Kinship in international relations: Introduction and framework Iver B. Neumann, Kristin Haugevik and Jon Harald Sande Lie Full citation: Neumann, Iver B., Kristin Haugevik & Jon Harald Sande Lie (2019). “Kinship in international relations: Introduction and framework”. Chapter 1 in Haugevik, Kristin & Iver B. Neumann (Eds) Kinship in International Relations. London: Routledge, pp. 1-20. ** AM version. Please check https://www.routledge.com/Kinship-in-International- Relations/Haugevik-Neumann/p/book/9781138580558 for the final print version. ** While kinship is among the basic organizing principles of all human life, its role in and implications for international politics and relations have been subject to surprisingly little exploration in international relations (IR) scholarship. This volume is the first book-length study, and so a bit of a first stab at thinking systematically about kinship – as an organizing principle, as a source of political and social processes and outcomes, and as a practical and analytical category that not only reflects but also shapes politics and interaction on the international political arena. Since kinship is such a ubiquitous phenomenon, it should be ‘good to think with’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966) for IR theorists. It presents itself as an alternative and fertile starting point for thinking about how the overall international system is organized, how and why states formulate and practise their foreign policies the way they do and how various actors in the international arena make sense of and contend with one another. Our collective ambition, then, is to explore how kinship – whether constituted by blood, practices or metaphors – profoundly impacts on contemporary political structures, processes and outcomes. Our point of departure is that it is insufficient to approach kinship merely as a pre-given, natural bond between individuals, one that exists independently of perception or analysis. What is needed, we suggest, is increased awareness of how blood and metaphorical kinship relations are entangled, and acquire social meaning through everyday application as well as through scholarly attempts to classify and make sense of international relations by using kinship terminology.