Book Review 
 
Review of Bamford, Sandra, ed. The Cambridge 

Handbook of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press. 2019. pp. 750. Price: $157 (Hardcover); $120 
(eBook). 

 

Irina Kretser 

Saint-Petersburg State University 
i.kretser@spbu.ru 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthropology & Aging, Vol 41, No 2 (2020), pp. 286-288 

ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2020.293 

 

  

 

 
 

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

 
This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as 

part of its 

D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. 



           Book Review | Kretser |  

  

 

Anthropology & Aging  

Vol 41 No 2 (2020) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2020.293 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu 

286 

 

 
 
Book Review 
 
Review of Bamford, Sandra, ed. The Cambridge 
Handbook of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 2019. pp. 750. Price: $157 (Hardcover); $120 
(eBook). 

 

Irina Kretser 

Saint-Petersburg State University 

i.kretser@spbu.ru 

  

 

 

At its core, The Cambridge Handbook of Kinship, edited by Sandra Bamford, explores “how kin connections 

are imagined, formed, and administered in the twenty-first century” (5). The book consists of six parts 

and opens with three cases, focusing on issues of assistant reproductive technologies, of kinship and 

citizenship and of adoption and private rehoming of a child, thus immediately immersing the reader in 

the complexities of modern kinship and pointing out to some of the themes that will be dealt with in 

the rest of the volume. 

 

Part I presents classical anthropological kinship theories from a new angle and analyzes the intellectual 

history of some of the significant anthropological concepts in this field. Gillian Feeley-Harnik (Chapter 

3) scrutinizes the linkages between the notion of ‘descent’ and ideas of connection, selection, 

development and improvement. She deals not only with descent in the human world, but includes 

animal worlds as well, describing, for example, sheep breeding experiments in 18th-century Great 

Britain. Isabelle Clark-Decès (Chapter 4) studies the effects of the implication of alliance theory to South 

India, and Sarah Franklin (Chapter 5) pauses on different ways of thinking about ‘biology’ in the context 

of kinship studies. At the end of Part I, Janet Carsten (Chapter 6) suggests shifting from the very classical 

opposition between ‘biological’ and ‘social,’ to questions of how kinship works, focusing on the 

importance of “stuff,” temporality and gradations of kinship. In sum, Part I provides the reader with 

the basic concepts in kinship studies, while raising new questions and indicating future directions for 

the field. 

 

Further scrutinizing the cultural dichotomy between ‘biological’ and ‘social,’ Part II mainly argues not 

to reduce ‘biological’ to ‘reproduction,’ and offers ways of balancing the ‘social’ and the ‘biological’ in 

localized and historically contingent ways. The body becomes a domain where the ‘social’ and the 

‘biological’ merge, as it embodies, reflects, and materializes kinship relations. Kathryn E. Goldfarb 

(Chapter 7), observing the behavior of kids in child welfare institutions in Japan, describes how kinship, 

care, or its absence, are embodied in bodily practices. For example, the proficiency of using chopsticks 

is interpreted as ‘embodied signs’ of previous family relations. Drawing on another example, she asks: 

“Is being left- or right-handed biological? Is it cultural? Or is it an emblematic case of ‘local biologies,’ 

the result of dynamics across both domains?” (153). This is a pivotal question, and a most relevant 

starting point for studying our bodies and relations. Furthermore, Gail Landsman’s account of the role 

of technology in childhood disability (in Part V, Chapter 24) focuses on how an assemblage of bodies, 

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           Book Review | Kretser |  

  

 

Anthropology & Aging  

Vol 41 No 2 (2020) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2020.293 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu 

287 

technologies and people, redefines personhood and social relations of a person with a disability. In Part 

II, and throughout the volume, the authors emphasize that kinship is deeply embedded in ‘biological 

materiality’ (154) and inseparable from it.  

 

In Part III the authors bring to the fore how cultural, political, legal and kinship orders are inextricably 

interwoven with, and foundational for mundane realities of kinship, established through everyday 

practices. Noa Vaisman (Chapter 12) tells one of the most dramatic and memorable stories in this book: 

during the dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) about 500 children – “living disappeared” – were 

transferred from their own families (their parents were murdered) to other families, where “their 

biological identities were erased, by changing their dates of birth, names and kinship ties” (279). 

Modern governments and nongovernmental organizations still try to restore the truth and return the 

“living disappeared” to their biological relatives but, as the author indicates, these processes raise a lot 

of questions that touch upon the sensitivity and complexity of the relation between kinship and state 

power. Does the Argentinian state have the right to intervene in people's lives and forcibly reunite them 

with a family they never knew? Does the state have the right to collect a DNA sample of the “living 

disappeared” without their permission? Do these, now adults, have the right to refuse to undergo a 

DNA test? Do their biological relatives have the right to know the truth? Biological, social, political, 

legal and ethical issues get inextricably entangled and mixed up in these contradictory narratives. What 

is private? What is public? There is no answer, no border. 

 

Part IV gives considerable attention to the role of migration in the context of kinship. Lieba Faier 

(Chapter 18) provides a rich guide to Japanese ways of living, exploring how Filipina female migrants 

become “oyomesan” (412) – traditional Japanese brides and daughters-in-law –  thus transforming not 

only their own lives and selves, but also influencing Japanese patterns of kinship. In the remainder of 

part IV, however, the authors go beyond positive effects of transnational connection and focus on the 

precarious position of transnational migrants and their unstable kinship relations: Jessaca Leinaweaver 

(Chapter 17) calls attention to inequality and racialization in the context of transnational adoption and 

poses the question what ‘transnational’ means in this context; Nicole Constable (Chapter 16) focuses on 

the vulnerable lives of Hong Kong former foreign domestic workers and their families or “temporary 

family formation” (373), and Deborah A. Boehm (Chapter 19) describes how Mexican families are 

scattered across the US-Mexico border due to deportation from the US.  

 

In Part V kinship is interwoven with technologies. Marcia C. Inhorn et al. (Chapter 22) call attention to 

the linkage between particular religious ideologies and types of permitted assisted reproductive 

technologies in Sunni Muslim Arab countries, secular Turkey, Shia Muslim Iran, and Jewish Israel. 

Other authors in Part V provide interesting insights into studies of surrogacy: Janet Dolgin (Chapter 21) 

examines the court cases of surrogacy and transformations of the notions of ‘mother,’ ‘family’ and 

‘childhood’ in this context. Elly Teman and Zsuzsa Berend (Chapter 23) focus on the similarity between 

surrogacy practices in Israel and the USA, and Tsipy Ivry and Elly Teman (Chapter 25) analyze common 

cultural roots and mutually constitutive relationships between surrogacy and pregnancy in Israel. 

  

Part VI thematizes the failed artificial distinction between the modern nation-state and kinship 

ideologies. As most of the authors here amply demonstrate, state and kinship are inseparable from each 

other: the ‘political’ intervenes in family lives and redefines kinship relations – through the carceral 

system, as Hollis Moore shows (Chapter 27) or through development programs, as Koreen M. Reece 

illustrates (Chapter 29). Furthermore, “the nation-state is frequently in tension with kinship and religion 

considered together, as an alternative . . . space for the making of persons and relations between 

persons” (711). In the same vein, Susan McKinnon (Chapter 26) describes how the image of cousin 

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           Book Review | Kretser |  

  

 

Anthropology & Aging  

Vol 41 No 2 (2020) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2020.293 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu 

288 

marriage is changed in Great Britain: from positive ratings, when this practice was still associated with 

aristocracy, to stigmatization, when it started to matter as part of British Pakistani Muslims’ kinship. 

To conclude, I wish to highlight several themes that are compelling about this book and that run 

through the different parts. The authors bring to the fore, firstly, the importance of religion as the basis 

of kinship ideologies in modern states; secondly, the increasing role of the law in redefining kinship; 

thirdly, that particular forms of kinship can have both negative and positive effects, and fourthly, that 

information, whether it’s DNA tests or adoption documents, is becoming a new essential part or “stuff” 

of kinship. This elaborate volume will be of great value for a diverse audience interested in how 

inconsistent, competing and contested narratives merge in the domain of modern kinship. 

 
 

 

 

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