Blood and Kinship - Matter for Metaphor From Ancient Rome to the Present

The word "blood" awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.

List of contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

List of Illustrations and Tables

Introduction

David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher

Chapter 1. Agnatio, Cognatio, Consanguinitas: Kinship and Blood in Ancient Rome

Ann-Cathrin Harders

Chapter 2. The Bilineal Transmission of Blood in Ancient Rome

Philippe Moreau

Chapter 3. Flesh and Blood in Medieval Language about Kinship

Anita Guerreau-Jalabert

Chapter 4. Flesh and Blood in the Treatises on the Arbor Consanguinitatis (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries)

Simon Teuscher

Chapter 5. Discourses of Blood and Kinship in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile

Teofilo F. Ruiz

Chapter 6. The Shed Blood of Christ. From Blood as Metaphor to Blood as Bearer of Identity

Gérard Delille

Chapter 7. Descent and Alliance: Cultural Meanings of Blood in the Baroque

David Warren Sabean

Chapter 8. Kinship, Blood, and the Emergence of the Racial Nation in the French Atlantic World, 1600–1789

Guillaume Aubert

Chapter 9. Class Dimensions of Blood, Kinship, and Race in Brittany, 1780–1880

Christopher H. Johnson

Chapter 10. Nazi Anti-Semitism and the Question of “Jewish Blood”

Cornelia Essner

Chapter 11. Biosecuritization: The Quest for Synthetic Blood and the Taming of Kinship

Kath Weston

Chapter 12. Articulating Blood and Kinship in Biomedical Contexts in Contemporary Britain and Malaysia

Janet Carsten

Chapter 13. From Blood to Genes? Rethinking Consanguinity in the Context of Geneticization

Sarah Franklin

Notes on Contributors

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Christopher H. Johnson is Professor Emeritus of History at Wayne State University. A National Book Award nominee and Guggenheim Fellow, his publications include The Life and Death of Industrial Languedoc, 1700-1920: The Politics of De-Industrialization (1995).

Bernhard Jussen has been Professor of Medieval History at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2008. In 2007 he was awarded the Leibniz prize of the German Research Foundation. His publications include Spiritual Kinship as Social Practice (2000) and Atlas des Historischen Bildwissens (2009).

David Warren Sabean is Henry J. Bruman Professor of German History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His publications include Kinship in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (1998).

Simon Teuscher is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zurich. His publications include Lord's Rights and Peasant Stories. Writing and the Formation of Tradition in the Later Middle Ages (2012).

Summary

The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.

Additional text

"Blood & Kinship is an important contribution to the anthropology of kinship, by providing significant analyses of how kinship in Europe has been understood distinctly through time, incorporating blood as metaphor in different ways." � Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"The collection of essays is a welcome contribution not only to the so-called New Kinship Studies, but also to the history of the substance of blood." � H-Soz-Kult

"This is a book of astonishing quality, comprising a wealth of outstanding studies that underline the various shifts and mutations that took place mostly in the late medieval and late modern periods. It is true that issues of gender could play a more prevalent role and that discourses and semantic issues are largely privileged over visual matters, cultural practices, and material culture, but rather than a critique this is an invitation for further investigations on those aspects. In any case, those limitations certainly do not make this book less inspiring and pioneering regarding the history of the blood metaphor and its shifting meanings." � Contributions to the History of Concepts

"Has family and kinship always met the same thing throughout our history? [This volume] is a collection of scholarly essays on history and anthropology looking at the foundations of western culture and history. Exploring the concept of blood and daring to take a very different perspective on the ideas of blood, many academic and scholarly minds come together to bring many fresh perspectives on these cultures. Tracing thousands of years of history and culture and offering an interesting twist of ideas throughout, Blood & Kinshipis an excellent and highly recommended addition to history and anthropology community and college library collections." � Library Bookwatch

"This is an excellent book, a sophisticated collection of scholarship that raises questions important not only to historians but also to anthropologists and other social scientists. I loved reading it..." � Jared Poley, Georgia State University

Product details

• Authors: Christophe H. Jussen Johnson, Christopher H. (EDT) Johnson, Christopher H. Jussen Johnson
• Assisted by: Christopher H Johnson (Editor), Christopher H. Johnson (Editor), Bernhard Jussen (Editor), David Warren Sabean (Editor), Simon Teuscher (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.09.2015
• EAN: 9781782381778
• ISBN: 978-1-78238-177-8
• No. of pages: 368
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); History (General), Anthropology (General)