Paper short abstract:

This paper considers milk ties, the embodiment of the person and the construction of social relatedness in Muslim contexts. With reference to kinship, law, politics and cosmology, it suggests a ‘grammar of proximity’ that defines ‘substance’ in terms of relationality rather than categories.

Paper long abstract:

<b>Co-author: Saskia Walentowitz, University of Bern</b></br>

In recent years, issues related to 'milk kinship' in settings in which Islam plays a notable role have been singled out for close study by social scientists. In contrast, the articulations of milk ties, the embodiment of the person and the construction of social relatedness in Muslim contexts are but partially explored. The approaches of 'milk kinship' hitherto adopted are foremost philological-historical, relativist and structuralist. In this presentation, we will argue that relatedness through milk, defined in its cultural and historical variability, may not be artificially isolated from the wider, gendered fields of social proximity, law, politics and cosmology. No single explanation or theory accounts for all these facets and variants. Yet, each society in which ties of milk are deemed significant refers to a grammar of proximity through which 'substance' is defined in terms of relationality rather than categories. Thus, variations of milk bonds and their implications may be meaningfully differentiated and compared in anthropological perspective.