Kinship as a relation

Abstract

Anthropological approaches to kinship « today » can benefit from work on the recursive nature of relations, which certainly illuminates the motherhood/fatherhood pair. Each term is implicated in the other, but that this mutual implication should be imagined as a « relation » that can then be compared to other « relations » is a Euro-American formulation. However widely and generally applied, such a relation can only be known through specific epistemological devices, and these may be as foreign to other contexts as much as they may run up against devices foreign to them. Drawing on Anglophone materials, this article confronts a comparative approach to motherhood and fatherhood.