Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how concepts of kinship might be redeployed to inform current debates about non-human rights: to challenge anthropocentric assumptions, and to relocate human beings into more inclusive and reciprocal ‘re-imagined communities’ of living kinds.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology contains some closely interwoven strands of ideas about human-non-human relationships. Multiple evolutionary and genetic links connect humans to other living kinds at a material level. All societies have complex social relationships with non-human beings, with varying degrees of equity and reciprocity. Although some locate human and other species within distinctive and hierarchical categories, others lean towards more permeable boundaries. Ethnographic research in the last century has articulated diverse ideas about non-human species as kin and as persons. Recent multi-species ethnographies have made imaginative leaps into non-human worlds to consider how other species connect with each other and with ourselves. Actor Network Theory and related systems approaches similarly highlight the inter-relationality of living beings, things and environments.The topic of kinship interweaves with these intellectual strands in some useful ways, raising questions about how we think about non-human species and compose relationships with them. Such questions have the potential to inform ongoing debates about the extent to which human societies should acknowledge non-human rights and interests or ‘the rights of nature’, and whether (and how) we might recognise ethical responsibilities to protect these rights.As groups concerned about the environmental crisis and mass extinctions stress the urgency of establishing less anthropocentric relationships with the non-human world, there is a creative opportunity to re-imagine concepts of kinship. Rather than focusing on degrees of separation, this would seek to relocate humankind into communities of living kinds and highlight an imperative to seek collective human and non-human well-being.