Gender and kinship used to be easily accessible concepts for understanding how societies work. Ideas about social coherence, politics and proprietorship were seen as fundamentally linked to a society’s specific regulation of gender relations and its kinship system. Assuming this, social sciences did not feel the need to address the underlying question, what gender and kinship really are about. In short: Are we talking biology (chromosomes and genetics) or culture (gender roles and genealogy)?
Since the 1960s, new reproductive technologies have deeply shattered our assumptions on the nature of man and society. Through genetic finger-printing, “fatherhood” – for the first time in history – became a biological fact. In contrast, the role of the biological mother was split up into at least two contributing factors (eggs and wombs).
As a consequence, today it is anything but clear what it is that makes someone a father or a mother – let alone what men or women really are. In fact, there are two contradicting tendencies operating on the same plan: a thorough deconstruction of “biological” categories with an emphasis on the cultural constructedness of gender and kinship, and an equally thorough (re-)biologization of person, family ties and personal relations.
In the course we will explore the ways in which gender and kinship are defined, understood, and experienced in different societies and at different times. We will critically examine the history of ideas about gender and kinship in anthropology and sociology and put them into critical perspective in the light of technologies of assisted reproduction.

Course objectives:
1. To acquaint you with theories of gender and kinship;
2. To introduce you to different concretions of gender relations in a cross-cultural perspective;
3. To expose you to different sources of information used by sociologists and anthropologist to examine gender and kinship;
4. To equip you with a “tool-kit” for pursuing your own research agendas (kinship related or not);
5. To encourage you to think critically about the use of social theory in the analysis of gender and kinship across different cultures
6. To support the development of your oral and written presentation skills within an intellectually challenging environment.

Seminar organization and evaluation:
The course is open to students from all disciplines and does not require any preliminary knowledge on the topic. However, students are required to prepare at least one text per week from the reader provided in the first week of the semester.
In addition, each student has to complete the following tasks over the course of the semester: (1) write the minutes of a session (20%), (2) read an additional text from the reading list and give a 10-minute presentation in the classroom (20%), (3) write a 12–15-page paper on a chosen topic (60%).

Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction: Genes “R” Us?
Getting to know each other; brainstorming: What is kinship? Who is my family? What is gender? Are we men, or women, or …? Family trees and the problem with drawing them

Week 2: What is kinship? And Why Should Social Sciences Bother?
Kinship terminologies in different languages; metaphors of descent; helpful terminology and drawing conventions

Week 3: Looking Back – Kinship and Evolutionism
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881); savagery, barbarism, and civilization; from promiscuity to monogamy; kinship as system; many terminologies, few systems; definitory and classificatory kinship; classification as a mirror for biology
Requested reading:
Thomas Trautmann, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship.

Week 4: Lineage-Theory and Segmentary Society
Kinship and political organization; Fision and fusion as political principles
Requested reading:
E.E. Evans-Pritchard. 2004 (1940). The Nuer of the Southern Sudan, pp. 64-78.

Week 5: It’s the Economy, Stupid!
Claude Lévi-Strauss and kinship as economic exchange; structuralism and the mathematization of relatedness. How and why to exchange women; the kinship atom
Requested reading:
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology, pp. 145-157.

Week 6: Kinship and Ethnocentrism
David Schneider and the blind spot in kinship theory; kinship as system of symbols and meanings; kinship as a non-subject
Requested reading: David M. Schneider: What is Kinship All About?, pp. 257-274.

Week 7: Kinship and Substance
The materiality of kinship; genetics and fatherhood, blood- and milk-brothers
Requested reading:
Janet Carsten 2004 (1995). The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. pp 309-327.

Week 8: Gender Trouble and the Trouble with Gender
The gender-sex-opposition (and the opposition against this opposition); Judith Butler and the deconstruction of gender
Requested reading:
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, pp. 3-44.

Week 9: Kinship and Gender
Feminist alternatives to kinship studies;
Requested reading:
Sylvia Junko Yanagisako & Jane Fishburne Collier. 2004 (1987). Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender and Kinship, pp. 275-293.

Week 10: Assisted Reproduction and the Role of Emotions
techniques of assisted reproduction; sperm-donors and surrogate mothers; split-up motherhood; biology and emotion; co-pregnancies, closeness and distance
Requested reading:
Helena Ragoné. 2004 (1994). Surrogate Motherhood and American Kinship, pp. 342-361.

Week 11: Adultery in the Petri-Dish?
Assisted reproduction and Jewish orthodoxy; reconciling Torah and genetics; demographic pressure and the need for kosher citizens;
Requested reading:
Susan Martha Kahn: Eggs and Wombs: The Origins of Jewishness. pp. 362-377.

Week 12: Kinship and/as Relatedness
Concluding discussion: What remains of kinship in the age of assisted reproduction? Genetics vs. genealogy revisited; perspectives and questions; social paradigms and demographic change.

Bibliography
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge 1990.
Carsten, Janet. 2004 (1995). The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), pp. 309-327. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 2004 (1940). The Nuer of the Southern Sudan. In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), pp. 64-78. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Fox, Robin. 1966. Kinship and Marriage. An Anthropological Perspective. London: Pelican Books.
Franklin, Sarah and Susan McKinnon (eds.). 2001. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Holy, Ladislav. 1996. Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship. London: Pluto Press.
Kahn, Susan. 2000. Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kahn, Susan Martha: Eggs and Wombs: The Origins of Jewishness. In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), S. 362-377. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2004 (1945) “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology. In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), pp. 145-157. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Parkin, Robert & Linda Stone (eds.). 2004. Kinship and Family. An Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Ragoné, Helena. 2004 (1994). Surrogate Motherhood and American Kinship. In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), pp. 342-361. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Schneider, David M. 1968. American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Englewood Cliffs: Pretice Hall.
Schneider, David M. 2004 (1972).What is Kinship All About? In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), pp. 257-274. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Trautmann, Thomas R. 1987. Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko & Jane Fishburne Collier. 2004 (1987). Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender and Kinship. In: Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), pp. 275-293. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.