Exploring New Dimensions in Kinship Studies

For most of the twentieth century, kinship studies were dominated by a single assumption: that family bonds were ultimately rooted in biology. Blood, marriage, and sexual reproduction formed the bedrock of how anthropologists mapped human relationships. Then, in 1984, David Schneider published A Critique of the Study of Kinship and shook the entire field. His argument was provocative – that kinship, as studied by anthropologists, was not a universal institution but a projection of Euro-American cultural assumptions onto the rest of the world. What followed was not the death of kinship studies, but its remarkable transformation. Today, the field looks radically different: more inclusive, more culturally sensitive, and far more attuned to the realities of contemporary family life.

Schneider’s critique and its aftershocks 🔗

David Schneider’s central argument was that anthropologists had consistently assumed kinship was based on sexual reproduction or ties derived from it – and that this assumption came directly from Western European cultural norms, not from any universal social reality. Schneider suggested that in certain cultures, sexual procreation was not regarded as the core of kinship, which meant there was no analytical consistency in comparing kinship across cultures. He went further, arguing that the very domains anthropologists used to divide social life – kinship, politics, economics, religion – had no universal analytic validity.

Many scholars at the time anticipated that this radical critique would effectively kill kinship studies as a discipline. Instead, the epistemological critique resulted in a revitalization of the field and the development of more reflexive approaches to kinship. A new generation of scholars, intellectually shaped by feminism, took Schneider’s work as a launching point rather than a conclusion. They accepted his critique of ethnocentrism but rejected his view that kinship could not serve as any kind of cross-cultural category at all. What emerged from this tension was what scholars now call the “new kinship studies.”

What are the new kinship studies? 🔗

The new kinship studies represent a paradigm shift – away from fixed, biologically anchored definitions of family and toward an understanding of kinship as something actively constructed through cultural practices, social relationships, and shared experience. Kinship studies began attracting new interest as the research object moved under other names, becoming associated with new issues – gender, sexuality, images of the body, and ideas of personhood – that in turn reshaped the field.

The shift was not merely theoretical. It came with new questions: Who counts as family? What makes someone a relative? Can kinship be built through care, feeding, or shared residence rather than shared genes? These questions opened the door to examining kinship in same-sex families, adoptive families, immigrant communities, and communities formed around mutual support – all of which had been poorly served by traditional biological models.

Feminist contributions: rewriting the kinship script 🔗

From the 1960s onward, the feminist movement and the scholarship it inspired had a very obvious impact on kinship studies. Initially, this resulted in ethnographic works that documented women’s lives – their roles in households, trade, labor, and religion – which had previously been omitted from academic accounts. By the late 1970s, feminist attention shifted from documenting women’s experiences to analyzing how gender itself was symbolized and constructed within kinship systems.

Challenging male-centric models 🔗

Early kinship theory was heavily androcentric. Descent, inheritance, and lineage were studied primarily through the lens of male roles. Women appeared in these accounts largely as wives, mothers, or objects exchanged between men to cement alliances – a framing most associated with Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist theory. Feminist scholars argued that these early theories were not only patriarchal but also insufficient in explaining how kinship systems are shaped by power relations, social inequalities, and cultural norms around gender and sexuality.

Scholars like Jane Fishburne Collier directly challenged the idea that women functioned as objects of exchange within kinship systems. Feminist scholars introduced intersectionality to kinship studies, emphasizing the need to understand kinship within broader systems of social stratification – where gender intersects with race, class, sexuality, and other axes of power. This meant that kinship could no longer be analyzed as a separate, self-contained institution; it was deeply embedded in social hierarchies.

Marilyn Strathern and the gender of kinship 🔗

Among the most influential feminist voices in new kinship studies is Marilyn Strathern, whose work – particularly on Melanesian societies – fundamentally reframed how gender and kinship are understood together. Her work, alongside Schneider’s, pushed anthropology into new terrain, intersecting with feminist theory, queer studies, and science and technology studies. Strathern argued that kinship relations are socially constructed and shaped by the cultural, economic, and political realities of each society – not determined by biology. For Strathern, gender is not only a marker of difference but also a central organizing principle in kinship systems, one that structures labor, power, and social meaning simultaneously.

Feminist scholars also redirected attention to the household as a site of gendered power relations. Rather than focusing exclusively on formal descent groups and lineage systems, they argued that kinship analysis must extend to the domestic sphere – where everyday gender roles are enacted, reinforced, and sometimes resisted.

New reproductive technologies and the redefinition of kinship 🔗

If feminist scholarship challenged the gendered assumptions of kinship theory, new reproductive technologies (NRTs) challenged its biological foundations from a different direction. The advent of new reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization, alongside new family forms such as same-sex marriage, instigated the revitalization of kinship studies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The rise of NRTs alongside perceived changes in the institution of the family in Western societies suggested new practices and experiences of kinship emerging outside the biological and domestic spheres that had been the core assumptions of older kinship studies. IVF, surrogacy, gamete donation, and other assisted reproductive technologies made it possible to separate what had previously been inseparable: genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and social parenthood could now exist in three different people.

Fragmenting the biological family 🔗

Reproductive biotechnologies can separate concepts of parenthood into genetic, gestational, and social dimensions, often leading to a fragmentation of heteronormative kinship models and posing a challenge to historical methods of establishing legal and moral parenthood. Consider the ancient legal principle mater semper certa est – “the mother is always certain.” Today, it is no longer certain that the birth mother will be defined as a child’s biological mother, giving rise to a new flexibility in determining what biological motherhood really is. When a surrogate carries a child using a donated egg, who is the mother? The genetic contributor, the gestational carrier, or the social parent who raises the child?

These are not merely philosophical puzzles. They play out in courts, clinics, and families around the world. Gamete donation by third parties has created a range of practical and ethical considerations, including cases where mothers donate eggs to their daughters – producing a child who would be both grandchild and half-sibling within the same family. These constellations were once unimaginable; they are now documented realities that force a rethinking of what kinship means.

Chosen families and the expansion of relatedness 🔗

NRTs also opened space for entirely new forms of family formation. Same-sex couples who formed families using reproductive technologies often went through more intentional family formation processes, constructing kinship networks based not on blood alone, but also on ties of friendship and love – building a “family of choice.” This concept of chosen family, particularly well-documented in LGBTQ+ communities, demonstrated that kinship bonds could be formed through commitment and care rather than shared genetics.

This aligns with what anthropologist Kath Weston’s research showed: that gay and lesbian informants often conceptualized biological kinship as uncertain because biological kin had been known to sever ties upon learning of a relative’s homosexuality, while their friendships were invested with the certainty and depth usually associated with family bonds. The opposition between “real” biological kinship and “fictive” chosen kinship was turned on its head.

Fictive kinship: rethinking what “real” family means 🔗

The concept of fictive kinship – relationships treated as kinship despite lacking biological or marital ties – has been central to the new kinship studies. Historically, the term was used to describe relationships that were considered imitations of “real” kinship. Godparents, adoptive families, and close friends who were treated as family fell into this category. But the label itself embeds a hierarchy: biological kinship as the standard, everything else as secondary.

New kinship studies have challenged this framing directly. Anthropologists now recognize that cross-culturally, social ties formerly treated under the category of “kinship” are often not predicated on blood ties or marriage, but may be based on shared residence, shared economic ties, nurture, or familiarity through other forms of interaction. The concept of relatedness, developed by Janet Carsten, offers a more flexible alternative. Rather than measuring social bonds against a biological standard, it asks what specific cultures themselves define as the basis for being related.

Janet Carsten and the substance of relatedness 🔗

Carsten’s fieldwork among the Malays of Pulau Langkawi in Malaysia produced one of the most cited examples of this rethinking. She found that relatedness in terms of becoming a person and participating in social relations is based on feeding – giving and receiving nourishment – and residing in a common space. Shared meals and cohabitation, over time, created genuine kinship bonds between people who had no biological connection. The distinction between “biological” and “social” kinship simply did not map onto the Malay understanding of family.

Carsten argued that kinship could not be understood only with reference to biology and reproduction – relatedness implied that kinship is more social in the sense that relations are constructed through caring and sharing non-biological substances as well. This framework has proven particularly useful for understanding adoptive families, immigrant communities, religious communities, and other social formations where deep bonds of loyalty and care exist independently of biology.

Redefining family and gender roles in contemporary kinship discourse 🔗

Taken together, these developments – feminist critiques, NRTs, and the concept of relatedness – have produced a fundamentally different picture of what family is and how it works. By the late 20th century, the symbolism of procreation, gender roles, emotions, and households and their everyday activities had all become prominent themes of kinship study. Rather than assuming in advance what kinship is, scholars now begin from within specific cultures, asking what relatedness comprises in each particular context.

Gender roles within kinship have been similarly denaturalized. The feminist contribution established that there is nothing inevitable about the gendered division of labor within families. The sociology of kinship examines the social structures, roles, and dynamics that govern human relationships based on family ties, encompassing biological, legal, and social ties and exploring how these relationships impact social organization, cultural practices, and individual identities. This broader remit means kinship is no longer the exclusive domain of biological parents and their children – it includes the full range of relationships through which people provide care, build identity, and create belonging.

What the new kinship studies ultimately insist on is that family is made, not just born. Whether through shared meals in a Malaysian fishing village, through IVF in a fertility clinic, through the deliberate construction of a chosen family in San Francisco, or through the raising of an adopted child – kinship is a social achievement, shaped by culture, technology, intention, and love. The biological thread is one strand among many, not the whole fabric.

What do you think? As reproductive technologies continue to evolve – making genetic, gestational, and social parenthood ever more separable – how do you think legal systems should determine who counts as family? And do you think the concept of “fictive kinship” should be retired entirely, given that it implies biological bonds are somehow more real than the bonds formed through care and commitment?

References

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