Focusing on Southern Europe, this study looks at currently hotly debated issues of kinship, gender and modern medical technologies. It challenges established ideas of cultural continuities and discontinuities within the European context and offers fresh insights into longstanding questions regarding gender and kin relatedness.

The Biotechnology Act in Norway, one of the most restrictive in Europe, forbids egg donation and surrogacy and has rescinded the anonymity clause with respect to donor insemination. Thus, it limits people's choice as to how they can procreate within the boundaries of the nation state. The author pursues this significant datum ethnographically and addresses the issues surrounding contemporary biopolitics in Norway. This involves investigating such fundamental questions as the relation between individual and society, meanings of kinship and relatedness, the moral status of the embryo and the role of science, religion and ethics in state policies. Even though the book takes reproductive technologies as its focus, it reveals much about vital processes that are central to contemporary Norwegian society.

Presenting twenty-nine original chapters - each written by an expert in the field - this Handbook examines the history of kinship theory and the directions in which it has moved over the past few years. Using examples from across the globe (Africa, India, South America, Malaysia, Asia, the Pacific, Europe and North America), this Handbook highlights the power of kinship theory to address questions of broad anthropological significance. How have recent advances in reproductive medicine fundamentally altered our understanding of biological properties? How has globalization brought in its wake new ways of imagining human relatedness? What might recent shifts in state welfare policies tell us about those relations of power that define the difference between 'functional' versus 'dysfunctional' families? Addressing these and many other timely concerns, this volume presents the results of cutting edge research and demonstrates that the study of kinship is likely to remain at the core of anthropological inquiry.

Early Human Kinship brings together original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics to provide a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society. A major new collaboration between specialists across the range of the human sciences including evolutionary biology and psychology; social/cultural anthropology; archaeology and linguistics Provides a ground-breaking set of original studies offering a new perspective on early human history Debates fundamental questions about early human society: Was there a connection between the beginnings of language and the beginnings of organized 'kinship and marriage'? How far did evolutionary selection favor gender and generation as principles for regulating social relations? Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in conjunction with the British Academy

This volume provides an investigation of the dynamics of reproduction. Using reproduction as an entry point the authors examine how cultures are produced, contested, and transformed as people imagine their collective future in the creation of the next generation.

Interest in the study of kinship, a key area of anthropological enquiry, has recently reemerged. Dubbed 'the new kinship', this interest was stimulated by the 'new genetics' and revived interest in kinship and family patterns. This volume investigates the impact of biotechnology on contemporary understandings of kinship, of family and 'belonging' in a variety of European settings and reveals similarities and differences in how kinship is conceived. What constitutes kinship for different publics? How significant are biogenetic links? What does family resemblance tell us? Why is genetically modified food an issue? Are 'genes' and 'blood' interchangeable? It has been argued that the recent prominence of genetic science and genetic technologies has resulted in a 'geneticization' of social life; the ethnographic examples presented here do show shifts occurring in notions of 'nature' and of what is 'natural'. But, they also illustrate the complexity of contemporary kinship thinking in Europe and the continued interconnectedness of biological and sociological understandings of relatedness and the relationship between nature and nurture.

With the global expansion of reproductive technologies, there are ever more ways to create a family, and more family types than ever before. This book explores the experiences of those persons - whether single, in a couple, or part of collective co-parenting arrangements; whether hetero- or homosexual; whether cis- or transgender - who are creating what has been termed ‘new family forms’ with reproductive ‘assistance’. Drawing on qualitative research from around the world, the book is particularly anchored in two bodies of social science scholarship - sociological and anthropological inquiries into the cultural impact of reproductive technologies on the one hand, and parenting culture studies on the other. It seeks to create fertile conversations between these scholarships, highlighting the intersections in the ways we think about conceiving and caring for children in today’s ‘reproductive landscape’. Focusing specifically on persons whose reproductive journeys do not conform to dominant scripts, the book traces the many ways in which intentions, expectations and technological developments contribute to changing and enduring conceptions of good parenthood in the twenty-first century. Taking a holistic perspective, the book presents deep insights into the experiences not only of (intending) parents, but also of donors, surrogates, medical professionals and activists. The collection will be of interest to an international readership of scholars of gender, reproduction, parenting and family life. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Anthropology & Medicine.