ANTH/WMGS 326 Issues in the Anthropology of Kinship
Winter 2018
OTHER WAYS OF FORMING KINSHIP
Apr.
2: Required reading: Lewis, Elizabeth (2016) “A death in
the Family: Disability activism, mourning, and diagnostic kinship.”
Disability Studies Quarterly 36(4):
http://dsq-sds.org.libproxy.stfx.ca/article/view/5344/4472
- what are “kinship imaginaries” (Rapp and Ginsburg 2011)?
- how do they posit a “normal” ideal family? How do various
circumstances pressure families to develop different kinship
imaginaries?
- what is “diagnostic kinship”?
- why do Guatemalan families with children diagnosed with deafblindness develop a sense of kinship with other similar families?
- how important is kinship to these Guatemalans?
- how do their kin respond when a child is diagnosed with a syndrome such as deafblindness?
- how does the Guatemalan experience compare with the findings from her later research in the U.S.?
- how might various pressures, and conflicts affect how kinship is performed under these circumstances?
- how is the cause of disability imagined?
- how does diagnostic kinship spread globally?
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