Description
This module will introduce students to the study of gender, relatedness (and kinship) and race from an anthropological perspective 鈥 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 鈥榢inship鈥 or 鈥榬ace鈥, 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 鈥榮ham鈥.
Weekly topics:
- Gender, kinship and race in anthropology
- Relatedness, adoption and 鈥榢inning鈥
- 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. 鈥楴egotiating the 鈥淕hanaian鈥 way of schooling: transnational mobility and the educational strategies of British-Ghanaian families鈥. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(3): 250-263
Busby, C. 1997. 鈥楶ermeable and partible persons: gender and body in South India and Melanesia鈥. 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. 鈥楩resh contact in Tamatave, Madagascar: sex, money, and intergenerational transformation鈥. American Ethnologist 31(4): 573-588.
Inhorn, M. C. 2006. 鈥楳aking Muslim babies: IVF and gamete donation in Sunni versus Shi鈥檃 Islam鈥, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 30 (4): 427鈥450.
Kim, E. 2010. Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kwon, J. H. 2015. 鈥楾he work of waiting: love and money in Korean Chinese transnational migration鈥, 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 Parre帽as, R. 2005. 鈥楲ong distance intimacy: class, gender and intergenerational relations between mothers and children in Filipino transnational families鈥. Global Networks, 5 (4): 317-336.
Song, M. 2010. 鈥楧oes 鈥榬ace鈥 matter? A study of 鈥榤ixed race鈥 siblings鈥 identifications鈥 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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