2 Ethnocentric Projection and the Study of Kinship

Ethnocentric Projection and the Study of Kinship … May 2008 12
The first of these is that the very issues that arise in articulating and defending the
Ethnocentric Projection Thesis also arise in considering variations in the forms that kinship
can take on the domestic front. Although the new kinship studies can be said to focus on
kinship in familiar places and spaces, much the same dilemma I posed above for proponents
of the Ethnocentric Projection Thesis faces anyone exploring “kinship” that departs from
the conception of kinship that Schneider has identified in traditional kinship studies. At least
that is true if Schneider has, in fact, correctly identified this conception, an assumption
motivating both the positive and negative strands to the new kinship studies depicted in
Table 1. If an asymmetric or distinctive role for biological genealogical and reproductive
relations lies at the core of our (Western) conception of kinship, then there is a real question
as to whether we can explore, in familiar places and spaces, something properly called
“kinship” in which biological genealogical and reproductive relations do not play such roles.
On the other hand, if the Western conception of kinship is flexible enough to admit of
kinship between neighbours, between members of an internet chat group, or between
disability activists, then it seems that the new kinship studies simply extends traditional
kinship studies into novel domestic sites. (And, of course, if the Western notion of kinship
is this flexible, then, one might think, surely it is flexible enough to apply to non-Western
societies lacking our putative fetishization of biology. Whence the ethnocentric projection)
Thus, there would be much more continuity between the new and traditional kinship studies
than has been suggested by much of the rhetoric fueled by Schneider’s own talk of the end
of kinship studies. In effect, we can see something like ethnocentric projection beginning at
home.
The second way in which compartmentalizing the discussion of Schneider’s critique
from contemporary kinship studies would be a mistake is that one upshot of that discussion
is that what I characterized as the most central pair of claims for the new kinship studies—
attention to cultural constructions of kinship and the resulting dismissal of biological notions
of kinship—prove more difficult to defend than they might initially appear. In particular, we
have seen that the negative member of this pair, dismissing biological notions of kinship, as
it features in the Ethnocentric Projection Thesis, stands in need of clarification. When such
clarification is provided, some of the complexities along the path of actually defending or
justifying this dismissal are revealed. I have not argued that the Ethnocentric Projection
Thesis is false, underscoring this as an empirical issue whose resolution lies beyond my
limited aims in this chapter. But I take the preceding discussion to have shifted the burden
of proof to proponents of the Thesis, and argued that this burden is significant. Since
denying that biological genealogical and reproductive relations play an asymmetric or
distinctive role is one way to dismiss biological notions of kinship, the preceding discussion
again provides grounds for rethinking this aspect to the rethinking of kinship.
One point made at the end of section 2 was that the positive and negative
characterizations of the new kinship studies were separable. If that is correct, then one
meliorative option for future directions to kinship studies would be to advocate downplaying
those negative features. Doing so, of course, would minimize the sense of discontinuity
between traditional and new kinship studies, something that it might be time to do anyway.