ANTC09H3 Lecture 4: Week 4 Readings
Document Summary
Week 4 mary weismantel making kin: kinship theory and zumabgua adoptions. In a diverse and unequal society it is unsurprising that individuals and communities create families that do not conform to the hegemonic ideal. In debates about custody, adoption, abortion and reproductive technologies, the public searches for a suddenly elusive definition of paternity and maternity. The social fabric of zumbagua is made up of small households based on lifelong heterosexual marriages, a pattern that superficially resembles the conservative euro-american ideal embraced by the mississippi judge. The bonds people form with one another in the parish are based on an understanding of relatedness that differs strikingly from euro-american principles. Absent from zumbagua discourse are those anxieties over natural and unnatural parents that look so large in the popular imagination of los angelenos. In los angeles as in latin america, poor and marginalized communities have had to create strong, flexible kinship systems in order to survive.
