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- Convenors:
-
Jennifer Speirs
(University of Edinburgh)
Siobhan Magee (University of Edinburgh)
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- Track:
- Being Human
- Location:
- University Place 6.208
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 August, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore anthropological meanings of the term 'inheritance', unpacking its use in socio-legal and economic discourses, in talk of genetics and relatedness, and in claims for groups' or individuals' rights, whilst linking it to perpetual questions about the (re)production of societies.
Long Abstract:
Inheritance' is usually taken to mean the transferral of rights, property, objects or other materials to one or more 'heirs' on the occasion of someone's death. It may also refer to the intangible: physical characteristics, dispositions, status and obligations. In genetics and biology, inheritance refers to how traits are passed on through Mendelian conditions. Inheritance emerges in discussions about families and about who is related to whom and how. DNA testing, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, organ donation, and the donation and cryopreservation of gametes have destabilised assumptions about familial relationships although the sharing of biogenetic substance is not the only way in which people think about kinship (Edwards 2009). Fostering, step-parenting, adoption and friendship each generate relationships in which inheritance may feature.
We are interested in exploring whether, and if so how, the varying ethnographic contexts in which 'inheritance' is used influence the meanings attributed to it. A variety of papers is encouraged, potentially discussing the following topics: How might inheritance reveal moral concerns about relatedness between people, generations, and material objects? What are the strategic uses to which 'inheritance talk' is put? We anticipate exploration of these questions in the context of debates about the rights to obtain and to refuse genetic information (Strathern 1999), of ethnographic findings on inherited resemblance of looks and dispositions (Demian 2000), of identity politics, property (Hann 2008), and socio-legal arguments about creating and maintaining relationships, as well as in relation to continuing questions about how societies are or are not 'reproduced' (Goody 1976).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 August, 2013, -Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to examine how the meaning of genetic inheritance is negotiated by women or couples facing age-related infertility and/or turning to egg donation to have their own child in the Swiss context.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to examine how the meaning of genetic inheritance is negotiated by women or couples facing age-related infertility and/or turning to egg donation to have their own child in the Swiss context. Egg donation entails a disruption in genetic connection between mother and child exposing parents to the threat of "resemblance talk" casting doubt on the legitimacy of their family (Becker 2005). The desire for resemblance and the making of phenotypal resemblances (Bergman 2010; Fortier 2009) are used to establish a sense of genealogical continuity (Bestard & Orobitg 2009; Fortier 2009; Marre & Bestard 2009). Allowing to keep egg donation procedure hidden, they can serve also the conventional model of biogenetic kinship (Bergman 2010; Konrad 2005). Drawing on ethnographic observations and 35 in-depth interviews with women or couples undergoing medically assisted conception, I state that the meaning of genetic inheritance is especially negotiated during two decision-making processes: firstly on having a child with donated eggs; secondly on the way to disclose the procedure. I will question how people in these situations deal with genetic disruption, genealogical continuity and transmission. A special focus will be brought to the ambivalent links between disclosure and desire for resemblance, allowing me to highlight the temporal dimension of the negotiation of genetic inheritance.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the transmission of national belongings in alliance as kinning process. Based on registrars' narratives about the (un)desirability of some unions, it analyses metaphors around the circulation of national belongings through the exchange of bodily fluids between spouses.
Paper long abstract:
The transmission of national belongings offers an enthralling perspective from which to explore the topic of inheritance, understood as the circulation of material and immaterial goods between related persons. Based on fieldwork conducted with Swiss registrars between November 2009 and January 2011, this paper questions the stakes of inheritance at the crossroads of familiar and national belongings.
As other ranges of civil servants, registrars have lately been involved in the struggle against unwanted migration. With the development of bureaucratic technology aiming at tracking down “sham marriages”, registrars' work is also about the selection of potential co-nationals. Foreign spouses of Swiss nationals acquire rights regarding residence as well as regarding state membership. If the Swiss legislation about nationality is mainly articulated around jus sanguinis, and remains very restrictive regarding jus solis, it nevertheless entails the possibility for foreign spouses to become Swiss through a more straightforward bureaucratic procedure named “facilitated naturalisation”.
During my fieldwork, it became obvious that registrars consider themselves as part of the technology of protection of the national body through rhetoric of good marriages/civil partnerships. The present paper analyses the metaphors used in their narratives about what makes some foreigners desirable co-nationals, while others remain illegitimate. I will highlight the articulation between markers of national belongings such as family names, the “place of origin” and matrimonial strategy, and narratives about the circulation of bodily fluids, especially sperm and mother's milk.
Paper short abstract:
For the purpose of this paper, I chose to focus on inheritance conflicts as a backdoor to understanding contemporary family dynamics, hierarchies, gender and age relationships as well as the way in which they interact with the Beninese justice.
Paper long abstract:
Over the last few years, the number of inheritance disputes handled by the Beninese state courts has drastically increased. In Cotonou, State of Persons courtrooms are so crowded that people even have to stand outside during registration. What are those people fighting about, why and how do they proceed?
For the purpose of this paper, I will follow Beninese families' itineraries throughout inheritance disputes. When a parent dies, how are commodities managed or shared? What are the discussions and the conflicts resulting from those? What causes people to cease the courts? I will look into the arguments that are raised and the means that are mobilized by the parties, but also by their relatives. What does the 'extended family' have to say about children fighting in court? Those conflicts are about property, about who it belongs to and whether it should be sold. They are about the economic and symbolic value of land and houses. They are about family norms or "traditions" and the individualistic notion that "no one can be forced to remain in joint ownership" (CPF, art 752). Inheritance conflicts are now settled by a new Code on Persons and Family (2004) promoting gender and generational equality. How is it appropriated by both the Beninese families and the judicial officials tasked to enforce it?
In short, what are the different steps and justifications behind inheritance disputes, how are they eventually settled and what does it mean with regards to family dynamics in contemporary urban West Africa?
Paper short abstract:
The recently-disallowed practice of anonymous semen donation in the UK reveals the instability of the concept of inheritance, and ambivalence about the relationship between genetic, social and material inheritance.
Paper long abstract:
Anonymous semen donation in the UK was characterised by keeping the identity of the donor hidden from recipients whilst assuring them of the quality of donors' genes and positive characteristics. Donors were usually selected for their youth, their intelligence and their good health. One reason for insisting on anonymity was to prevent the donor exercising any claim on the donor conceived child, it being assumed that a donor might wish to interfere with the child's upbringing.
The prevention of donor offspring from making claims for material inheritance from the donors was not anticipated as necessary, since it was presumed that anonymity prevented any possibility of donor offspring from discovering the identity of the donor. However research shows that some donors of the past are concerned that donor offspring might make claims for emotional support or for a share of the donors' estates, if the donor offspring could discover their identity. At the same time, donors are curious to know what they have handed on to donor offspring by way of physical appearance. I suggest that one cause of the discrepancy is the lack of thought into how donors might view their donation in hindsight, when they became fathers and grandfathers.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how DNA testing becomes an emergent way of constructing relatedness along with local notions of personhood among the Rukai of Taiwan, thereby coming to make the heterogeneous ontologies of ‘inheritance’.
Paper long abstract:
According to Rukai kinship practices, the children born from extra-marital relationships are often adopted or brought up by the siblings of their parents. Kinship practices as such will not face the question of identifying biological paternity until family members start to gravely concerns about the inheritance of private property. Interestingly, instead of the parents claiming their children, Rukai residents leave to the children the question of identifying the biological paternity on the grounds that children at the age of twenty are legally eligible to make a case in the Family Court. It is the agency and will of children which initiate the process of obtaining genetic information to make it revealed in the Court. This 'discovery' (Strathern 2005) of biological paternity in turn manifests and co-exists with Rukai residents' existing knowledge concerning the constructs of relatedness both through everyday caring and affective experience and through bodily dispositions considered to be ancestor-connected. In this sense, the legal notions and practices with respect to the right of private property allow relatedness to be possibly objectified and scientifically revealed. Moreover, the genetic information obtained then comes to make an emergent, heterogeneous ontology of 'inheritance' connected to, penetrating, even in symbiosis with, their existing ontology of inheritance realized and informed by everyday kinship practices.
Paper short abstract:
A Supyire widow is inherited by her husband’s brother and stays in the patriclan. This paper analyses reactions to the relationships this creates and to the evolution of the custom in recent generations, assesses outside pressure to abolish the practice, and proposes a more gradual way forward.
Paper long abstract:
The Supyire people of Mali practise levirate: when a woman is married, she permanently joins her husband's family, and the marriage is not terminated by his death. Rather, it continues, with one of the husband's younger brothers (or cousins) inheriting her and acting as a substitute levirate husband. The paper describes how levirate is an integral part of the Supyire institution of marriage, how it gives marriage permanence, supporting the social structure, linking descent groups, determining access to land and providing a milieu for socializing children. The thesis highlights the experiences that Supyire men and women relate of their experiences of levirate. Despite the often difficult and complex relationships which the Supyire system of levirate creates, it gives security to widows and their children, a permanent place in the deceased husband's patriclan and allows them continued access to farmland and thus to a livelihood.
In recent generations the custom has evolved in response to monetarization and growing population. External pressure is currently being brought to bear from both United Nations and churches to outlaw or abandon levirate throughout Mali as it is seen as an violation of a widow's freedom to choose whom to marry. This paper argues that rather than tarring all customs labelled levirate with the same brush, promotion of understanding of the custom, its benefits and difficulties and continued gradual adaptation, rather than abrupt abolition, is the most constructive way forward to give the best possibility for Supyire family life to flourish.
Paper short abstract:
The ritual of offering a sacrifice to Heaven，cultural transmission
Paper long abstract:
As the process of open and reform continues to proceed and the economic globalization develops, the politic, economic, and cultural environment also begins to change mightily in china, which also caused the continuous damage to the base of traditional culture. It is a challenging to the traditional culture and ecological harmony in ethnic groups' region.
The Naxi minority, living in the northwest area of China with a population of 300 thousand, created its own traditional culture，which brought praises from people all over the world. Faced with the crush from economic globalization and parlous crisis, the Naxi culture picked up an active attitude to cope with and search for an appropriate way to preserve itself, among which to rekindle the ritual of offering a sacrifice to Heaven is an important one. The Naxi minority had been once called as "Naxi mu by de" which means that the Naxi people took the ritual of offering a sacrifice as the most important one. The ritual of offering a sacrifice to Heaven, as the most important ritual of Naxi people in history, once disappeared because of the complicate backgrounds and reasons, has now been recovering quietly. Given this situation, the thesis, based on the return of the ritual of offering a sacrifice to Heaven in the Xinzhu Village, Ludian Township, Naxi Minority Antonymous County, Lijiang City, tries to explore the cultural implication and social function, and give some advices on how to bring back the ethic groups' cultural traditions
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic work in a rural area of central northwestern Spain, this paper will discuss the changing meanings and uses of inheritance at the turn of the century in an area of equal-part inheritance for both men and women. There is concern over the possible clash of these moral rights in an increasingly critical economic situation in which the need to provide for one’s offspring may override sibling solidarity.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic work in a rural area of central northwestern Spain, this paper will discuss the changing meanings and uses of inheritance at the turn of the century in an area of equal-part inheritance for both men and women. Whereas during most of the 20th century, women and men inherited rural property (land, animals, tools, etc.) and used it to form their own family farms, this changes at the end of the century when a certain number of men but almost no women stay to farm in the village or in nearby villages. Women continue to inherit property that they do not now use, while men inherit property that they do use, as well as using their sisters' property. That is, women have property rights over land that their brothers use, and this use by the brothers generates use rights. Both property and use rights have to do with belonging and with reproduction of families and family businesses; and both are very strong moral rights. Sisters have a moral hold on brothers because the brothers make their living using their sisters' land; brothers have a moral hold over the land because they are actually using it.