Geographies of Relatedness

Author(s): Catherine Nash

Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Dec.,
2005), pp. 449-462
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Geographies of relatedness

Catherine Nash

This paper explores the analytic purchase and substantive concerns of what I am

calling geographies of relatedness. Drawing on recent work in feminist anthropology

which has reconsidered kinship as classificatory system and practice, and highlighting

the attentiveness to sites, scales and contexts within this work, I suggest ways in which

a focus on relatedness may shape approaches to established and emerging matters of

concern in human geography. I consider first the foundational status but flexible

meaning of 'blood' in kinship thinking, and the ways the flexibility of kinship can be

curtailed and its foundational status reinstated in relation to the nation and the state.

Second, I consider the geographies of relatedness that are constituted through and

practised in the process of establishing degrees of biological connection, delimiting

difference, mapping human 'diversity' and defining personal, collective and human

origins at different scales and with different effects. A focus on geographies of

relatedness, I argue, highlights the ways blood ties or similarly naturalized

connections move between and connect categories of relatedness with different sizes,

extents and configurations across space, as well as different temporalities. It suggests

an alertness to new global mappings of human relatedness and difference and

combines a critical attention to ideas of the 'nature' of human reproduction as

foundational, original or primal in the natural order of the social, to ideas of 'place of

origin': personal, national, ethnic, racialized, universal in their familiar and emergent

forms.

key words diversity kinship nature origins 'race' relatedness reproduction

Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, London El 4NS

email: c.nash@qmul.ac.uk

revised manuscript received 9 August 2005

In these new technologies, kinship and affinal relations

measured the countdown to the ceremony's first

proliferate, but this proliferation seems only to elaborate

scene of a giant stylized human head, which breaks

and more thoroughly disperse the genealogical grid.

apart to reveal a statue of a classical male torso.

Indeed, we can hardly call kinship and affiliation a theory

Faces representing human diversity are projected

anymore, so thoroughly has it reterritorialized modern

onto the broken pieces. Next, Eros, the Greek god

social life. (Povinelli 2002, 227)

of love, flies above a young woman and man who

play - she puts up a chase, he chases - at the water's

edge of a pool in the centre of the stadium. At the

Opening

finale of the ceremony, following an extended

The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic

parade of Greek history and culture from past to

Games that took place in Athens on 13 August 2004

present, the woman returns to the water's edge.

was a global event that staged a specific national

This time she is heavily pregnant and her belly

history and a universal human story. Watched on

glows strongly as the reflection of the stars in the

television by an estimated 4.5 billion people world

lake are transformed into a towering double helix

wide, its central pageant of Greece's culture and

of DNA that rises and rotates above her.

history was framed by figures of human 'life itself',

A globalized media event of this kind is an easy

its ideal form, variety, sexual reproduction and

subject for decoding. Its semiotic legibility is a

basic substance. At the start an amplified heartbeat

measure of the success of the production team's

Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 30 449-462 2005

ISSN 0020-2754 ? Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2005

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Catherine Nash

450

effort to produce a drama whose meanings could

ing in the 'natural facts' of human sexual difference

transcend any ambiguities of cross-cultural com-

and reproduction, to explore the analytical purchase

munication. Its message was meant to be obvious.

and the substantive concerns of what I am calling

Yet it is also striking in the degree to which it

geographies of relatedness. The sorts of assumptions

stages both long-established cultural tropes and a

apparent in the ways the 'facts of life' were staged

contemporary vocabulary of universal humanity of

in the 2004 Olympic opening ceremony have been

particular and more recent provenance. Familiar

subject to incisive analysis in feminist science, cultural

oppositions between matter and time, nature and

and new kinship studies. As Sarah Franklin, Jackie

culture, universality and difference structured the

Stacey and Celia Lury (2000) have argued, modern

ceremony. The 'universal' cycle of sex, conception

Western understandings of human sexual repro-

and birth frames a moving tableau of Greek history

duction as the fundamental, immutable fact of

and cultural styles; procreative human nature is

human life and the basis of 'life itself' - that which

the grounding for the linear trajectory of culture

connects all living things and is the underlying and

and history. Here sex and birth - the 'facts of life' -

unifying connectedness of all things in a purposeful

and the prospective family trio of man, woman and

evolutionary project - have powerfully naturalized

child (that results from a conception narrative sug-

ideas of sexual difference as the natural foundation

gested discretely but unmistakably via images of

of the social. This work builds on the sustained

sexual play and pregnancy) are figured as the

feminist critique of biological essentialism by explor-

natural foundation of the social and that which

ing the continued work of nature not as immutable

transcends cultural difference. The image of future

category but rather in terms of the 'complex and

motherhood and birth and the double helix draw

often paradoxical ways in which ways in which

on each other's status as the wonder stuff of life.

The double helix stands for the future child's

'unique genetic blueprint'. It also stands for the

evolutionary history of sexual reproduction and

nature and culture have become increasingly isomphoric

while remaining distinct' (Franklin et al. 2000, 8, italics

in original; see also Franklin 2003; Strathern 1995a).

Just as nature is 'commodified, technologies, re-

natural selection that has produced humanity's

animated and rebranded in ways that expose its

genome (Franklin 2000, 189). But if the primal

artifice' (Franklin et al. 2000, 10), the authority of

scene of sex and birth and the spiral of DNA served

nature and naturalized idioms is productively

to stress a shared humanity in the human family

enhanced and extended. Nature can stand for what

beyond difference, the event also staged the organ-

is fixed and what is flexible. The juxtaposition of

ization of human difference in its parade of nations.

the pregnant woman and double helix both suggest

Universal humanity is naturalized through image of

the safely immutable and, as nature-as-biology-as-

the family as the social organization of the 'natural

genetics is instrumentalized in bioscience (Franklin

facts' of sex and reproduction (Franklin and McKinnon

2000), as that which is open to manipulation.

But if the relationships organized around repro-

2001), and the geo-political organization of nation-

states is naturalized through the image of national

duction and the 'blood ties' it produces seem to

families of shared descent within the global human

stand for stability and cohesion in opposition to the

family. The luminous image of future life in the

promises and threats of new developments in the

woman's womb and the genetic 'code of life' borrow

biosciences, the other side of its familiar comfort is

from each other's emblematic status as images of

the equally familiar effect of figuring social relation-

perpetuity, continuity and 'panhumanity' (Franklin

ships in terms of biological connection. The final

et al. 2000, 26). Yet the double helix also suggests

paragraph of the last chapter of Donna Haraway's

new biotechnological practices, knowledges and

book Modest Witness (1997) on feminism and techno-

forms of 'life' that unsettle the familial genealogies

science, contains a striking passage that is an antidote

evoked in the event, supplement and supplant

to the Olympic opening ceremony's primal scene.

sexual reproduction and create new understandings

She writes:

of embodiment, subjectivity, sociality, the human and

I am sick to death of bonding through kinship and 'the

human genetic diversity and relatedness (Franklin

family', and I long for models of solidarity and human

2000; Rose 2001; Marks 2002).

unity and difference rooted in friendship, work, partially

This paper foregrounds feminist engagements

shared purposes, intractable collective pain, inescapable

with the naturalization of social categories, identities

mortality, and persistent hope. It is time to theorize an

and relationships via kinship's conventional ground-

'unfamiliar' unconscious, a different primal scene, where

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451

Geographies of relatedness

everything does not stem from the dramas of identity

tracing the technological and conceptual connections

and reproduction. Ties through blood - including blood

between population genetics and popular genealogy,

recast in the coin of genes and information - have been

I present new global maps of human genetic diver-

bloody enough already. I believe that there will be no

sity, personal family trees, the intimate and extended

racial or sexual peace, no liveable nature, until we learn

forms of relatedness they reflect and generate and

to produce humanity through something more and less

their political effects as significant subjects for

than kinship. (Haraway 1997, 265)

geography.

Haraway's argument that 'ties through blood' and

blood recast as genes and information 'have been

Natural families

bloody enough already' comes at the end of a

chapter in which she explores three paradigms

Staging a contrast between the apparently universal,

of bioscientific thinking about human unity and

cyclical and basic 'facts of life' - sex and birth - and

difference: 'race', 'population' and 'genome'. The

the linearity and particularity of history and culture,

shift from discourses of 'race' to 'population' to

'genome' since the mid-twentieth-century retreat

the 2004 Olympic ceremony dramatized a contrast

between nature and culture that is fundamental to

from scientific racism, she argues, has resulted in

Euro-American ways of thinking of kinship. This

the reconfiguration, but not disappearance, of the

contrast was central to mid-twentieth-century

discursive entanglements of family, kinship, gender,

anthropological kinship studies which assumed

nation and 'race'.

that specifically Eurocentric or Anglo-American

In one sense this cautions against inadvertently

reinforcing the primacy of blood or naturalizing

conceptual distinctions between the givens of

nature and the meanings of culture hold for all

kinship as the fundamental basis of human rela-

people in all places. As Sarah Franklin and Susan

tionships in the process of considering kinship as

McKinnon argue, understanding 'kinship as the

practice and as an analytical focus. But it also pro-

after-effect of the natural fact of sexual reproduc-

vides a provocation to do so. Haraway's strategic

tion' has both underpinned anthropology's tradition

bad-temper follows her incisive engagement with

of kinship studies, and, by positing a domain of

kinship as an analytical category and idiom that

natural facts, naturalized sexual difference and the

has been central to recent feminist science studies

family trio of man, woman and child as 'the pre-

and to a significant strand of feminist social and

discursive, universal and timeless basis of kinship,

cultural anthropology. In this research the term

'cultures of relatedness' signals an innovative and

gender or reproduction' (2001, 2). But if kinship

was understood through the assumed universality

critical engagement with kinship as an anthropo-

of the social meaning of natural facts of life in

logical analytical category, social practice and clas-

mid-twentieth-century anthropology, it was also

sificatory technology (Carsten 2000 2004; Franklin

a means of differentiating between societies as

and McKinnon 2001). Drawing on this work I want

the 'putative uncertainties' or inaccuracies in the

to consider the analytical purchase of a focus on

understandings of reproduction held by the people

geographies of relatedness, by highlighting the

studied by anthropologists were contrasted to

spatialities of kinship within new kinship studies,

Western scientific certainties about the facts of life

and by exploring what these studies might suggest

about ways of engaging with established and

(Franklin 1998, 106). It served to differentiate also

because the function of kinship in any society was

emerging matters of concern in human geography.

viewed as a marker of development. Kinship rules,

I first feature feminist anthropological work on the

it was argued, provided the basis of social order in

foundational status but flexible practice of kinship

so called 'primitive societies' that is superseded by

in which the meanings of 'nature' or 'blood' are

complex state institutions in 'advanced societies',

performatively produced. At the same time, as I will

where kinship is relegated to its insignificant and

argue, the mutual naturalizations of kinship across

feminized place in the sphere of the private and

the scales of family, nation and humanity, shapes

domestic (Carsten 2004).

what can legitimately cross the boundaries of the

In new kinship studies this critique of the Eurocen-

nation-state and what is recognized as legitimate

trism of anthropological assumptions about kinship

by the state. Second, I consider the geographies of

and the use of the apparent 'facts of nature' to

relatedness that are being made and remade via

naturalize hierarchical difference through 'natural'

ideas of human, collective and personal origins. By

categories of 'sex', 'gender', 'race', 'reproduction'

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452

Catherine Nash

So a person who could be claimed in terms of blood

and the 'family' is coupled with a reinvigorated

ties may be disowned through lack of social interest,

focus on the ways kinship continues to operate as a

which might or might not be a matter of consequence.

productive classificatory discourse and practice

Conversely, someone who was forgotten may be claimed

(Franklin and McKinnon 2001). For Janet Carsten

back through resurrected biological links. (Edwards and

the term 'cultures of relatedness' conveys 'a move

Strathern 2000, 160)

away from a pregiven analytical opposition between

the biological and the social' (Carsten 2000, 4). As

The doing of kinship therefore involves ideas of

Franklin and McKinnon argue, recent work recon-

incontrovertible bonds based on blood and routine

figuring kinship studies demonstrates that

practices of choosing kin in ways which make blood

a fundamental but flexible criteria for relatedness.

cultural understandings of kinship are shaped by - and

Answers to questions of who is a relative, and what

in turn, contribute to the shaping of - the political

sort, thus deploy a flexible sense of the primary

dynamics of national and transnational identities, the

significance and sometimes insignificance of blood.

economic movements of labour and capital, the

Kinship remains a potent and powerful discursive

cosmologies of religion, the cultural hierarchies of race,

technology and practice because it both evokes the

gender, and species taxonomies, and the epistemologies

fixity and certainty of the natural and makes use of

of science, medicine and technology. (2001, 9)

the flexibility of the social. The doing of kinship

New kinship studies provide an analytical focus

deploys the idiom of natural relatedness - through

and conceptual language for exploring models of

blood or genes - and is a social process through

reckoning relatedness, mechanisms of classification

which the relations that matter are selectively per-

that mark degrees of connection, and practices

formed. Thus in the doing of kinship, the categories

through which different sorts of relatedness are

of 'nature' and 'culture' are both mobilized and

enacted. This work has brought the anthropological

disrupted.

focus on kinship back 'home', and has pointed to

the unstable status of the 'facts of nature' and to

Yet, the symbolic power of biological or blood

relatedness is not always easily elided. Instead its

flexible reconfigurations of the substances that

significance can be reworked both by challenging

matter in the doing and making of kinship.

its status as foundational and by reconfiguring what

Though kinship has been understood as the social

substances and processes mean most in establish-

meaning of the 'natural' facts of reproduction, or

ing kinship relations. Those working to make kin

in David Schneider's (1984) terms, as code and sub-

in families formed through transnational adoption

stance, in her work on English kinship, Jeanette

do so in the absence of the conventional criteria of

Edwards (2000) traces the ways in which distinctions

biological relatedness and in the presence of the

between the biological and the social are mobilized

potent discourse of the nation as ordered family

and notions of nature or nurture, biology and the

and often racialized community of shared descent

social are interrelated in delineations of kinship.

and common ancestry (McClintock 1993). In her

Borrowing from the idioms used by the residents

work on Norwegian transnational adoption Signe

of the town in the north of England where she did

Howell (2001 2003) has explored the ways adopted

her ethnography, she uses the term 'Born and Bred'

children are incorporated into families through

kinship to name the ways in which ideas of what is

practices that both evoke and challenge biological

given, fixed and inherited and what is forged,

relatedness and origins. These practices include

mutable and chosen, nature and nurture, birth and

describing the adoption process in terms of preg-

upbringing are routinely and flexibly used 'in a

nancy and delivery and describing the meeting of

constant process of including and excluding persons

the parents and adopted child as birth. Howell

from social categories which are, in turn, repro-

writes of the arrival of a child at Oslo International

duced in the process' (Edwards 2000, 28). Neither

Airport being recounted by the adoptive mother as

birth nor upbringing alone guarantee these rela-

the child's birth, as well as the rituals of incorpora-

tionships. As she and Marilyn Strathern point out,

tion - of 'making place, making kin' (Howell 2001,

despite the positive associations of making connec-

212) - that constitute the child's social birth. These

tions in what they call English society, and Western

include visiting and photographing the child in

society more generally, the ever-extending family

places associated with the adoptive parent's fami-

tree is truncated by the ways in which relatives drop

lies and their sense of descent and belonging. A new

out of the 'family' or are 'dropped'. As they put it:

place of origin is performed through these practices.

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453

Geographies of relatedness

At the same time adoptive parents are advised to

and in particular the notion of the nation as family.

encourage their children to appreciate their non-

The flexibility of kinship is also curtailed for those

Norwegian origins and in doing so through cultural

subject to the state's power to limit what counts as

events and organizations often develop networks

legitimate. While proof of ancestry and descent dis-

of relatedness with couples who have adopted

criminates in the granting of citizenship, 'proper'

children from the same place. Adoptive parents thus

kinship also underpins ideas of the natural order of

self-consciously recreate the ideals of biological

social life within the state. Judith Butler (2002) has

relatedness in its absence and are aware of the dan-

recently addressed the problematic implications of

gers of ignoring its 'reality' in the child's 'original

campaigns for state recognition of same-sex rela-

home'. In both asserting the social legitimacy of

tionships and the extension of significant rights to

the family and the strength of their 'as-if-blood' rela-

gay partners. In making their arguments about

tionships and by working to maintain the child's

equality of rights for same-sex couples - rights to

sense of connection to the place of their birth and

be recognized as next-of-kin in cases of illness and

'original' culture, notions of home and kinship are

thus both debiologized and rebiologized (Howell

2001). For adoptees easily read as 'from somewhere

else', questions of belonging and origins and the

death, for example - those campaigning for these

legal rights must cede the power to legitimate

'proper' kinship to the state. At the same time, she

argues, notions of miscegenation and the Oedipal

evidently 'constructed nature' of their family are

triangle of child, mother and father are resurfacing

inescapable (Yngvesson and Mahoney 2000). Here

in arguments against granting state recognition to

the flexibility of kinship is curtailed by racialized

same-sex relationships. Her critique is specifically

versions of national indigeneity that shape the ways

directed toward those that argue that the hetero-

that questions of 'where do you come from?' are

sexual family secures the proper function of the

asked.

primal scene that establishes gender, sex and social

Work on other forms of assisted family formation

is central to the renewed interest in kinship. The

development of new reproductive technologies has

order. 'Proper' kinship is thus the foundation of

the social (see also Butler 2000). Kinship can clearly

be deployed to name what is flexible, fundamental

been the subject of some of the most significant work

and foundational across a range of scales and sites

on the ways in which the categories of nature and

with very different effects.

the natural are troubled by bio-technologies that

Even as new reproductive technologies and other

threaten to disrupt kinship's natural facts of mater-

developments in the biosciences lead to the complex

nity, paternity, sex, gestation and birth and are

reconfiguring of ideas of nature and culture, ideas

reproduced via new technology (Edwards et al. 1999;

of kinship continue to have a powerful naturalizing

Franklin 1997; Franklin and Ragone 1998; Strathern

force. Some of this power derives from the ways

1992). Ethnographies of the practices of kin making

where reproduction is assisted by donation of ova

different concepts of kinship, and more particularly,

family, naturalize each other across different scales.

or sperm or surrogacy of all kinds has pointed to

As the figuring of family-in-formation via imminent

the complexities of what counts as biological or

birth and the model of 'family of man' in the Olympic

conventionally 'real' relatedness. Strategies of

opening ceremony suggested, the benign associ-

foregrounding or under playing the significance of

ations of affinity and affection at the intimate, familial

different substances and sites are deployed in order

and global scales borrow from each other's appar-

to make the couple intending to be parents come

ently natural status and positive effects. Both the

out as the socially recognized 'natural' parents. In

intimate family and 'family of man' thus feed the

different cases, genes or gestation are said to matter

metaphor of nation as family and together mask

more to the making of claims of ancestry and descent

the corollaries of harmony and unanimity - hierarchy

(Thompson 2001). Though this is nature assisted it

and differentiation - and naturalize biologically

does not point to the implosion of the categories of

ordered relations of connection and distinction,

nature or culture but to their flexible reconfigura-

closeness and difference, affinity and antipathy.

tion, and to renegotiations of the boundaries and

This semantic borrowing between family, nation

explanatory relations between concepts of culture

as family, and 'family of man' and its use in natu-

and nature (Franklin 2003).

ralizing gendered subject positions and hierarchies

This flexibility can be constrained when kinship

making intersects with other versions of the family,

of racial difference under the banner of collective

kinship is well known (McClintock 1993). The

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454

Catherine Nash

flexibility of kinship as performed exists in varying

remade in response to diverse forms of migration,

degrees of tension with cultural discourses of the

new technologies and new forms of knowledge.

national family as community of shared descent.

New models of 'good practice' and legislative change

Ideas of kinship and relatedness thus shape what

index the place of origins in public culture. The

relations are recognized as legitimate or proper

emphasis in transnational adoption of fostering the

within the state and what can legitimately cross the

adopted child's sense of connection to their place

borders of the state. But ideas of the natural family

of birth, and the right in Britain since 2004 of those

and the nation as family are also flexibility utilized

born as a result of gamete donation to information

in this regulation of movement. The entry of trans-

about the donor parents once they are 18, for

national adoptees is allowed or the transnational

example, represent shifts in the social and cultural

transport of gametes in assisted reproduction is

salience of ideas of ancestry and origins. The logics

facilitated in some contexts because of the social

of both suggest that ideas of cultural roots and

recognition of the 'natural' desire to have a family

genetic origins are interwoven. The explanatory

for those unable to do so otherwise. In other cases

power of genetics in public culture intersects in

immigration is curtailed or criticized because it

complex ways with the place of culture in models

upsets the 'natural' ethnic homogeneity of the

of subjectivity and the social. New genealogical

national family. Thus policing, negotiation and

identities in which ancestry and origins are afforded

permeability of national borders are inflected by

increased significance, for example, reflect the effects

powerful but plural versions of 'natural families'.

of genetic discourses on interests in ancestry and

Reviewing recent work on kinship through a geo-

inheritance, and a multi-culturalist discourse in

graphical lens thus suggests themes for a geography

which cultural diversity and ethnic particularity

of relatedness that both foreground long established

are positively valued and viewed as integral to sub-

concerns, including nature and naturalization,

jectivity (Nash 2002). Technological developments

migration, demography, the nation-state and other

that enable new forms of relatedness are thus

geographies of identity, and brings them into

entangled in familiar and new understandings

clearer articulation with emerging perspectives and

of the relationships between selfhood, related-

substantive areas of interest, such as posthumanism

ness, ancestry and origins. Here I want to point to

(Castree and Nash 2004) or the political and cultural

the technological and conceptual connections

economies of bioscience (Parry 2004). In the next

between population genetics and popular genea-

section of this paper I follow through this focus on

logy, consider the relationships between ideas of

scale and boundaries to consider the geographies

human 'diversity', 'population' and 'origins', and

of relatedness shaped by recent developments in

highlight their socially and spatially differentiated

the science and cultures of origins.

effects.

The growth of popular genealogy in Europe and

in former European settler colonies is a complex

Mapping origins

cultural phenomenon that reflects the ways in

In Judith Butler's exploration of questions of kinship,

which ideas of ethnicity, nation, 'race', ancestry

sex, the state and governance, she points to the ways

and origins are being refigured in different postco-

in which a particular notion of heterosexual kinship

lonial contexts. Those travelling from former settler

as the structural origin of culture is reappearing in

colonies to Europe in search of ancestral knowledge

French debates about gay and lesbian marriage.

and places of origin come from contexts in which

These notes on a geography of relatedness can be

ideas of indigenous ancestral relationship between

extended by considering origins in both this founda-

land and local descent group offers a compelling

tional sense and in relation to that saturated symbol

model of a bond between land and people unbroken

- original home or place of origin. A focus on the

by migration and modernity. Nevertheless, as I have

geographies of relatedness shaped though senses

discussed in more depth elsewhere, for many the

of personal and collective geographical origins thus

process of researching a family tree and travelling

resurrects longstanding interests in the geographical

to places of ancestral 'homes' can complicate under-

imaginaries of 'race', nation and ethnicity, and the

standings of ancestry and origins (Nash 2002).

postcolonial politics of the categories of 'native'; and

Exploring the self genealogically can be one dimen-

'settler', and suggests new questions about the ways

in which ideas of origins are being mobilized and

sion of liberal individual self-fashioning and a

reflexive engagement with the meaning of ethnic

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455

Geographies of relatedness

identification. Yet, the question of 'where are you

If the process of establishing local genealogies to

from?' is frequently asked more insistently of those

secure indigenous land claims reduce Aboriginal

who are viewed as fundamentally foreign to the

relationalities to formal genealogical systems, others

nation. How this question gets asked signals the

further elide the complexities of collective identity

effects of racialized models of national belonging.

and understandings of kinship and origins by

Being able to account for oneself in terms of ancestry

attempting to describe these groups in terms of their

and roots, a version of the self that seems increas-

shared genetics. The Human Genome Diversity

ingly normative and normalized, can be a matter of

Project notoriously collapsed because of its failure

cultural capital for some and a coercive requirement

to address the ethical problems of consent, property

for others. Ideas of origins and indigeneity have

rights and the implications of its search for 'relict

differentiated effects.

populations' imagined as isolated and genetically

While the recognition of indigenous rights is a

distinctive in contrast to results of genetic 'admix-

feature of late twentieth-century political change,

ture' in other places (Hayden 1998). Yet diverse

respect for ancestral continuity between people

population genetic projects continue to pursue its

and place can also have reductive effects. Contem-

aims, by working to reconstruct the prehistoric

porary journeys in search of European roots have

migration pathways of human groups and explore

been historically preceded by the earlier travel of

the degrees of genetic relatedness between contem-

European genealogical traditions to the colony.

porary 'populations'. Many projects attempt to

Elizabeth Povinelli (2002) has explored this export

prove or disprove stories of origin, test historical

and extension in terms of modern subjectivity,

claims of relatedness, and determine the degree of

sexual legitimacy and postcolonial politics of recog-

genetic distance between (often antipathetic) national

nition. She uses the term genealogy grid to stand for

or ethnic groups (Simpson 2000; Marks 2001).

a European figuring of familial descent and related-

Population genetics may be rejected and resisted

ness that has its origins in royal and aristocratic

by some indigenous groups or used strategically

rankings, but was democratized with the develop-

by others as a resource through which collective

ment of the notion of the modern subject freed from

identity, origins stories and rights to land or other

nature, and 'freed from grip of familial kinship,

forms of collective cultural property can be affirmed.

descent and rank' (2002, 217). This contrasts with

The use of molecular genetics to map human origins

what she calls the intimacy grid - an idea of family,

and human 'diversity' have profound, but complex,

subjectivity and humanity itself, constituted through

implications for the ways in which collective iden-

intimate love and detached from the instrumentality

tities and difference are understood and enacted.

or utility of social institutions. While these girds of

Though population geneticists frequently argue

intimacy and genealogy were dispersed with Euro-

that their work disproves the existence of genetically

pean settlement, the 'intimacy grid is unevenly dis-

discrete races and so is on the side of liberal anti-

tributed across global populations' (Povinelli 2002,

racism, their work has often ambiguous implications

232). Though, she argues, Australian courts recog-

for the politics of race and ethnicity. Though it is a

nize the validity of local models of descent in

fundamental tenet of human population genetics that

deciding upon indigenous land claims, the genea-

human genetic diversity is both relatively insignifi-

logical grids they depend on do not document the

cant and a matter of gradients, there is at the same

intimacy, love, desire and affect that are taken to be

time a persistent desire to chart this diversity not

markers of humanity. Thus she writes:

through complex choropleth shading but through

the old colour-coded categories of race. In mapping

It might not be the intent of legislators with the liberal

human origins and difference, population genetiAustralian state, but in the context of indigenous

Australia - where life chances are closely tied to state

aid - indigenous persons must in fact de-humanize

cists frequently reinstate older racial categories in

delimiting groups within their gradients of genetic

themselves into pure genealogy to gain the recognition

difference, but often in terms that obliquely code

of the courts. (Povinelli 2002, 234)

for 'race' (Sankar and Cho 2002). The validity of

While the intimacy grid is ambiguously extended to

new family forms like gay parenting in some con-

different methods of establishing human groups or

'populations' on the basis of genetic difference is

texts, it is evacuated from genealogical descriptions

disputed within the field (Goldstein 2004). Yet in

of social organization in others (see also Jacobs and

the public dissemination of their work on human

Nash 2003).

diversity its technical contingencies and contested

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456

Catherine Nash

status rarely surface. Sometimes inadvertently, some-

descent. A recent genetic project in Ireland, for

times blithely, sometimes assertively, geneticists thus

example, divided the sample according to whether

rehabilitate the language of race.

Much of the current research in the field of

the donors have Gaelic names and were presumably

descended from ancient Gaelic stock and those with

population genetics is funded by pharmaceutical

English, Scottish or Norse names (Nash forthcoming).

companies keen to develop 'racially segmented' or

New genetic maps of global human diversity trace

'ethnic' drugs on the basis of genetic differences

between what are variously described human

'populations' or groups of 'different geographical

the routes and temporalities of human origins and

prehistoric movement, but they are based on a

particular historical geography of human migration

origin' (Marks 2004). This prioritizing of the small

that stopped in 1500. Modern migration muddies

degree of genetic difference amongst humans both

the clarity of this imaginative geography of peoples

diverts attention away from the social causes of

in their places. Yet, the combination of new (albeit

global and national disparities in health, including

partial) maps of human genetic variation and modern

the relationships between racism, deprivation and

migration also provides commercial opportunities

illness (Braun 2002) and legitimizes a new language

for applied population genetics. Those who are no

of racial difference (Duster 2005). The claims that

longer where their ancestors were before moder-

'we all came from Africa' in terms of genetic descent

nity can be offered help in tracing genetic ancestry

and prehistoric migration with its supposed impli-

cations of fundamental unity seems to neutralize

the simultaneous effect of rebiologizing 'race'

and genetic origins.

Using the methods (genetic markers, databases,

laboratory procedures) developed within population

(Skinner forthcoming) for the sake of the develop-

genetics, several commercial companies have been

ment of 'ethnically targeted' pharmaceuticals. As

established in the United States and Britain which

Donna Haraway's postscript suggested, shared

market the use of genetic tests for family history and

human descent is unreliable as a basis for global

popular genealogy. Those who are deemed to be

solidarity, since descent is also always a means to

'non-indigenous' in the United States or in Britain

differentiate.

are being offered genetic help in locating places of

This geographical imagination of human differ-

origin. Along with genetic paternity tests, the com-

ence is also one in which human mobility features

panies market new tests to verify clan relatedness

in particular ways. Human diversity is based on the

in the case of those in the States identifying strongly

environmental adaptations of different groups after

with 'Celtic' roots, or offer to locate where precisely

migration from Africa, but this is accompanied by

in Africa the ancestors of Black British and African

an imagination of subsequent relative isolation that

American people came from. Some companies offer

is undone by modern migration. The search for a

to estimate the percentage of different racial groups

map of human diversity uncomplicated by modern

within an individual's genetic inheritance. Many

migration continues, but the search for 'relict

offer to use a series of variable genetic markers and

populations' that characterized the Human Genome

current maps of their distribution to compare the

Diversity Project is largely replaced by sampling

markers of the individual being tested with those

strategies. In gathering human genetic material,

of contemporary people in different parts of Africa

screening the sample to ensure that the sample

collected in genetic surveys, and find the nearest

reflects the 'original' or indigenous population is

match, and in this way to suggest a place of origin for

routine. Often this entails organizing the sampling

those descended from slaves. The degree to which

according to the best estimate that the individual

the results of these tests are dependent on the

whose genetic material is being gathered is still in

vagaries of population sampling - where samples

the place their ancestors were in the moment before

are gathered, from whom and sample size - and

early modernity and the subsequent patterns of

statistics is masked in the selling of genetic genea-

human movement. In projects to chart human

logical testing services. Furthermore, since the tests

origins and prehistoric migration pathways, those

reductively narrow down ancestry to direct maternal

of old or very recent immigrant origin are thus

or paternal descent (via the direct inheritance of

unsuitable donors of genetic material. Though this

the y-chromosome between men and the direct

is a function of the focus on prehistoric genetics, it

inheritance of mtDNA from mothers to children),

has the effect of differentiating between a country's

they only give an impression of precision by effec-

population today on the basis of genetics and

tively dismissing all the other lines of ancestry in

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457

Geographies of relatedness

any family tree as genetically as well as culturally

random representatives of the total 'population'

insignificant (Nash 2004).

through locally specific sampling strategies that

The marketing of these genetic commodities to

African Americans draws heavily on a narrative of

themselves reflect the ways in which the nation is

imagined in terms of descent, origins and relatedness.

cultural recovery and rediscovery of an embodied

New national biobanks or genetic database projects

connection to a place and people over distance and

present their value in terms of medical advances

time. They thus are framed by ideas of restoration

enabled by systematic collection of biogenetic

and healing that are designed to clime with deeply

information. But they are also the latest phase in

felt collective senses of injustice and dislocation.

a history of biopolitical informational gathering by

But their marketing also suggests the ways the

the state. Suggestions that genetic information should

politics of racialized belonging shape the socially

be collected from all babies at birth in Britain, a

differentiated meaning and effects of new genea-

policy raised in a recent UK government white

logical and genetic knowledges, identities and

paper (Department of Health 2003, 44-5), suggest

origins. In the United States these new genetic

not only new questions about the regulation of

techniques are greeted with ambivalence as well as

biogenetic information, that are raised in other

enthusiasm by African Americans (Baylis 2003;

areas of human genomics, and hopes for predictive

Dula et al. 2003; Kittles and Royal 2003). While the

genetics in health care, but also speak of a familiar

use of genetics in African American genealogy

fantasy of total knowledge. Like the biometric

promises a sense of belonging beyond slave ancestry,

promise of certain identity read from the body,

the way these tests are framed by ideas of genetic

biobanks offer hope of knowing who is who and

distinctiveness and ethnic, racial or tribal labels can

where in a context of increasing anxiety about the

have the effect of crudely geneticizing tribal dif-

porosity of borders and the fallibility of data about

ference in African countries with divisive effects

numbers of 'illegal aliens'. Another offspring of the

(Rotimi 2003). The impact of these tests on existing

meeting of population genetics and popular gene-

senses of relatedness and identity - destablishing

alogy may emerge in the application of techniques

some prior claims of collective identity or ancestral

that claim to reckon 'race' from genes. There are

connection, reinforcing others, generating or sever-

concerns that companies that sell the service of

ing networks of obligation or affiliation between

'new', known or genetically disproved relatives -

determining 'race' or proportions of mixed racial

ancestry from an individual's genetics may be

and on the way the politics of race, ethnicity and

employed in using the new police National DNA

nation are configured through these geneticized

Database (England and Wales) in criminal investi-

geographies of relatedness need to be explored

gations (GeneWatch UK 2005, 6), which may not

carefully (Elliot and Brodwin 2002).

only lead to miscarriages of justice but to the further

Finally, following the entanglements of origins,

racialization of relatedness.

'race' and relatedness through the approaches and

artefacts of population genetics throws up another

To close

application that suggests again the interconnections

between ideas of origins at different scales - personal,

To return to that Olympian image of imminent

collective, human. The techniques that are used in

birth and evoke a familiar vignette: A baby is born.

mapping human genetic diversity, and that are

And no sooner born but aspects of their infant

applied in geneticized genealogy, are also the same

features and form begin to be explained or puzzled

techniques used in forensic genetics. In her ethnog-

over as the product of their mother's or father's

raphy of the scientific practices through which ideas

genes, or mother's or father's 'side'. This is an

of human diversity are enacted, Amade M'charek

imagined scene, but one that reflects the ways in

(2005) shows how the results of forensic investiga-

which this 'Western' child is made sense of in

tions using genetics are deeply dependent on the

relation to the transfer of biogenetic substance. Ideas

particular ways in which 'population' is configured

of passing on, mixing and/or sharing substance

in genetic databases and performed through

are both central to Euro-American understandings

particular techniques and procedures. The databases

of reproduction and relatedness and the subject of

against which a suspect's 'genetic profile' is com-

speculation since, beyond obvious traits and the

pared can only ever be partial proxies of the genetics

sex-linked inheritance of genetic conditions and

of the 'population' at large. They are produced as

without specialized knowledge, there is no certainty

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458

Catherine Nash

about what one gets from which parent, and since

The different meanings of 'genes', blood or

'nature' and 'nurture' share explanatory weight to

inheritance and the complex and flexible ways in

different degrees. The familiar presence of inherit-

which ideas of inheritance and environment are

ance in the ways in which identity, embodiment

given causal power within the practice of kinship

and relatedness are imagined and made sense of

have recently been drawn on to challenge interpre-

contrasts strongly with the now familiar academic

tations of 'biology' as necessarily reductive, essen-

language of identity as contingent, fluid and frag-

tialist and determining (Wade 2002). Kinship is

mented. These terms stand for a wealth of critical

presented as a domain in which ideas of the relation

challenges to accounts of the sovereign, autonomous,

between the given and the made are worked through

self-determining subject. But kinship serves as the

in ways which parallel understandings of biology

model against which more flexible and more

in terms of dynamism, invention and flexibility

progressive hybrid versions of culture or identity

within the biosciences. Carlo Novas and Nikolas

are set only if kinship is figured as a formula for

Rose (2000) have argued that critics of genetic

defining identity, delimit-ing connection, and fixing

determinism and biological reductionism oversim-

social relations and groups in deterministic ways.

plify the ways in which new forms of personhood

Instead, the combination of ideas of continuity and

and embodiment are being produced in relation to

change, evident inheritance and unpredictable

developments in molecular genetics and biomedi-

recombination within Euro-American understand-

cine. Rather than produce an objectified and deter-

ings of kinship and reproduction are, as Pete Wade

mined genetic subject, genetic biomedicine and

(forthcoming) argues, paralleled by versions of

genetic knowledges, they argue, are producing new

hybridity that keep in tension ideas of cultural

genetic forms of personhood that are characterized

inheritance and creative mixing. These homologies

by active, enterprising, self-actualizing, prudent,

suggest more work in tracing the specific nature

informed, responsible engagements with maximiz-

and effects of different deployments of ideas of

ing 'well-being' and managing risk (see also Rose

roots, blood and belonging.

2001; Rose and Novas 2005). Notwithstanding the

But if arguing for the value of ideas of hybridity

implications of genetic biomedical knowledges in

over the apparent determinism of kinship is reduc-

relation to health insurance, employment, education

tive, an alternative turn to the relationality of

and the criminal justice system, these knowledges,

kinship - that is the emphasis on conceiving of

they argue, create new communities and networks

persons through social relationships - as a counter-

of obligation, identification and distributed exper-

point to individualism and genetic essentialism is

tise. They suggest a more complex development of

similarly problematic. Marilyn Strathern's (1995b)

subjectivities and social networks in response to

reflections on arguments which locate in kinship,

new biomedical knowledges that intersect with other

community or family the sort of relational under-

sorts of social identities and the wider construction

standings that are eclipsed in popular discourses of

of the modern liberal subject.

genetic essentialism are instructive here. These

Yet, if biology stands for something more flexible

arguments pose a dilemma because though she

both in biological sciences and non-specialist know-

wants to support critiques of genetic essentialism,

ledges, its very flexibility means that it can be used

she also wants to resist a form of nostalgia that

in many ways, including fundamentalist and reduc-

would overlook the ways in which individualism

tive forms. Indeed, thinking about kinship in relation

is part of Euro-American kinship thinking. Kinship

cannot be recuperated as the place for relationality,

to naturalized categories of connection and difference

- family, nation, 'race' - foregrounds the persistent

in contrast to genetic essentialism. This is because

power of ideas of biological relatedness as much as

it involves ideas of individualism and inherited

it suggests the ways ideas of the biological or natural

nature as much as it is flexibly delimited and per-

are themselves contingently imagined and deployed.

formed. This suggests a need to think of kinship

Feminist engagements with kinship both point to

in ways that position it neither as the regressive

the unpredictable effects of the creative remaking

ideology that must be moved beyond, nor a form

of ideas of nature, biology and the natural and to

of positive relational understanding that is eroded

the persistent power of naturalized relationships and

by genetic essentialism and individualism. The

subject positions. In addition, ideas of the flexibility

point is not to argue for or against kinship but to

and dynamism of natural systems can be used to

explore the diverse effects of kinship in practice.

naturalize neo-liberal policies devoted to the flexible

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459

Geographies of relatedness

movement of capital. Instead of ideas of the biological

relations and pointing to the remaking of ideas of

or natural in relation to social relationships and iden-

the natural as well as their powerful deployment,

tities being only addressed as the target of de-

this analytical framework draws work on social

constructive critique, their complex and politically

differentiation and social relations into greater

differentiated mobilizations need to be explored.

contact with new theorizations of an expanded

To return again to that Olympian image of immi-

nent birth and recall another familiar vignette: a

social or more-than-human world in which nature

and culture have never been adequate categories

baby is born. And no sooner born but begins to be

(Whatmore 2002; Castree 2003). A focus on related-

treated as a baby girl or boy and admired as either

ness productively points to the ways in which

sweet or strong. In the 1980s accounts like this were

naturalized categories work and are reworked in

often used as attempts to explain the social con-

the doing of social relations and identities. But what

struction of gender and the pervasive and powerful

are the effects of considering kinship vis-a-vis under-

effects of gendered socialization. Since these accounts

standings of relationality that expand the meaning

depended on a distinction between 'cultural' gender

of the social to include objects, entities, institutions

and 'natural' sex with its implications of a predis-

and technologies of all kinds in complex networks

cursive truth of bare embodiment, they have lost

and in continuous processes of co-emergence? One

their political purchase. Yet the naturalization of

response to this question would be to explore, as

sexually differentiated inheritance or 'nature' that

Franklin et al. (2000) suggest, the ways naturalized

they challenged still haunts efforts to rematerialize

idioms of kinship are mobilized outside their familiar

embodiment. This is the problematic that is being

domain. Themes of ancestry and descent, for

pursued in recent 'neo-materialist' feminist work

example, central to the lexicon of kinship, cut across

exploring alternative theorizations of ontology and

themes of connection and difference between people

matter (Roberts 1998; Fraser 2001 2002; Hird

and other animals and between other things (Lury

2003) that are paralleled by attempts to develop

2002; Marks 2002; Ritvo 2004). Indeed, radical ver-

'bioculturalist' accounts of human diversity (Good-

man and Leatherman 1998; Goodman 2001). While

sions of relationality often derive their impact through

deploying language of kinship. Ideas of cross-

constructionist accounts of the 'body' or 'nature'

species kinship, for example, are provocative because

and anti-naturalist accounts of 'the human' and the

of the ways they both evoke and explode conven-

'social' challenge determinism, they depend on

tional understandings of who is a relative. Donna

separating the 'facts' of nature from the 'values' of

Haraway's (1991 2003) work provides a model of a

society or culture (Cheah 1996). Yet, the hold of

double critical strategy of exploring the continued

evolutionary psychology with its accounts of gendered

significance of kinship relations (of the sort she is sick

differences in behaviours shaped in the human

of) and conceptualizing alternatives (as she is famous

evolutionary past and now 'hard wired' into genes

for, from machinic cyborg to companion species).

or neurons points to what is at stake in relinquish-

Another response would be to reconsider the

ing the political value of constructionism. The

contrast between kinship networks and actor-

apparent legitimacy of ideas of inherent and

networks. Jeanette Edwards and Marilyn Strathern

inherited sexual difference poses problems for

argue that recent academic interests in heterogeneous

theorizing material embodiment and relationality.

networks reflects the interests of theorists in tapping

This question of inheritance or 'what gets passed

'the power of making and unmaking connections'

on' is thus a substantive subject and a theoretical

that is part of the narration and practice of Euro-

problem in relation to ideas of material embodiment

American relatedness in which making connections

because of the ways in which gender and race have

is afforded positive value (Edwards and Strathern

been naturalized through ideas of sexually differ-

2000, 163), rather than being, as some have suggested,

entiated inheritance and biological difference. This

notably different from older work on networks in

cautions against too readily advocating or embracing

sociology and anthropology (Strathern 1996).

a biological turn or even knowingly using a language

Interests in complex assemblages index a culturally

of 'instincts' (Thrift 2000) even if it is used in work

embedded interest in making kin and other con-

that has left long behind, or never needed, the cate-

nections. Finally, it is also possible to turn a focus

gories of nature and culture.

on radical relationality back onto genealogy in par-

In highlighting the role of ideas of nature and

biological relatedness in the structuring of social

ticular, and relatedness more widely, to explore its

materialities, techniques and networks beyond, but

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460 Catherine Nash

also including, those conventionally defined by the

national, ethnic, racialized, universal in their

'facts of life'. A family tree or map of global human

familiar and emergent forms. The anthropological

'diversity' can then be explored as a 'material-

attentiveness to the ways in which questions of

semiotic object[s] of knowledge' (Haraway 1997)

not as unmediated empirical records of those 'facts'.

'who is related to whom?' are answered and their

implications for the definition of 'communities of

This attention to materiality in the networks of

shared descent' - familial, racial, ethnic, national -

objects, ideas and practices through which a family

and geographical attentiveness to questions of 'where

tree is constituted or relatedness is enacted can be

do we come from?' with their implications for geogra-

considered alongside the meaning of biogenetic

phies of difference and identity are combined under

substance within kinship itself.

the heading 'geographies of relatedness'.

In this effort to develop an analytical framework

and substantive focus on geographies of related-

Acknowledgements

ness I am not claiming that this is a novel spatiali-

zation of new kinship studies. To do so would reify

the disciplinary perspectives of anthropology and

geography and understate the ways much of this

work is keenly attentive to its geographies (just as

older work on kinship was underpinned by a com-

I am very grateful for the generous comments of

Jane Jacobs, Bronwyn Parry and Susan Smith. This

paper has been written with the support of the

Economic and Social Research Council Research

Fellowship (Award No. RES-000-27-0045).

parative perspective and questions of cultural dif-

ference) (see Ginsberg and Rapp 1995). The research

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