Kinship in the Middle East

The study of kinship remains central to anthropology and to understanding the social world in which we live. Although key debates on kinship have stayed embedded in anthropological studies, the impact of global changes affecting marriage, divorce, family structure, and the inevitable consequences of the interaction between biotechnologies and social and cultural practices have all served to bring back kinship into anthropological discourse in a forceful way. As a result, there is a tendency to move away from the distinction between the biological and social aspects of kinship and to focus on emerging forms of relatedness and their broader implications. In such an approach, relatedness is viewed as a process that is fluid and mutable, and that is constructed through active human agency. It expands to include changing gender relations, new family forms and the outcome of assisted reproductive technologies

Agency (philosophy · Fictive kinship · Genealogy · Kinship · Social science · Sociology · Structure and agency · Anthropology · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Turkey's Politics and Society