Kinship, Law and the Unexpected Relatives are Always a Surprise

Marilyn Strathern takes up an issue at the heart of studies of society--anthropologists using relationships to uncover relationships. The role of relations in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society. This argument takes the reader through current issues in biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, as well as intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere.

How can we hold in the same view both cultural or historical constructs and generalities about social existence? Kinship, Law and the Unexpected takes up an issue at the heart of studies of society - the way we use relationships to uncover relationships. Relationality is a phenomenon at once contingent (on certain ways of knowing) and ubiquitous (to social life). The role of relations in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society. The argument takes the reader through current issues in biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, and intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere. If we are often surprised by what our relatives do, we may also be surprised by what relations tells us about the world we live in.

Preface; Part I. Divided Origins: Introduction: divided origins; 1. Relatives are always a surprise: biotechnology in an age of individualism; 2. Embedded science; 3. Emergent properties; Part II. The Arithmetic of Ownership: Introduction: the arithmetic of ownership; 4. The patent and the Malanggan; 5. Losing (out on) intellectual resources; 6. Divided origins and the arithmetic of ownership; Notes; References; Author index; Subject index.

How can we hold in the same view both cultural or historical constructs and generalities about social existence? In response to this anthropological conundrum, Kinship, Law and the Unexpected takes up an issue at the heart of studies of society - the way we use relationships to uncover relationships.

Marilyn Strathern is William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. She has carried out fieldwork over several years in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Melanesia). She is the author of several works including Kinship at the Core, After Nature and Property, Substance and Effect.