a0001 Transforming Kinship Sarah Franklin, Based in part on the previous version of this eLS article ‘Kinship in Flux’ (2005) by Marilyn Strathern. The analysis of kinship AU:1 , a core concept AU:2 in the social sci- ences, has continued to evolve in the context of new technologies, alternative parenting strategies and glo- balisation. A widening array of diverse kinship practices encompasses new meanings of ‘shared substance’ as well as ‘being related’ and having ‘genealogical’ or ‘conjugal’ connections. The introduction of ‘achieved’ (non ‘nat- ural’) parenthood in the 1980s has not, as was predicted by some, either undermined or weakened familial ties or obligations – instead, if anything, has the reverse effect. For example, the increased emphasis on molecular genetic information has not been found to have engen- dered a more essentialist model of parenthood or kinship. Instead, a pattern of flexible adjustment to both tradi- tional kinship norms (however these may be defined) and the creation of alternative kinship possibilities, including new scientific options for parenthood, have characterised the transformation of kinship in the early twenty-first century. s0001 Introduction p0001 Early models of kinship derived from the postulates of ancient law, religion, philology and mythology began to give way in the late-nineteenth century to the modern view of social evolution, according to which marriage, parent- hood and kinship are formed through the imposition of a social pattern upon a basic universal substratum of reproductive biology. According to this view, perhaps most vigorously introduced by Lewis Henry Morgan, and later codified by Friederich Engels, marriage and parent- hood both evolve over time, and pass through distinct stages in the history of human social organisation. Heavily influenced, as was the rest of modern thought, by Darwin’s model of natural selection, these early kinship models implied that although all of humanity universally shares the same biology, the parsing of human biological capacity differs markedly from region to region, over time, and cross-culturally. p0002 Rejecting the emphasis on evolutionary progression in favour of a more technical focus on the varied means of achieving social unity, the structural functionalist anthro- pologists who dominated British social anthropology in the first part of the twentieth century understood kinship as a form of what Durkheim described as ‘mechanical’ soli- darity – that is, a coherent moral practice structuring everyday life, or what would now be described as law-like social norms. The institutions and conventions of kinship, in the form, for example, of lineage and clan structures such as agnatic moieties, were central to this model, which was largely employed in the study of nonwestern societies. Within the French tradition, which came to be dominated by the structuralist anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss in the postwar period, an emphasis on marriage exchanges gave rise to ‘alliance theory,’ to which kinship was a central analytical concept (or ‘elementary structure’). Throughout these debates concerning marriage, parenthood and kin- ship, three themes have remained predominant, namely the formation of kinship through procreation, through mar- riage and family arrangements, and through domestic activities. In some combination or other, these three dimensions of social activity have dominated the debate over kinship since its inception. p0003 Towards the end of the twentieth century, following a period of lessening interest in formal kinship patterns, kinship theory began to be reconsidered from two sig- nificant and interrelated perspectives. The first of these was the autocritique of anthropological ethnocentrism and neocolonialism, which derived from a reexamination of the anthropological canon, including the presumed biogenetic foundation for kinship, reproduction and parenthood. The debate, for example, over the significance of knowledge of biological paternity, and in particular its relevance to determining various degrees (or ‘stages’) of social evolu- tionary progress, became instead an index of anthro- pological solipsism, and thus a measure of disciplinary limitations. This ‘reflexive turn’ was accompanied by sig- nificant social change within the western industrialised societies, where most anthropologists concerned with kinship are based. The advent of new reproductive tech- nologies such as artificial insemination, surrogacy and in- vitro fertilisation, for example, enabled couples to achieve technologically the form of biological parenthood that had previously been presumed as natural. In turn, the process of ‘making’ parenthood reversed the naturalised model of Version 2 a0023825 Advanced article Article Contents . Introduction . Changing Concepts of Kinship Online posting date: 15 th November 2013 eLS subject area: Bioethics & Philosophy How to cite: Franklin, Sarah (November 2013) Transforming Kinship. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester. DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005222.pub2 eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 1