Abstract
Kinship remains central to the understanding of society. This is not only because kinship refers to social organisations but also because it concerns social relationships (Adebanwi, 2017; Akanle, 2013, 2018). Even though it is common for many to consider kinship as an antiquated category to describe a form of traditional societies in their historical stateless forms as was the case in the formative years of anthropology, current occurrences and events tend to show that kinship relevance is trans-epochal. This is particularly so when the relationship between kinship and statehood comes to the fore. Statehood and kinship are both descriptive categories and organisational classifications of social relations that are central to understanding social realities. The resilience of kinship enables its transformative capacities to efficaciously function across societies and times. The need to understand the relationship between kinship and the state is very important, now more than ever before. This is for two major reasons. One, kinship remains relevant and dynamic to the extent that even contemporary societies globally find kinship infiltration of rational spaces like the state – happenings usually considered mainstreamed in traditional band societies and the underdeveloped world. Two, the reconnection of state institutions and kinship appears to be more intertwined today in terms of temporalities, scales, permanence and classifications, and this may remain so into the future. Thus, there is the need to continue to interrogate and reintegrate the spaces and nexus of kinship and the state in the context of anthropological and political developments with implications for the social structure and social institutions for sustainable understanding of human actions and developments.
The need to further understand the interface of kinship and the state and the associated debates as well as discussions is exacerbated. This is because societies across the world are constantly confronted with the poorly understood consequences of the nexus of state and kinship, as in the case of terrorism, insurgences, corruption, identity theft, citizenship, social inequality, technology (mis)appropriations, rights violations and underdevelopment. While it is commonly assumed that kinship is in the realm of private, traditional and subjective non-rational and the state is at the level of rational, objective, political and democratic, this distinction, in practice, is becoming pragmatically and paradigmatically less real. The distinction remains in the realm of past classifications and contemporarily in need of fresh insights and understanding. While it is commonly noted that the state is governed by law and inclusive, while kinship is governed by small family sentiments, insider–outsider dichotomies and private motives, current situations suggest the need for more nuanced study of the connections between state and kinship across societies. It is important to sufficiently examine and understand the interconnectedness of state and kinship so as to optimally appropriate the outcomes and implications for scholarship and practice.
It is to contribute to the unmet needs of a better understanding of state–kinship connections that Thelen and Alber reconnected the state and kinship in their book and collected empirical chapters to explore the bearing of state and kinship. The book is scholarly, conceptual, theoretical yet pragmatic, making it very relevant as both academic and policy toolkit. The case studies in the edited volume follow conceptual and pragmatic paths over temporal, spatial and scalar boundaries across realms for meanings and experiential acquisitions (p. 3). Authors in this nine-chapter edited volume historically trace kinship as a concept from kinship studies as descent or incest and how they have somewhat made inroads into real and concrete state spaces like politics and how state elements and political anchors have made inroads into the realm of kinship, as can be seen in the case of corruption, transparency (p. 3) and nepotism. As state and kinship are reconnected, continuous oscillations and shifts are seen in terms of the normative and the objective and negotiate as well as appropriate forms depending on content, context, times, intentionalities and involved actors in terms of objectives. The chapters in this book delineate the implications of kinship–state classifications and dichotomies along appropriations of practices as good or bad which affect processes and dimensions of inclusion and exclusion and sometimes life and death decisions (p. 4). This book is timely and bridges the gap between years of seeing kinship in the state as irrelevant, destructive and distractively normative and the period of constructing state and kinship relationships as mutually communicating and systematically deployed depending on the values and goals of the actors and institutions (Adebanwi, 2017; Akanle, 2018; Akanle and Adesina, 2017; Ekeh, 1975).
The book describes the role of kinship in the state as sometimes corruption enabling and metaphorically a political incest needing redemption (p. 40), demonstrating sometimes untoward consequences of an unholy alliance between state and kinship. Although the book is sometimes speculative, the comparison between corruption and incest is an engaging metaphor moderating guilt and responsibility in a time of ideal national polity (p. 41) in light of Weberian tradition. More often than realised, the roles and deep penetrativeness of kinship in state functionality, public goods and national security are so impactful that they can be metaphorically considered deterministic of outcomes of military weapons of war (pp. 61–86). Kinship is so important to national security, for instance, that the United States army has factored it into military strategies in ensuring effective state security through military anthropology. Kinship thus matters and continues to matter in United States military and beyond in the global military sphere (p. 62). A very demonstrative space of kinship and state interfacing is the realm of kinship and politics. While this may be very evident in developing countries, it may be less so in the developed world but it nevertheless operates in all societies. In capitalist societies, the relationship may be less obvious and the boundary may be blurred as is also the case in certain socialist and post-socialist systems (pp. 87–107). At this level of analysis, relationship between politics and kinship weave together and tear apart narratives of belongingness, entitlement and exclusion, counterclaims and equality in the face of appropriating state resources (p. 87) in the instances of positive and negative. In the spaces, counter-spaces and domain of state, politics and kinship are thus encompassing, overlapping and parallel (p. 94).
The capacity of state and kinship to reconnect is also felt at the level of state legitimacy and gender. This brings tensions and possibilities within historical and context-specific gendered politics and the state (pp. 109–129). Considering the case of the Argentine nation-state in nineteenth century global capitalism, the capacity of the state actors to appropriate kinship values for nationhood legitimation, citizenship and belonging is noteworthy. Kinship as a system or a multiplicity of systems that is to do with subjectification (p. 109) over time becomes an entangled domain for public, private and polity (p. 110). The dynamics of kinship instrumentality enable its appropriation at the macro state level to move from familial to familiar. The transformative aggregation capacity of kinship appropriativeness at the state level enables corruption, subjective political intimacy and redefinition of relatedness, as in the case of Serbia (pp. 130–154). In this instance, state politics that are assumed to be equalitarian and egalitarian ultimately appear to be ever more embedded in informal kinship bonds (p. 148). Kinship is so efficacious and deeply structural that its impact and affects are felt on reproductive technologies like Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). The complicated and subjective kinship implications of ART is what Janette Edwards in Chapter 6 refers to as The Politics of See-Through Kinship (pp. 155–177).
The way and manner states and contexts relate with, define and appropriate kinship depends on how important and central kinship is in determining access to state resources. This is particularly important where and when kinship classifications affect citizenship, identity, belongingness and access to state goods (pp. 153–240). This is why the process of kinning and de-kinning of children is institutionally sanctioned and moderated in Greece (p. 178) to effectively preserve and optimise the redistributive capacity of the state where kinship plays a prominent role and migration is part of the social-anthropological equation. The case study of Greece is also related to that of Denmark, where kinship norms remain central to state identity and this identity is institutionally moderated right from kindergarten to form a conformist child and obedient adult as they function for the state at adulthood from well socialised kinship networks from childhood (pp. 200–219). Kinship is not only relevant among stable populations but also among mobile ones like migrants. When people migrate, they renegotiate kinship and convert it to social capital in the face of survival challenges even as they interface with states at origin and destination (Akanle, 2018). This is the case, for instance, in comparative experiences of West African migrants in Greece and the Netherlands, where formation of kinship relations among migrants in the two contexts of inequality (pp. 220–240) are instrumentally and constructively definitive.
The book and this review contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the multilayered, dynamic and complex as well as complicated roles of kinship and its continuous relevance in fully knowing state functionalities in the twenty-first century and beyond. Kinship is thus relevant and continues to be so in our understanding of the state and society in general today and the future.