Projects per year
Abstract
Western anthropologists invented the concept of kinship to describe the “other” which seemed to be integrated by kin ties. While Euro-pean (broadly speaking) kinship principles rested on the assumption that birth-related ties must be re-evaluated and replaced by choice-based ones during the process of growing-up, the societies with strong “kin ties” seemed to be lingering in social childhood. I use Western social theories not as sources of intellectual wisdom, but as ethnographic artifacts produced by the intellectual elites of the so-cieties under scrutiny. Theoretical assumptions like status contract, Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, strong-weak ties, bonding-bridging so-cial capital—all reiterate the same vision of social change where the past, and early social life is associated with ties produced through birth and the future is associated with choice. A similar framework (flesh vs spiritual kinship) was advocated by European Christians since early Medieval times. Many of these theories draw direct par-allels with (European) assumptions of individual development: if birth-related ties are not severed, pathology of sorts results. The fear (or prediction) of the constantly disappearing European family also is a part of the general narrative of growing up in Europe. I argue that we need to start looking at European kinship not via theory that was developed to describe the “rest” but as an integral part of Eu-ropean social fabric and consequently evaluate the stream of global theories (e.g., proposing ends of history) in a world where Europe heads towards the periphery.
Original language | English |
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Pages | 51 |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2022 |
Event | Old Discipline, New Trajectories: Theories, Methods and Practices in Anthropology - Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania Duration: 16 Jun 2022 → 18 Jun 2022 https://www.sasciconf2021.fsf.vu.lt/about-the-conference |
Conference
Conference | Old Discipline, New Trajectories |
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Country/Territory | Lithuania |
City | Vilnius |
Period | 16/06/22 → 18/06/22 |
Internet address |
Keywords*
- Anthropoloty
- theory
- kinship
- Europe
Field of Science*
- 5.4 Sociology
- 5.9 Other social sciences
Publication Type*
- 3.4. Other publications in conference proceedings (including local)
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- 1 Active
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(Re)moving ties: relatedness in contemporary mobile work regimes
Sedlenieks, K. (Project leader), Puzo, I. (Leading expert), Lulle, A. (Leading expert), Kiščenko, D. (Expert (PhD student)) & Siliņa, A. (Assistant (student))
3/01/22 → 30/12/24
Project: Fundamental and Applied Research Programme