The Kinning of Foreigners

Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective
1. Auflage 2006
ISBN: 978-1-84545-184-4
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 276 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 554 g

Since the late nineteen sixties, transnational adoption has emerged as a global phenomenon. Due to a sharp decline in infants being made available for adoption locally, involuntarily childless couples in Western Europe and North America who wish to create a family, have to look to look to countries in the poor South and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this book is to locate transnational adoption within a broad context of contemporary Western life, especially values concerning family, children and meaningful relatedness, and to explore the many ambiguities and paradoxes that the practice entails. Based on empirical research from Norway, the author identifies three main themes for analysis: Firstly, by focusing on the perceived relationship between biology and sociality, she examines how notions of child, childhood and significant relatedness vary across time and space. She argues that through a process of kinning, persons are made into kin. In the case of adoption, kinning overcomes a dominant cultural emphasis placed upon biological connectedness. Secondly, it is a study of the rise of expert knowledge in the understanding of ‘the best interest of the child’, and how the part played by the ‘psycho.technocrats’ effects national and international policy and practice of transnational adoption. Thirdly, it shows how transnational adoption both depends upon and helps to foster the globalisation of Western rationality and morality. The book is an original contribution to the anthropological study of kinship and globalisation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Howell, Signe

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgements

PART I: ADOPTION - BIOLOGY OR SOCIALITY?

Chapter 1. Desire and Rights: Transnational Movement of Substances and Concepts

Chapter 2. A Changing World of Families: An Overview

Chapter 3. Kinship with Strangers: Values and Practices of Adoption

Chapter 4. Kinning and Transubstantiation: Norwegianisation of Adoptees

Chapter 5. Expert Knowledge: The Role of Psychology in Adoption Discourses

Chapter 6. Who Am I, Then? Adoptees’ Perspectives on Identity and Ethnicity

PART II: GOVERNMENTALITY AND THE ROLE OF PSYCHO-TECHNOCRATS

Chapter 7. Benevolent Control: Adoption Legislation in the USA and Norway

Chapter 8. Benevolent Control: International Treaties on Adoption

Chapter 9. Expert Knowledge: Global and Local Adoption Discourses in India, Ethiopia, China and Romania

Chapter 10. In Conclusion: To Kin a Foreign Child

Postscript: A Note on Methods

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Howell, Signe
Signe Howell is professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. She obtained her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford and has been a lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Before she began her research on transnational adoption (1999), her studies were focused on Southeast Asia where she has carried out fieldwork amongst a hunter-gatherer group in Malaysia and a group of settled agriculturalists in Eastern Indonesia. She has published widely on various aspects of social organization, religion, ritual and kinship. Her books include Society and Cosmos: Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia; Chewong Myths and Legends; Societies at Peace: Anthropological Perspectives (edited with Roy Willis); The Ethnography of Moralities; For the Sake of our Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia; The House in Southeast Asia (edited with Stephen Sparkes). She has also published a number of articles in books and journals on the topic of transnational adoption.