S9: Gender, Kinship and Care

This paper aims to use a variety of disciplinary perspectives to explore powerful new developments in the experience and understandings of gender and kinship in the context of the emergent field of “care.” The course addresses recent developments in gender theory and global changes in the nature of intimacy. It examines anthropological evidence of the re-emergence of more traditional kinship and gender relations in new forms. Cross-cultural studies of same-sex and heterosexual relationships and especially friendships will be examined so as to better theorise the ways in which care is being reconfigured both within and outside normative kinship configurations. The new theorisation of care builds upon the new ways of caring for the sick, frail and elderly as well as the young and examines policy concerns about the failures of parents in the care of children. It also examines care as a form of governance and identifies the ways in which the multiple and culturally specific ways of “caring” are often not recognised by the state which increasingly seeks to standardise practices of care and divest them of their socio-cultural meanings and significances. Themes to be addressed include: new reproductive technologies, gender and work/family balance, migration and the international division of reproductive labour (employed care givers and global “care-chains”), new models and practices of parenting, domestic and state coercions, public planning and state policy in the realm of care.

Reading lists and syllabus outline for Paper S9:

• Syllabus Outline – (pdf)
• Gender, Kinship and Care Paper Guide – (pdf)

• Affective Labour and its Excesses – Update Lent 2012 – (pdf)
• Article: Biosecuritization: The Quest for Synthetic Blood and the Taming of Kinship
• Peano Seminar – Affective Labour and its Excesses – Lent 2012 – (pdf)

• Theorising Gender, Sexuality and Subjectivity – Michaelmas 2011 – (pdf)
• Creating Kinship – Michaelmas 2011 – (pdf)
• Article: Adams, Hattum, English – Chronic Disaster Syndrome
• Article: Agarwal – The Gender and Environment Debate
• Article: Cole – Disembedding and the Humiliation of Poverty
• Article: Collier, Lakoff, Rabinow – Biosecurity Towards an Anthropology of the Contemporary
• Article: Durkheim – Solidarity Arising From the Division of Labour
• Article: Fullilove – The Butterfly in Beijing
• Article: Hacking – Our Neo-Cartesian Bodies in Parts
• Article: Hall, Etc – Psychological Impact of the Animal-Human Bond in Disaster Preparedness and Response
• Article: Hartmann – Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex
• Article: Hoffman – The Monster and the Mother; The Symbolism of Disaster
• Article: Illouz – Constructing the Romantic Utopia
• Article: ISDR – Gender Perspective: Working Together for Disaster Risk Reduction
• Article: Judkins, Presser – Division of Eco-Friendly Household Labor and the Marital Relationship
• Article: King – Tornado Alley Fight
• Article: Lane – Man Enough to Let my Wife Support Me
• Article: Rybczynski – Intimacy and Privacy
• Article: Smith – Nature as Accumulation Strategy
• Article: Tett – The Derivatives Dream
• Article: Zelizer – Encounters of Intimacy and Economy

Previous years’ reading lists are here.

Exam Questions

• Gender, Kinship and Care – mock exam paper – 2010 – (pdf)
• Gender, Kinship and Care exam questions – 2010/11 – (pdf)

• 2011 Examiners’ Report on Paper Gender, Kinship and Care – (pdf)

Chai-boy, Goa 1993