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Professor Jeanette Edward, from the University of Manchester, United
Kingdom, will deliver a paper entitled "Undoing Kinship". It is one in a
series of seminars "Inimkond/Humankind - Current Issues in Anthropology and
Beyond" which are held every fortnight. This seminar will be held in
auditorium N315 (Tallinn University Nova building) on Thursday, 14 February
from 18:00-20:00.Abstract:One message that came out of the anthropology of
kinship and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) was that kinship is
proliferating. As gamete donation creates new kin figures – donor
mothers, fathers and siblings, for example – and embryos, like children,
can be adopted, the kin universe is imagined as expanding. Anthropologists
have, understandably, been intrigued by the way in which ARTs create
kinship and how the biomedical 'assistance' of conception also 'assists'
the making of kin. In practice, however, kin can be 'cut-off' and 'cut out'
and kinship links do not proliferate ad infinitum. This paper focuses on
how kinship is undone and whether the concepts of kinning and de-kinning
are useful in our understanding of how 'blood' is not always and everywhere
'thicker than water'.Jeanette Edwards is professor in the Department of
Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, having previously held
posts at the Public Health Research and Resource Centre in Salford and the
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Keele University. She has
worked as visiting scholar at the University of Balamand in Beirut (2007,
2008 and 2009), the École des Haute Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
in Paris (2006), the Universitat Autonoma in Barcelona (1998), and the
University of California at Berkeley (1998).Her research interests revolve
around kinship, gender and biotechnology. She is interested in the
anthropology of science more broadly and in the relationship between
science and its various publics more specifically. Her original fieldwork
was in the north of England where she focused on notions of social class,
'community' and belonging and she is still keenly interested in the
ethnography of Britain. Since her PhD research she has carried out
extensive fieldwork in England in both community and organisational
settings. More recently she has been working with teams in seven European
countries looking at kinship in the light of new reproductive and genetic
technologies.The series of seminars "Inimkond/Humankind - Current Issues in
Anthropology and Beyond" features speakers from anthropology and related
fields, and fosters discussion of their research with an interdisciplinary
audience. It aims to contribute to the culture of academic scholarship and
debate at Tallinn University. Speakers include local researchers as well as
guests from a variety of background disciplines including those with
different interpretations of anthropological theory and methodology.
Presentations in the seminar series will be of particular interest to staff
and students in anthropology, cultural theory, sociology, and history.For
further information about the seminar series, please contact:Franz
KrauseE-mail: franz.krause@tlu.ee