Difficult attachments : anxieties of kinship and care / edited by Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Sandra Bamford.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Goldfarb, Kathryn E., 1982- editor.

Bamford, Sandra C., 1962- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kinship.

Kinship care.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (274 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2025]

Summary:

Anthropologists have long considered kinship as the basis for social solidarity. Indeed, the idea that kinship is grounded in positive sociality has found its way into most anthropological accounts and has served as an orienting framework directing decades of scholarly research. But what about when it is not? What about instances when kinship is anything but ‘warm and fuzzy’ but is characterized, instead, by neglect, violence, negative affect, or a lack of nurturance and care? In the three interlinked sections of this volume, the view that kinship is about “solidarity” and “care” is challenged by exploring how kin relations are not only about connection and inclusion but also about disconnection, exclusion, neglect, and violence. Kinship relationships that feel “positive” and “good” take a great deal of perseverance and work; there is nothing “natural” about kinship ties as being based on positive sociality. In these chapters, the contributors take seriously the contingency of kinship relations (the moments when kinship breaks down or is a source of suffering) and how this prompts scholars to develop new theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Introduction: Ambivalent Affinities: Kinship beyond Mutuality

Part I: Ambiguities of Care

1. The Estranged Case of Leonard: Aging with Dementia When Kin Don't Care

2. Kinship in the Carceral: Aging and Aspiration in Tokyo

3. When Choosing Does Not Stick: Limits of Queer Kinship and Community in Old Age

4. When Forever Does Not Last a Lifetime: Adoption Disruption and the State in North America

5. Emergency Rooms: A Story about Motherhood, Medicine, Reluctance, Mystery, and Expertise

Part II: Toxic States

6. Siblings and the Darker Sides of a (Finally) Realized "Mutuality of Being

7. Reunification as Refusal: Kin-Making and Unmaking in the Aftermath of Indigenous Child Removal

8. Kinship under Colonial Duress: Anticolonial Nationalism Mends Ruptured Tibetan Attachments

9. Schools as Kin: Shifts in Black Strategic (Teacher) Mothering in the "School Choice Marketplace

10. Estranged: U.S. Immigration Detention and the Erasure of Family Ties

Part III: Negative Affects

11. Strange and Burdensome Gifts: Giving and Receiving in Families Shaped by Hoarding

12. Not Family Care: Welcoming the Wild Things in Japanese Child Welfare

13. "Looking Back" at the Mirror: Reflections of and on Messy Dog Siblingship

14. Diffuse and Enduring Disappointment: Thinking Kinship in South Africa and Beyond

15. Adjustment Problems: Ambivalence and Moral Imagination in North Indian Kinship

16. When an Affect Becomes an Epidemic: Exploring Loneliness and Relatedness in the Twenty-First Century

17. Kinship Conceived and Lived

Afterword: A Language for Kinship

Editors' Acknowledgments

References

Notes on Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-9788-4141-8

OCLC:

1456758102