Kinship as fiction: exploring the dynamism of intimate relationships in South Asia

Taguchi, Yoko and Majumdar, Anindita (2021) Kinship as fiction: exploring the dynamism of intimate relationships in South Asia. Contemporary South Asia, 29 (1). pp. 1-9. ISSN 0958-4935

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Abstract

This special issue brings together emerging studies on kinship in South Asia and explores the idea of kinship as ‘fiction’ through ethnographic analysis of intimate relationships. Anthropology had long considered kinship as ‘natural’ or ‘biological’, thereby rendering other relations as ‘real’ or ‘fictive’. However, the recent ever-expanding scope of the ‘new kinship studies’, through the mapping of socio-technological changes, including the development of new reproductive technologies, the expansion of a diverse marriage system, and the global reconfiguration of care work, has brought a new dynamism to the discipline. Drawing both on traditional South Asian kinship studies and on more recent theories in anthropology, care work, medicine and science and technology studies, Kinship as Fiction offers insights on how ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are related, translated, and regenerate each other by changing their meanings and forms. Fiction plays an important role in shaping reality, by making emerging worlds comprehensible, and helping us to imagine relations differently. This special issue investigates how particular ‘fictions’ are narrated and enacted within the constraints of reality, and how reality is, in turn, generated by fiction in the context of kin and other intimate relationships.

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IITH Creators:
IITH CreatorsORCiD
Taguchi, YokoUNSPECIFIED
Majumdar, Anindita0000-0002-5836-0047
Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: assisted reproductive technologies; ethnography; Fiction; kinship; personhood
Subjects: Literature
Social sciences > Social Services
Divisions: Department of Liberal Arts
Depositing User: . LibTrainee 2021
Date Deposited: 10 Jul 2021 06:40
Last Modified: 10 Jul 2021 06:40
URI: http://raiith.iith.ac.in/id/eprint/8214
Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2021.1884661
OA policy: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/5111
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