ identificationsâ The Sociological Review 58(2): 265-285
Valentine, D. 2007. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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