Abstract
These two volumes are products of a series of conference panels, workshops and discussions among an international group specializing in the field of Kinship Studies. These books’ forerunner, Kinship in Europe (2007), the first volume to emerge from this context, developed long-term perspectives on the organization of kinship relations and on their presence and importance from the Middle Ages up to and including the modern era. The second book, entitled Sibling Relations (2011), was devoted to social as well as political dynamics among siblings and to the transformations that such dynamics underwent. Both transregional and transnational families in Europe and beyond remain at the centre of the third book in this series, Transregional and Transnational Families in Europe and Beyond. David Sabean and Simon Teuscher, in their introduction, define their main objective as the suggestion of ‘a series of analytical tools, themes, and conceptual clarifications that could be useful for opening up fresh discussion’ on families and kinship groups ‘scattered across the map’ (1).
Jose Moya sets up an overall framework by sketching out an impression of mobility patterns that leads from Palaeolithic cross-communality to the nineteenth-century massification of international families. In the book’s medieval section, Gabriel Piterberg provides insights into the formation and power structures of Mamluk and Ottoman rulers’ households. Christina Antenhofer portrays the Gonzaga family, which – during the fifteenth century – rose from the status of local Italian signori to that of Europe’s high nobility. Simon Teuscher focuses on the mobility of patrician family members around 1500 in Western Europe, which contributed markedly to the wealth and prosperity of their sedentary kin. With reference to family chronicles, he emphasizes ‘the interdependence of property regimes and the transregional dispersion of families’, especially of ‘surplus sons’ (76, 88).
With regard to the early modern period, Michaela Hohkamp analyses marriage patterns within ruling families. She underlines the crucial role of married sisters, especially of princesses. Francesca Trivellato examines ‘how specific kinship structures, inheritance practices, and dowry systems influenced the business organization’ (107) of Sephardic and Armenian families in the Mediterranean region. In this respect, she stresses the importance of family ties and marriage relations. Jonathan Spangler’s contribution puts semi-sovereign families in the border region between France and the Holy Roman Empire at the centre of attention and reveals a particular and rather common strategy of placing sons, namely: ‘two sons, two armies’ (134). And Gisela Mettele analyses a specific kind of ‘spiritual kinship’: that of the Moravian community, which included members of rather varied geographic origins. They were organized into so-called choirs, ‘according to age, gender, and family status’ (159).
The section on ‘Modernity’ is opened by Christine Philliou. She depicts the Phanariotes, Orthodox Christians under Ottoman governance, as a transregional elite with widespread influence. They served the Ottoman state as governors and diplomats, and their family relations were shaped by large structures of politically instrumentalized patronage. Christopher Johnson follows the paths of several closely related families from Vannes (Brittany) on their respective ways around the nation, which led mainly to Paris and Rennes in connection with their performance of military and intellectual services. And David Sabean takes a look at the Siemens family as entrepreneurs whose reach extended to many parts of the world.
Finally, three articles focus on the twentieth century. Mary Chamberlain writes about Caribbean migration to Great Britain in the 1950s, with her family case studies showing an ‘imaginative continuity’ with the ‘old country behind’ (261). She also considers the implications of social exclusion and the importance of family narratives as a ‘badge of connectivity’ (265). Stéphanie Latte Abdallah traces the creation of a ‘family ideology’ among Palestinians in Jordanian camps, revealing connections to changes in gender roles in the context of exile. Mario Rutten and Pravin Patel present findings from fieldwork conducted during the late 1990s among Patidar communities in rural areas of central Gujara (India) and their relatives in London, with a focus on interrelations.
Overall, the individual contributions examine the various modes by which goods, property and persons circulated, the specific consequences that migration and/or dispersion had for structures of relationships, and also how aspirations, ideas and ideals travelled around. The strength of this volume lies in the interlinkage of family and kinship relations with political power, economic undertakings, property, and/or social change in the context of migration – including exile, which might lie beyond the concept of transnational families that is under consideration here. At the same time, the importance of women’s fortunes as business capital became clear. The articles provide insights on the broad range of implications and challenges of mobility, such as with regard to paternal authority or gender roles: traditional patterns could fade or, conversely, be reinforced. These perspectives enable the authors to identify changes and to grasp features of competition and conflict as well as phenomena of solidarity and re-arrangement within dispersed communities and networks. With the exception of the section on the twentieth century, the emphasis is placed on ruling and elite families as well as merchant diasporas. Between these two groups, however, there exists a clear difference: while the latter can be discussed in terms of migration, ruling families are characterized by a broad realm of social and political interaction as a matter of principle.
The fourth volume inquires about the nexus of kinship and blood as well as its use as a representation of family and kinship relations. It aims at re-examining ‘cultural assumptions … in light of a series of new issues’ (1). Considering the range of different terms, Ann-Cathrin Harders shows how kinship and blood were used in republican Rome to create aristocratic cohesion and to structure hierarchies. Kinship was defined primarily by legal and social concepts, whereas consanguinitas represented a rather flexible and broad concept. Philippe Moreau reconstructs the perception of bilineal transmission of blood in ancient Rome that corresponds to the agnatic and cognatic construction of kinship, and he elaborates upon the differing notions of consanguinitas and sanguis in familial and legal contexts. For the medieval discussion, Anita Guerreau-Jalabert argues that vernacular languages should be taken into account. Through translations from the Bible, a new conception entered the kinship field: namely flesh (caro), which ‘reflected a relationship between the spiritual and the carnal’ (71). It was the most widely used term until the end of the Middle Ages. Simon Teuscher investigates arbores consanguinitatis – diagrams with comments produced between the thirteenth and sixteenth century in the context of Catholic marriage impediments among kin. The author considers them to be ‘systematic reflection on kinship’ (83). While ‘blood’ is largely absent as metaphor in texts written around 1200, references to it ‘begin to multiply’ towards the transition to the early modern period (85). Kin-relationships were increasingly mapped as ‘representation of a coherent group’ (90) and closely linked with aristocratic conceptions of belonging. Based on poems and literary work, Teofilo Ruiz follows discourses in late medieval and early modern Castile in order to gain an understanding of the semantic field into which meanings of blood and lineage were inserted. He intertwines this discourse on nobility and kinship with the ‘almost obsessive’ (120) and hostile debates and policies regarding limpieza de sangre. Nevertheless, ‘wealth, determination, and a good lawyer’ (121) could make upward social mobility also possible for baptized descendants of Jews and Muslims. For the same period of time, Gérard Delille elaborates interconnections between concepts of nobility, virtue, heredity and social distinction. In his view, the ‘idea of race and hereditary transmission of qualities through blood is concomitant’ to the ‘patronymic revolution’ (140). David Sabean examines biblical and classical as well as theological and literary sources. He delineates the shift ‘from a language of flesh to a language of blood’ (149) and investigates the relationship between ‘the blood of heredity and alliance’ in the baroque era (152). Guillaume Aubert draws a connection between kinship and blood and concepts of race and nation in the French colonial North American and Caribbean context between 1600 and 1789. Among other things, he discusses policies of favouring and refusing intermarriages as well as the implications of sang mêlé (mixed blood) for inheritance rights and social mobility. Christopher H. Johnson’s contribution is centred on the time period between 1780 and 1880, when consanguineal marriage became rather widespread. In this context, he traces the changing language of kinship – on the one hand on the basis of letters written by members of several closely related bourgeois families from Vannes in Brittany, and on the other hand with reference to memoirs and printed correspondence. The wider context of his study is the integration of Brittany into the French nation.
Cornelia Essner describes the idea of ‘Jewish blood’ and ‘racial contamination’ in the anti-Semitic context of German National Socialism. Kath Weston takes up the issues of synthetic blood, blood transfusion and bone marrow transplantation, coming to the conclusion that kinship becomes a ‘shadow term’ and ‘bodies fall to pieces’ in this context of commodification (257, 259). Janet Carsten compares relationships between blood and kinship – connections as well as separations – in biomedical practices in Britain and Malaysia, including public discourses regarding blood and organ donation. And Sarah Franklin rethinks consanguinity and anthropological concepts of kinship in the context of new reproductive and genetic technologies, drawing the conclusion that ‘the kinship significance of blood has to teach us about understandings of genetic relations, rather than the other way around’ (303).
While the three previous volumes emphasize social interaction, the focus of this book lies on conceptions and semantic shifts, albeit once again viewed in connection with kinship practices as well as ideas of social distinction, nobility, ‘race’ and relatedness. Both volumes offer an impressive and inspiring journey through many centuries. Numerous contributions pay specific attention to consanguineous relations as well as to marriage alliances, which are seen not only as political instruments among the high nobility, but – more generally – as a crucial element through which to establish relatedness. Challenges that remain are the expansion of social coverage and the adoption of a broader perspective – both on kinship in eastern and northern Europe and on different marital property regimes beyond dotal systems in the narrow sense.