Paper short abstract:

This paper will launch the debate: how can we use the genealogical method in contemporary anthropology? I will argue that family histories are a methodological disposition that can help to heuristically combine genealogies with the new epistemological trends that have been emerging in anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

Ways of living in the world are inseparable from the processes of constituting a sense of belonging in which primordial relations play a central part. In the process of becoming a being in the world, people make places and shape their lives through the relations they maintain with their close ones and through the incorporation of stories and lived experiences that kin and friends tell them about these places, lives and relations in the past. This year we celebrate one hundred years since W.H.R. Rivers published his famous essay on the genealogical method and the study of kinship. This presentation will launch the debate in this workshop: how can we use this methodological disposition in contemporary anthropology?Starting from the debate on the polemical life of the genealogical method and the critical reassessment of the study of kinship and genealogy after the 1980's, I will argue that family histories are a methodological disposition that can help us to heuristically combine genealogies with the new epistemological trends that have been emerging in anthropology.