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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