Relations as Potential

Abstract

Abstract Across the Tibetan ethnographic region, not only marriage but kinship more broadly is formed, maintained and explained in heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory ways. Following studies of marriage, this article takes these myriad ways as forming a continuum of kinship principles and practices that can be foregrounded and backgrounded in different localities and at different times, in ways that both respond to and shape external and internal factors, concerns and forces. The aim of the article is to suggest a more nuanced model of Tibetan kinship and relatedness, in which houses, lineages and lateral kin, as well as assistance and trade networks, are understood in terms of flexibility, pragmatism and potentiality. The inherent flexibility of Tibetan marriage and kinship could be seen as the core organisational principle, forming what I call a kinship of potentiality.