Bringing Adoption and ARTs Together: A new turn in kinship theory

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of adoption studies in the long 20th century history of kinship theory. I summarize a pre-history of this “transfer of children” before Schneider’s 1984 A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Then I focus on recent attention to the subject, drawing on George Stocking’s framework of “multiple contextualizations” that alter the “internal dialogue” of anthropology. In the next section, I discuss the ways in which studies of adoption and technologically assisted reproduction have diverged, issuing in differing perspectives on nature, culture, choice, and inevitability. In conclusion, I suggest how bringing adoption an ARTs together not only expands an internal disciplinary dialogue on kinship but also offers a framework for more rigorous analyses of rapidly changing modes of reproduction in a global context.