Editorial

Abstract

Kinship studies are certainly a hallmark for anthropology as a discipline. Yet, it has been more than a decade since Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale has published a paper on kinship (except for a review article by Giovanna Bacchiddu [2015] on two books about international adoption and the reconfiguration of the American family model). We have to go back as far as the late 2000’s to read one, when Warren Shapiro wrote a peremptory critique of Susan McKinnon's book in which the latter had strongly argued against “neo-Darwinian biological assumptions” underpinning the kinship theories developed by evolutionary psychology. The long absence of kinship from issues of this journal elicits an obvious comment: it was about time Social Anthropology / Anthropology Sociale devotes a full issue to this topic and engages with recent ethnographic theory on kinship and kinship matters. While we don't believe that it is our role as new editorial team to ponder the reasons for the omission of this topic, let us simply notice the major turn in kinship studies as a beginning for explanation. At the turn of the century, kinship as a topic has evolved from theoretical discussions about “systems” and social organization to a urge for describing and understanding new patterns of relatedness, transnational families, parenting, and adopting. Entire journals were created out of the need to explore ignored and emerging universes of relatedness and reimagine family studies. Despite the seismic shift from concerns about terminologies, ways and varieties of affiliation, and primary forms of structuring human lives to questions of care, parenting, and having kin, kinship studies have not been the hotspot of anthropological debate for years. However, they have consistently been addressed by books reviewed for this journal.