Critical Kinship Studies

"Riggs and Peel provide an excellent introduction and nuanced analysis of how kinship operates as 'a technology'. They provide an engaging critique of naturalization processes and the ways these underpin social structures and situate 'the human' centre stage in the kinship saga. The authors successfully use their critical posthumanist vantage point to unpick power, kinship and the 'natural order of things'. Critical Kinship Studies is thus invaluable reading for students and researchers interested in how lives and loves become solidified in complex webs of relating." (Professor Jacqui Gabb, Professor of Sociology and Intimacy, The Open University, UK) "Insightful and comprehensive, this book is a well-written and timely contribution to understanding the 'critical' in critical kinship studies. Damien W. Riggs and Elizabeth Peel use a diverse mix of empirical material to persuasively and eloquently illustrate how practices of kinship naturalizations operate in various institutional and cross species contexts." (Professor Charlotte Krolokke, Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark)

This book draws together research on posthumanism and studies of kinship to elaborate an account of western human kinship practices.This book draws together research on posthumanism and studies of kinship to elaborate an account of western human kinship practices. Studies of kinship have increasingly sought to critique the normative assumptions that often underpin how caring relationships between humans are understood. The categorisation of 'human' and 'kinship' is brought into question and this book examines who might be excluded through adherence to accepted categories and how a critical lens may broaden our understanding of caring relationships. Bringing together a diverse array of analytic foci and theoretical lenses, Critical Kinship Studies opens up new avenues for understanding what it means to be in relationships with others, and in so doing challenges the human exceptionalism that has often limited how we think about family, loss, love and subjectivity.