The aim of this section is to review the long and rich history of scholarship on kinship and friendship. The inter-workings of these issues have provided the basis for significant theoretical developments and part of the foundational building blocks of philosophy and anthropology, while also offering significant contributions to both psychology and sociology.
I will begin with kinship. Studies of kinship were at the centre of major theoretical developments, and indeed the development of some academic disciplines, during the 19th and 20th century. A book largely associated with the foundation of kinship studies and anthropology is Morgan’s (1966) 1871 publication Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Understandings of kinship were first established by Morgan’s argument that all societies universally pass through certain stages of linear progress by organizing according to bloodlines and marriage. Morgan’s book established kinship as a central phenomenon in societies and set the tone for engagement with several of the most influential scholars of the time. Many leading American, British and French Anthropologists and Sociologists would all engage kinship studies, producing what are now seen as classics of the disciplines. The functionalism of Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) and the structural functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown (1952) both emerged through studies of kinship. Structural functionalism stated that the meaning of a particular institution or custom, like marriage, was derived from its function in society as a whole. This work embodied theories of social evolution that were dominant at the time and that explained culture and society as similar to organisms that were composed of and reducible to parts like organs and limbs that function together. This notion of the social is highly deterministic and was thought to follow a linear evolution from one stage of progress to the next.
Structuralism, one of the most influential bodies of intellectual thought in the 20th century, was also created largely through the study of kinship, particularly through Claude Levi-Strauss (1969) and his seminal work the Elementary Structure of Kinship. Levi-Levi-Strauss wanted to move away from functionalist notions of kinship that argued meaning is generated in how it functions to meet the needs of the individual, and more generally placed the nuclear family at the centre of Kinship studies. In building on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Marcel Mauss, Levi-Strauss attempted to explain what gave rise to rules against incest and the use of exogamy and how this builds relationships between potentially rival groups. Thus, Levi-Strauss shifted attention from the content and functioning of kinship relations to a concern with the underlying
‘deep structures’ of the human mind that give rise to social structure and create cohesion between different and often rival social groups (Peletz, 1995).
Levi-Strauss (1969) argued that society does not function to serve the needs simply of marriage and lineage, but that kinship was organized around both descent and building alliances
between groups through the obligation of exchange and reciprocity of wives. Strauss stipulated that as the mind is structured according to binary oppositions, these structures emerge in the social world in the formation of groups and the binary relations between them. The theory put forth that societies are not reducible to their parts, but individual elements get their meaning in relation to their place within structure, in and between groups. Thus, the meaning attached to labels, like sister and mother is only produced in relation to their position within underlying structures that form complete systems of meaning. In this way, we can only understand the meaning and authority of a father or a mother in relation to the meaning of a daughter and in relation to a male cousin. In addition, these social structures are universal for all humans.
However, the meanings and relations between categories will be different and constitute different realities in different societies depending on how that society is organized in opposition to categories within alliances and lineages.
When applied to migrant mobility and VFR, structuralism helps to reveal how social relations within VFR are governed by principles and norms that organize the meaning of different categories (like mother, son or daughter) in relation to each other across transnational space. These systems of meanings make up the natural order of kinship that guides behaviour post-migration. When looking at kinship, a structuralist might start by examining the patriarchal kinship system and gender in Italy (Kertzer & Saller, 1991; R. Miller & Miller, 1978; Moss &
Cappannari, 1960), where the meaning of a mother, father, daughter, and son obtain meaning from their binary opposite and within a system organized around the authority of the father.
Keeping in touch will be organized according to this paradigm, with women likely charged with maintaining contact because of underlying notions of purity that should keep women out of economic roles and more involved in family life. Each individual, and the category they represent, has meaning that fits with a natural order of kinship. While structuralism has problems that will be flushed out, the general principle that kinship categories organize norms and obtain meaning in relation to others is an important building block for this thesis.
The legacy of structuralism provided the springboard against which several of the most significant theoretical movements and sub-movements of the 20th century would rise. Largely originating from French intellectuals, post-structuralism movements emerged that ranged from deconstruction to performance theory and included influential theorists like Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Lacan, Henri Lefebvre, and Judith Butler. The main brunt of the attack against structuralism took issue with the highly fixed, static, and abstract understandings of meaning and the relations that structuralism proposed. Michael Foucault (2003), while dealing only to a limited extent with kinship, demonstrated the temporal problems with structuralism by understanding how subjects take on different meaning in different historical contexts through the control and distribution of knowledge by state apparatuses that establish power relationships of domination and subjugation. Feminists interested in kinship and gender echoed Foucault’s focus on power by committing themselves to developing gendered approaches to kinship, marriage and inter-generational marriages (Peletz, 1995). In addition, cultural relativism argued that truth and the epistemological underpinnings of cultural and social meaning are generated through particular frames and practices that constitute the entirety of social worlds.
Pierre Bourdieu however, leveled the most influential critique against structuralism in relation to kinship. Bourdieu’s complex theoretical approach to kinship was also concerned with power. However, instead of state institutions as with Foucault, Bourdieu was concerned with the inter-generational reproduction of class relations through embodied practice. Bourdieu’s neo-Marxist critique took issue with structuralism’s inability to explain continuity and change within different societies and different expressions of agency that are implicit to change. Bourdieu argued that social relations are structured, re-structured and signified through the behavioral strategies of actors who inherit and become situated in particular material and historical contexts (Bourdieu, 1977). By centring his arguments on the iterative and embodied nature of practices instead of relying on language, Bourdieu sought to problematize the fixity of Levi-Strauss’s principles of social structure by demonstrating the ambiguity that underlays the myriad contexts actors face. For Bourdieu, meaning is generated in how actors face ambiguity by organizing themselves, relate to one another, acquire and use resources, and re-create order (Peletz, 1995).
In analyzing parallel cousin marriage, instead of simply arguing that social positions obtain meaning according to principles of kinship, Bourdieu (1977) conducted a Marxist analysis of kin relations that form from agents who inherit and accumulate symbolic, material, and social capital. This capital gains value and is organized in relation to the laws of the market and the social field it’s embedded in; that form the social conditions of possibility informing the creation
of strategic practices. Furthermore, Bourdieu’s approach argues that the contexts and dispositions that inform the logic of practice are internalized at the level of the body, and it is through these embodied dispositions that strategy is formed. This approach is important for the discussion here in two ways. First, by juxtaposing context with practices, Bourdieu offers a rich theoretical model for explaining the dialectics of practices through strategy and contradiction.
Second, he makes explicit that kinship relations and moral obligation are always linked to economy (and perhaps always have been). While Bourdieu’s notion of moral obligation and economy may differ from Bauman’s arguments on the commodification and superficiality of bonds, Bourdieu reminds us that practice never ceases to conform to economy (Bourdieu, 1977 as quoted by Appadurai, 2013).
Bourdieu’s notion of practice and change though, has been criticized for being overly glacial in nature (Appadurai, 1996), and for not going far enough in understanding the fluidity of relations. What’s more, Bourdieu is largely concerned with social reproduction and not social change (Doherty, 2014). Thus, Bourdieu’s theory of practices helps shed light on how migrants reproduce meanings of kinship through VFR and ICT practices. In addition, Bourdieu also assists with understanding agency, by pointing attention to how migrants may restructure and signify normative obligations by developing strategies to resist staying in touch that are constructed along gender lines. In regard to Italian kinship, Bourdieu might agree that women (and the categories they represent) lead to obligations to keep in touch, however, he would point to examining VFR and ICT practices and the manner in which informants manage ambiguity between contextual fields and kinship norms through practice. Migration is a means to build social and financial capital within a context of a re-structuring middle class that views mobility more positively while keeping in touch equates to the maintenance and development of certain types of social capital that have been disrupted by globalization (Griffin, 2012; Reynolds &
Zontini, 2013). Migrants could be equated to cogs within capitalist systems who are developing strategies through ICTs and VFR to maintain kin and kith rights, meet duties, and perhaps build capital as mobile subjects. Bourdieu does not, however, leave much room for transcending norms. Thus, while Bourdieu offers an instructive guide to the dialectics of kinship practice, we require an understanding of kinship relations that is more negotiated.