Pandemic Kinship


Book Description

An intimate portrait of everyday life in Botswana's time of AIDS, providing unique insights into the unexpected resilience of families in a pandemic.




Infected Kin


Book Description

AIDS has devastated communities across southern Africa. In Lesotho, where a quarter of adults are infected, the wide-ranging implications of the disease have been felt in every family, disrupting key aspects of social life. In Infected Kin, Ellen Block and Will McGrath argue that AIDS is fundamentally a kinship disease, examining the ways it transcends infected individuals and seeps into kin relations and networks of care. While much AIDS scholarship has turned away from the difficult daily realities of those affected by the disease, Infected Kin uses both ethnographic scholarship and creative nonfiction to bring to life the joys and struggles of the Basotho people at the heart of the AIDS pandemic. The result is a book accessible to wide readership, yet built upon scholarship and theoretical contributions that ensure Infected Kin will remain relevant to anyone interested in anthropology, kinship, global health, and care. Supplementary instructor resources (https://www.csbsju.edu/sociology/faculty/anthropology-teaching-resources/infected-kin-teaching-resources)




Queer Kinship


Book Description

The contributors to this volume assert the importance of queer kinship to queer and trans theory and to kinship theory. In a contemporary moment marked by the rising tides of neoliberalism, fascism, xenophobia, and homo- and cis-nationalism, they approach kinship as both a horizon and a source of violence and possibility. The contributors challenge dominant theories of kinship that ignore the devastating impacts of chattel slavery, settler colonialism, and racialized nationalism on the bonds of Black and Indigenous people and people of color. Among other topics, they examine the “blood tie” as the legal marker of kin relations, the everyday experiences and memories of trans mothers and daughters in Istanbul, the outsourcing of reproductive labor in postcolonial India, kinship as a model of governance beyond the liberal state, and the intergenerational effects of the adoption of Indigenous children as a technology of settler colonialism. Queer Kinship pushes the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of queer theory forward while opening up new paths for studying kinship. Contributors. Aqdas Aftab, Leah Claire Allen, Tyler Bradway, Juliana Demartini Brito, Judith Butler, Dilara Çalışkan, Christopher Chamberlin, Aobo Dong, Brigitte Fielder, Elizabeth Freeman, John S. Garrison, Nat Hurley, Joseph M. Pierce, Mark Rifkin, Poulomi Saha, Kath Weston




Kinship


Book Description

Recent events have pushed artists to visualize ideas of closeness in a new light. "Kinship", published on the occasion of the National Portrait Gallery’s next “Portraiture Now” exhibition, features the work of eight leading contemporary artists who explore familial relationships through photography, painting, sculpture and performance.




COVID-19 Pandemic and the Social Determinants of Health


Book Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected those population sectors that experience inequality. Specifically, marginalized racial and ethnic populations with pre-existing health conditions, those living in poverty, those possessing a low education level, hourly wage employees, etc. have experienced an excess burden of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality compared to their White counterparts in developed countries. The interaction of the social determinants of health with a novel virus has made visible the inequities that have been hidden or accustomed to in many communities globally. As we work to end the current pandemic, we must consider the post-COVID-19 pandemic era and address the social determinants of health so that populations start from a place of health, as opposed to a place of disease for the next public health challenge. Syndemic research has demonstrated the interaction among socio-cultural factors, socio-economic factors, structural factors, and individual factors (collectively referred to as the social determinants of health) and infectious disease epidemics (e.g., COVID-19, AIDS) and social epidemics (e.g., structural racism). These interactions can exacerbate and sustain adverse health outcomes for marginalized populations. How can communities improve the social determinants of health for impoverished populations? The importance of doing so would have implications not only for the health status of communities but could also improve economic conditions for these geographic areas. Addressing the social determinants of health for marginalized populations has the potential to improve health for all.




Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction


Book Description

Explores the emphasis that contemporary novels, films and television series place on the present, arguing that hope emerges from the potentiality of the here and now, rather than the future, and as intimately entangled with negotiations of structures of belonging. Taking its cue from an understanding of hope as connoting an organizing temporality, one which is often presumed to be projecting into a future, Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction challenges this understanding, arguing that hope emerges in practices of relationality in the present, disentangling hope from a necessary correlation with futurity. Through close readings of contemporary works, including The Road, The Walking Dead, Cloud Atlas, Sense8, The People in the Trees and A Little Life, Gero Bauer investigates how these texts explore structures of kinship as creative and affective practices of belonging and care that claim spaces beyond the heterosexual, reproductive nuclear family. In this context, fictional figurations of the child – often considered the bearer of the future – are of particular interest. Through these interventions into definitions of and reflections on fictional manifestations of hope and kinship, Bauer's analyses intersect with queer theory, new materialism and postcritical approaches to literature and cultural studies, moving towards counterintuitively hopeful readings of the present moment.




Reproduction, Kin and Climate Crisis


Book Description

Exploring the impact of climate change and the pandemic on people’s decisions to form families and their experience of having children, this book makes a valuable contribution to debates on contemporary planetary crises.




Kinship and Collective Action


Book Description

"Make kin, not babies!", Donna Haraway demands in an attempt to offer new and creative ways of thinking what kinship might mean in an age of ecological devastation. At the same time, the emergence of a seemingly new culture of public protest and political opinion have provoked scholars such as Judith Butler to address the contexts and dynamics of public collective action. This volume explores the dynamic relationship between structures of kinship and the (material) conditions under which collective action emerges from a literary and cultural studies perspective. How are kinship and collective action negotiated in literature, the arts, or in specific historical moments, and how does this affect the role of representation? How have conceptualizations of both concepts developed over time, and what can we infer from this for questions of kinship and collective action today?




Handbook of Social Sciences and Global Public Health


Book Description

This handbook highlights the relevance of the social sciences in global public health and their significantly crucial role in the explanation of health and illness in different population groups, the improvement of health, and the prevention of illnesses around the world. Knowledge generated via social science theories and research methodologies allows healthcare providers, policy-makers, and politicians to understand and appreciate the lived experience of their people, and to provide sensitive health and social care to them at a time of most need. Social sciences, such as medical sociology, medical anthropology, social psychology, and public health are the disciplines that examine the sociocultural causes and consequences of health and illness. It is evident that biomedicine cannot be the only answer to improving the health of people. What makes social sciences important in global public health is the critical role social, cultural, economic, and political factors play in determining or influencing the health of individuals, communities, and the larger society and nation. This handbook is comprehensive in its nature and contents, which range from a more disciplinary-based approach and theoretical and methodological frameworks to different aspects of global public health. It covers: Discussions of the social science disciplines and their essence, concepts, and theories relating to global public health Theoretical frameworks in social sciences that can be used to explain health and illness in populations Methodological inquiries that social science researchers can use to examine global public health issues and understand social issues relating to health in different population groups and regions Examples of social science research in global public health areas and concerns as well as population groups The Handbook of Social Sciences and Global Public Health is a useful reference for students, researchers, lecturers, practitioners, and policymakers in global health, public health, and social science disciplines; and libraries in universities and health and social care institutions. It offers readers a good understanding of the issues that can impact the health and well-being of people in society, which may lead to culturally sensitive health and social care for people that ultimately will lead to a more equitable society worldwide.




Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, 5-Volume Set


Book Description

We live in an astounding world of relations. We share these ties that bind with our fellow humans--and we share these relations with nonhuman beings as well. From the bacterium swimming in your belly to the trees exhaling the breath you breathe, this community of life is our kin. For many cultures around the world, being human is based upon this extended sense of kinship. Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a lively series that explores our deep interconnections with the living world. These five Kinship volumes--Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice--offer essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity, highlighting the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings. More than 70 contributors--including Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, David Abram, J. Drew Lanham, and Sharon Blackie--invite readers into cosmologies, narratives, and everyday interactions that embrace a more-than-human world as worthy of our response and responsibility. These diverse voices render a wide range of possibilities for becoming better kin. From the recognition of nonhumans as persons to the care of our kinfolk through language and action, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a guide and companion into the ways we can deepen our care and respect for the family of plants, rivers, mountains, animals, and others who live with us in this exuberant, life-generating, planetary tangle of relations.