Kinship Past, Kinship Present: Bio‐Essentialism in the Study of Kinship

In this article, I reconsider bio‐essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider's influential critique that concluded that kinship was “a non‐subject” (1972:51). Schneider's critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view their enterprise as divorced from such bio‐essentialist studies. Beginning with an alternative narrative connecting kinship past and present and concluding by introducing a novel way of thinking about kinship, I have three constituent aims in this research article: (1) to reconceptualize the relationship between kinship past and kinship present; (2) to reevaluate Schneider's critique of bio‐essentialism and what this implies for the contemporary study of kinship; and (3) subsequently to redirect theoretical discussion of what kinship is. This concluding discussion introduces a general view, the homeostatic property cluster (HPC) view of kinds, into anthropology, providing a theoretical framework that facilitates realization of the often‐touted desideratum of the integration of biological and social features of kinship. [ bio‐essentialism, kinship studies, homeostatic property cluster kinds, Schneider, genealogy ]