Contribution short abstract:

Using selected ethnographic examples from Latin America and Africa, the lecture will examine the extent to which economic changes in commoning or uncommoning produce conflicts within kinship relations and lead to accusations of witchcraft.

Contribution long abstract:

Witchcraft beliefs are widespread and can be found on all continents and in very different types of society. In addition to astonishing parallels, there are also significant differences. These concern not only the details of the respective ideas, but also the question of which types of people were usually suspected of witchcraft or sorcery (men-women, old-young, rich-poor, etc.). For the most part, however, witches and their victims are related by kinship or neighborhood. Concepts of witchcraft thus point to tensions and conflicts in social relationships. These are often linked to the different expectations of those involved with regard to the content and scope of mutual obligations and support and the use of goods, such as land or other resources as commons or private property. Witchcraft beliefs are fuelled by ambivalent feelings, such as the pursuit of money to fulfil personal needs on the one hand and the obligation to support the family and kin. They are a form of coping with "cognitive dissonance" (Festinger), i.e. the ideas about what a certain situation/relationship should look like and their real experience contradict each other. This is often the case when solidarity and harmony should prevail in a social relationship, but in reality there is mistrust and conflict.

Using selected ethnographic examples from Latin America and Africa, the lecture will examine the extent to which economic changes in commoning or uncommoning produce conflicts within kinship relations and lead to accusations of witchcraft.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines processes of (un-)commoning within Azorean households by focusing on the tension between normative ideas of “casa”, an institution said to harmonically align intimate relations and economic subsistence, and its increasing commodification as tourist accommodation.

Contribution long abstract:

On the Azores, a Lusophone archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, households make for a key site to study the intersections of kinship and economy. The vernacular concept of house, household or home (all: casa) is deemed capacious enough to embrace material building, subsistence model, and kinship relations. My interlocutors often described houses as pivotal nodes to align conjugal affection with economic necessity, generational aspiration with financial redistribution, or notions of self with practices of sharing objects and responsibilities. While in day-to-day reality, power struggles or feelings of alienation strain domestic spheres, “ser da casa” (to be of [a specific] house) is nonetheless a widespread idiom to value such domestic relationships and legitimize the commoning of resources and identity.

Over the past five years, an emerging tourism industry skyrocketed the price of any dwelling on São Jorge Island, Azores, while decades of abandonment and depopulation before had caused a massive surplus of, mostly empty, houses. Islanders suddenly find crumbling ruins, inhabited homes, or small stables to be equally valuable – a situation that foments tensions, forms of exclusion, and accumulation. Yet, since “casa” not only denotes an asset but is understood as a normative category commoning belonging, livelihood and intimate bonds, the recent spike in economic worth also affects ethics of economizing and relatedness. Tracing how island residents navigate their desires and recurrent failures to benefit from this trajectory, I argue that houses are pivotal media to understand how capitalism, kinship, and practices of (un)commoning reorganize people’s intimate relations.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores the deeply intertwined relation between diverse forms of kinship and marriage, on the one hand, and relations of property and economy, on the other, with a focus on three nineteenth-century utopian societies in the United States--the Shakers, the Oneida, and the Mormons.

Contribution long abstract:

Nineteenth-century evolutionary narratives trace a temporal trajectory in the development of social relations from group to individual (e.g., Maine) and from broad group relations of kinship, marriage, and property to monogamy and narrowed relations of descent and property, and inheritance (e.g., Morgan). Civilized society was thereby envisioned to entail the narrowing of the boundaries of what was to be considered the commons of kinship and familial economic relations. More or less at the same time these narratives were being crafted, numerous utopian societies flourished in the United States that questioned the primacy of individualism, monogamy, and private property. They rejected the restrictions of monogamy and broadened the common ground of gender relations either by placing them outside of marriage (e.g., celibacy) or by placing them within wider forms of marriage (e.g., group marriage, polygamy). Intimately related to this, they called for various forms of communal childcare, property, and economic relations. In this paper, I will examine three prominent nineteenth-century utopian societies in the US—the Shakers, the Oneida, and the Mormons—to consider how they articulated different visions for the commons of kinship, marriage, property, and economic relations—and how their realization of these different visions fared historically. In the end, I suggest that kinship studies and economic anthropology have much to gain from finding common ground in exploring the deeply intertwined relationship between matters having to do with kinship, marriage, property, and economy in contrasting visions of what of constitutes a fully developed and flourishing social life.

Contribution short abstract:

Based on ethnographic study of learning processes around parenting/family on educator-kibbutzim, the paper shows how ‘the purchase of cooperativism’ is created. The purchase of cooperativism refers to practices and feelings of communality shaped through learning that link relationality and economy.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper shows how practices and feelings of communality can be shaped through learning processes that link relationality and economy. The kibbutz has fascinated anthropologists for its attempts to create new commons through the re-design of production and reproduction, primarily childcare. Yet by the 21st century, the kibbutz has been virtually erased through capitulation to capitalization, privatization, and neo-liberalism. The new educator-kibbutzim are attempting to revive the kibbutz by adopting communal living arrangements and dedicating themselves social-educational initiatives. This study follows how they use learning processes to shape family, intimate group relations, and economy.

Based on ethnographic study of learning processes around parenting/family on educator-kibbutzim, this paper questions: How do these learning processes create and maintain communality? How do they work to constitute relationality through economic practices? Building on Zelizer's idea of the 'purchase of intimacy,' the paper presents the 'purchase of cooperativism' as created in learning processes. The 'purchase of cooperativism' refers to the structure of caring relations created by educator-kibbutzim and includes three layers: the creation of care as a moral economy, 'shared agreement' as a form of payment practice, and the distribution of caring labor as bridging the domestic and organizational levels of the kibbutz. The purchase of cooperativism is revealed as a gripping form of caring relations between adults maintained through payment practices, yet which also challenges capitalist forms of work/family separation and neo-liberal individualism. This study reveals how practices of intimacy created through the social process of learning can offer alternative economic cultural logic.

Contribution short abstract:

Over the past four decades, Bamiléké in Cameroon have become reluctant to engage in child fostering—uncommoning kinscription—reflecting transformations in and avoidance of conflict over financial and emotional economies of parenting, and furthering social inequality.

Contribution long abstract:

In the Bamiléké highlands of Cameroon during the 1980s, the “commoning” of parenting children through fostering combined economic, social, and emotional logics. Bamiléké adults considered fostering and distributed parenting during middle childhood to benefit children by building resilience, expanding their social ties (and thus future economic opportunities), contributing to their linguistic and social capital, creating opportunities for school attendance, conscripting them to help new mothers or lonely elders, and providing household labor or literacy skills to their hosts’ commercial endeavors. In contrast, formally-educated middle class Bamiléké in the 2010s and 2020s practiced the “uncommoning” of shared responsibility for children—even among some pam nto’ (uterine group) relatives most frequently chosen as foster parents. While the idea of child fostering remains a valorized expression of “African solidarity,” many Bamiléké replace fostering with concerted cultivation. This contribution explores how changes in kinship and class formation contribute to the decline of child fostering among transnationally-connected middle-class Bamiléké in Cameroon and in its German and French international diasporas. It presents two contrasting emic ideals regarding the who and the how of good parenting, employing sharply distinct notions of kinscription—or which kin should be responsible for which aspects of childrearing. Economies of childrearing are changing, with increasing emotional and financial investments (e.g., for children’s extracurricular activities). The multiplicity of ideas regarding responsible parenthood generates conflict, which many Bamiléké parents seek to avoid by becoming reluctant relatives. New orientations toward parenting demonstrate that parenting and parenthood reflect and contribute to social inequality.

Contribution short abstract:

In past adoptions from India to Switzerland. agencies, the state and adoptive parents heavily invested in the transfer of children, de-linking them from their origins and un-commoning them. Today, adoptees look for accountability, repair and for their biological parents, practicing commoning.

Contribution long abstract:

In the last third of the 20th century, tens of thousands of children from the global South were adopted by parents in the global North. Agencies helped to create a downright market of children for Western couples and state offices often looked away or facilitated this transfer of children. Adoptive parents heavily invested in these new relationships to make them happen and to make them work.

The paper is based on research on inter-country adoptions from India to Switzerland. Today, adopted persons increasingly question the conditions under which they were relinquished, the circumstances of their (possibly illegal) adoptions and their experiences of growing up in a white society. Many adoptees also try to find their biological parents, making use of their right to know one’s origin. Faced with a largely unhelpful Swiss state, they attempt to find their mothers through private connections, courts, and with the help of DNA tests; thus participating in a new market with the promise of reunion.

The paper analyses their searches as a response to the investment put into their separation from their families (un-commoning). This practice of (re-)commoning is radical because it refuses alienation, racialization and commercialization and brings supposedly intimate questions into the public realm.

Contribution short abstract:

In Nepal, land inheritance is state regulated to help to protect individuals from greedy kin. However, in Kathmandu in recent years, individuals’ legal rights to their family’s land have become the basis for new modes of dispossession, raising questions about the moral value of kin relations.

Contribution long abstract:

When it comes to uncommoning the shared resources of kinship, the most mundane form of this practice may well be inheritance. Across numerous societies, the distribution of inheritance amongst the next-of-kin is recognized as a perilous moment for kin groups, a time when fights may well break out over contested claims to family wealth. In Nepal, the distribution inheritance is most often conflated with the distribution of land to the next generation, a process so important and so rife with tension that it has been legally regulated, so that each member of the family retains a right to an equal share of their family’s estate. While such inheritance laws were codified to limit fighting and protect individuals from greedy kin, in certain areas they have allowed for a cottage industry of legal and legal-adjacent practices aimed at gaining leverage over real estate that would otherwise be inaccessible. This has been particularly pronounced in Kathmandu, where speculative real estate investment has pushed land prices so high that they are now said to rival those in Manhattan. To gain a foothold in this market, lawyers, brokers, and other intermediaries search for contested land disputes between kin, working each case for free with the promise that, should they be successful, they will split the land with the aggrieved party. This paper explores these practices, how they have weaponized inheritance rights, and how they are changing individuals’ understanding both of the value of land and of family.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores social micro-saving groups (jamʿiyya) in Central Oman, arguing that these local saving practices play a particularly important role for women, not only as forms of commoning—collectively managing resources—but also as acts of kinning, constructing and maintaining kinship ties.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines the practices of social micro-saving groups (jamʿiyya) among women of different age groups in Central Oman, framing them within the concepts of commoning and kinning to explore the intersection of economic and relational dimensions in kinship. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2016-2017, including a survey of 70 households in a rural Omani town, I analyze local saving groups as a central mechanism of communal financial management within extended families. Jamʿiyya refers to informal saving clubs where members contribute fixed amounts at regular intervals, and the pooled sum is distributed to one member in rotation.

In Oman, a relatively affluent oil-based welfare state, social saving groups do not replace bank accounts but complement them, strengthening and replicating social relationships. I argue that jamʿiyya practices play a particularly important role for women, not only as forms of commoning—collectively managing and distributing resources—but also as acts of kinning, constructing and maintaining kinship ties. Savings goals and uses vary across gender, age, and status groups, with educated women, often earning higher salaries than their husbands, playing key roles in achieving savings goals, such as (co-)funding celebrations or home renovations.

By enacting jamʿiyya practices within familial networks, Omani women reinforce and negotiate relational solidarity, illustrating how such practices intertwine the economic and social-emotional dimensions of kinship. This paper contributes to the anthropology of kinship and economic anthropology by examining processes of commoning in the intimate sphere of the family.