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A ‘kinship anthropology of politics’? Interest, the collective self, and kinship in Argentine unions ★
Author(s) -
Lazar Sian
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.12809
Subject(s) - kinship , allegiance , politics , inheritance (genetic algorithm) , sociology , state (computer science) , fictive kinship , genealogy , political science , gender studies , anthropology , law , history , biochemistry , chemistry , algorithm , computer science , gene
In this article I argue for a kinship anthropology of politics, understood as a focus on the day‐to‐day imbrications of kinship and politics in a given political space, and the implications of that for the construction of political subjects. I describe kinship within shop‐floor‐level trade union delegations of state employees in Argentina in three different ways: first, languages of kinship mobilized to describe political allegiance and dispositions, especially inheritance; second, family connections in recruitment and activism; and, third, practices of kinning as relatedness. The combination of these three kinship modes creates the union as kin group, and enables it to act on the world politically in order to transform it.