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The Politics of Making Kinship: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives

The long tradition of Western political thought included kinship in models of public order, but the social sciences excised it from theories of the state, public sphere, and democratic order.

Kinship has, however, neither completely disappeared from the political cultures of the West nor played the determining social and political role ascribed to it elsewhere. Exploring the issues that arise once the divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politics of Making Kinship demonstrates how political processes have shaped concepts of kinship over time and, conversely, how political projects have been shaped by specific understandings, idioms and uses of kinship.

Taking vantage points from the post-Roman era to early modernity, and from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars place kinship centerstage and reintegrate it with political theory.

Erdmute Alber is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. She co-led the research group on Kinship and Politics at ZIF in Bielefeld. Her books include Transfers of Belonging (Brill 2018) and (with Tatjana Thelen) Re-connecting State and Kinship (2017).

David Warren Sabean is Henry J. Bruman Endowed Professor of German history Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor of European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He co-led the research group on Kinship and Politics at ZIF in Bielefeld. His books include Kinship in Neckarhausen (1998).

Simon Teuscher is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zurich. He co-led the group on Kinship and Politics at ZIF in Bielefeld. His books include Lords’ Rights and Peasants’ Answers (2012) and (with David Sabean and Jon Mathieu) Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term Developments (1300-1900) (2007).

Tatjana Thelen is Professor at the department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. She co-led the group on Kinship and Politics at ZIF in Bielefeld. She co-edited Reconnecting State and Kinship (2017) and Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State (2017).