Susan McKinnon


Susan McKinnon Professor Ph.D. University of Chicago 1983 Brooks Hall, Room 309	Photo: Julie Lasetter
As a cultural anthropologist, my interests have long been centered upon the intersection between gender, kinship, and anthropological theory. More recently I have found that these long-term interests have come to merge in productive ways with newer interests in the areas of science studies and globalization. My concern with kinship is focused on both contemporary and historical formulations and transformations. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, edited with Sarah Franklin, explores the transformations that are taking place in kinship in the wake of the new reproductive technologies, the biogenetic and information technologies, the transformations in the global political economy, and the resulting transnational migrations of people and cultures. I teach two courses that contemplate these arresting new landscapes of kinship studies: "Kinship, Science, and Technology," and "Transnational Kinship." I am also fascinated with the history of anthropological kinship studies and, in particular, with the ways in which Euro-American cultural ideas about kinship and gender have shaped anthropological analytic categories and analysis. In the article, "Domestic Exceptions," I investigate how Evans-Pritchard's (mis)representation of the Nuer as patrilineal and egalitarian was the consequence of his use of analytic categories whose cultural configurations disassembled Nuer understandings of social relationships. And, in a book manuscript I am currently working on-Kindred Signs: Narratives of Social Evolution, Difference, and Inequality-I examine the traffic between scientific and cultural ideas about kinship. I argue not only that the "scientific" categories of anthropological kinship analysis have been culturally constituted but also that these categories have been central to Euro-American accounts of the nature and evolution of social differences and political-economic inequalities. My work on the cultural framing and significance of kinship studies is woven into my teaching of anthropological theory and the history of kinship studies, since I am interested in accounts of the history of the discipline that are also accounts of the discipline as a complex cultural artifact. I am intrigued, more broadly, by the ways in which particular cultural understandings are transformed into authoritative representations of the "nature" of the world. I am especially interested in the process through which culturally specific ideas of kinship and gender are "naturalized" in scientific accounts. I have written on this topic in connection with American scientific conceptions of incest and also in critiques of evolutionary psychology. In Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture, a volume of essays I co-edited with Sydel Silverman, we bring together a multifaceted argument from the four fields of anthropology to challenge and offer accessible alternatives to the naturalizing and essentializing discourses of the reductive theories of human biological and social life that currently saturate the American popular media. Following upon this initiative, I published Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology in the Prickly Paradigm Pamphlet Series at University of Chicago Press. I have also continued to write about the significance of kinship and gender in the creation of social hierarchy and equality. In a restudy of Firth's material on Tikopia and later in my own research in the Tanimbar Islands of Eastern Indonesia, I have examined how structures of hierarchy and equality are created through culturally specific processes that unfold in the articulation of differentially valued relations of kinship, marriage, gender, and exchange. This work has been part of another process through which kinship studies have recently been reconfigured-that is, in the emerging literature that examines the utility of the concept of "house societies" for both socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology. Specializations Cultural anthropology; gender, kinship; hierarchy, exchange; science studies; Indonesia, the United States. Courses The Cultural Politics of American Family Values; Kinship, Science, and Technology; Transnational Kinship; The History of Kinship Studies; Cultural Studies of Science; Sex, Gender, and Culture; The History of Anthropological Theory; Current Theory in Anthropology; American Cultural Anthropology; Feminist Theory in Anthropology; Grant Writing. Selected Publications ·2005 - Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology. Prickly Paradigm Pamphlet Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005 - (edited with Sydel Silverman) Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005 - On Kinship and Marriage: A Critique of the Genetic and Gender Calculus of Evolutionary Psychology. In Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. Susan McKinnon and Sydel Silverman, eds., pp. 106-31. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2002 - A obliteração da cultura e a naturalização da escolha nas confabulações da psicologia evolucionista. Horizontes Antropológicos [Brazil] 16:53-83.· 2001 - (edited with Sarah Franklin) Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham: Duke University Press. 2001 - The Economies in Kinship and the Paternity of Culture: Origin Stories in Kinship Theory. In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, eds. Durham: Duke University Press. 2000 - (with Sarah Franklin) New Directions in Kinship Study: A Core Concept Revisited. Current Anthropology 41(2):275-78. 2000 - Domestic Exceptions: Evans-Pritchard and the Creation of Nuer Patrilineality and Equality. Cultural Anthropology 15(1):35-83. 2000 - The Tanimbarese Tavu: The Ideology of Growth and the Material Configurations of Hierarchy. In Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. Susan D. Gillespie and Rosemary Joyce, eds. pp. 161-66. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1996 - Hot Death and the Spirit of Pigs: The Sacrificial Form of the Hunt in the Tanimbar Islands. In For the Sake of Our Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia. Signe Howell, ed. pp. 337-49. Leiden: Research School Centre for Non-Western Studies, University of Leiden. 1995 - Houses and Hierarchy: The View from a South Moluccan Society. In About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. J. Carsten and S. Hugh Jones, eds. pp. 170-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994 - American Kinship/American Incest: Asymmetries in a Scientific Discourse. In Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. C. Delaney and S. Yanagisako, eds. pp. 25-46. New York: Routledge. 1991 - From a Shattered Sun: Hierarchy, Gender, and Alliance in the Tanimbar Islands. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1990 - The Matrilateral Transference of Power in Tikopia. Journal of the Polynesian Society 99(3):227-64; 99(4):341-71. 1989 - Flags and Half-Moons: Tanimbarese Textiles in an 'Engendered' System of Valuables. In To Speak with Cloth: Studies in Indonesian Textiles. M. Gittinger, ed. pp. 27-42. Los Angeles: UCLA Museum of Cultural History.

Professor
Ph.D. University of Chicago 1983

Brooks Hall, Room 309

Photo: Julie Lasetter

As a cultural anthropologist, my interests have long been centered upon the intersection between gender, kinship, and anthropological theory. More recently I have found that these long-term interests have come to merge in productive ways with newer interests in the areas of science studies and globalization. My concern with kinship is focused on both contemporary and historical formulations and transformations. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, edited with Sarah Franklin, explores the transformations that are taking place in kinship in the wake of the new reproductive technologies, the biogenetic and information technologies, the transformations in the global political economy, and the resulting transnational migrations of people and cultures. I teach two courses that contemplate these arresting new landscapes of kinship studies: "Kinship, Science, and Technology," and "Transnational Kinship." I am also fascinated with the history of anthropological kinship studies and, in particular, with the ways in which Euro-American cultural ideas about kinship and gender have shaped anthropological analytic categories and analysis. In the article, "Domestic Exceptions," I investigate how Evans-Pritchard's (mis)representation of the Nuer as patrilineal and egalitarian was the consequence of his use of analytic categories whose cultural configurations disassembled Nuer understandings of social relationships. And, in a book manuscript I am currently working on-Kindred Signs: Narratives of Social Evolution, Difference, and Inequality-I examine the traffic between scientific and cultural ideas about kinship. I argue not only that the "scientific" categories of anthropological kinship analysis have been culturally constituted but also that these categories have been central to Euro-American accounts of the nature and evolution of social differences and political-economic inequalities. My work on the cultural framing and significance of kinship studies is woven into my teaching of anthropological theory and the history of kinship studies, since I am interested in accounts of the history of the discipline that are also accounts of the discipline as a complex cultural artifact.

I am intrigued, more broadly, by the ways in which particular cultural understandings are transformed into authoritative representations of the "nature" of the world. I am especially interested in the process through which culturally specific ideas of kinship and gender are "naturalized" in scientific accounts. I have written on this topic in connection with American scientific conceptions of incest and also in critiques of evolutionary psychology. In Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture, a volume of essays I co-edited with Sydel Silverman, we bring together a multifaceted argument from the four fields of anthropology to challenge and offer accessible alternatives to the naturalizing and essentializing discourses of the reductive theories of human biological and social life that currently saturate the American popular media. Following upon this initiative, I published Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology in the Prickly Paradigm Pamphlet Series at University of Chicago Press.

I have also continued to write about the significance of kinship and gender in the creation of social hierarchy and equality. In a restudy of Firth's material on Tikopia and later in my own research in the Tanimbar Islands of Eastern Indonesia, I have examined how structures of hierarchy and equality are created through culturally specific processes that unfold in the articulation of differentially valued relations of kinship, marriage, gender, and exchange. This work has been part of another process through which kinship studies have recently been reconfigured-that is, in the emerging literature that examines the utility of the concept of "house societies" for both socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology.

Specializations

Cultural anthropology; gender, kinship; hierarchy, exchange; science studies; Indonesia, the United States.

Courses

The Cultural Politics of American Family Values; Kinship, Science, and Technology; Transnational Kinship; The History of Kinship Studies; Cultural Studies of Science; Sex, Gender, and Culture; The History of Anthropological Theory; Current Theory in Anthropology; American Cultural Anthropology; Feminist Theory in Anthropology; Grant Writing.

Selected Publications

·2005 - Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology. Prickly Paradigm Pamphlet Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2005 - (edited with Sydel Silverman) Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2005 - On Kinship and Marriage: A Critique of the Genetic and Gender Calculus of Evolutionary Psychology. In Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. Susan McKinnon and Sydel Silverman, eds., pp. 106-31. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2002 - A obliteração da cultura e a naturalização da escolha nas confabulações da psicologia evolucionista. Horizontes Antropológicos [Brazil] 16:53-83.·
2001 - (edited with Sarah Franklin) Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham: Duke University Press.
2001 - The Economies in Kinship and the Paternity of Culture: Origin Stories in Kinship Theory. In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, eds. Durham: Duke University Press.
2000 - (with Sarah Franklin) New Directions in Kinship Study: A Core Concept Revisited. Current Anthropology 41(2):275-78.
2000 - Domestic Exceptions: Evans-Pritchard and the Creation of Nuer Patrilineality and Equality. Cultural Anthropology 15(1):35-83.
2000 - The Tanimbarese Tavu: The Ideology of Growth and the Material Configurations of Hierarchy. In Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. Susan D. Gillespie and Rosemary Joyce, eds. pp. 161-66. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
1996 - Hot Death and the Spirit of Pigs: The Sacrificial Form of the Hunt in the Tanimbar Islands. In For the Sake of Our Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia. Signe Howell, ed. pp. 337-49. Leiden: Research School Centre for Non-Western Studies, University of Leiden.
1995 - Houses and Hierarchy: The View from a South Moluccan Society. In About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. J. Carsten and S. Hugh Jones, eds. pp. 170-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1994 - American Kinship/American Incest: Asymmetries in a Scientific Discourse. In Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. C. Delaney and S. Yanagisako, eds. pp. 25-46. New York: Routledge.
1991 - From a Shattered Sun: Hierarchy, Gender, and Alliance in the Tanimbar Islands. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
1990 - The Matrilateral Transference of Power in Tikopia. Journal of the Polynesian Society 99(3):227-64; 99(4):341-71.
1989 - Flags and Half-Moons: Tanimbarese Textiles in an 'Engendered' System of Valuables. In To Speak with Cloth: Studies in Indonesian Textiles. M. Gittinger, ed. pp. 27-42. Los Angeles: UCLA Museum of Cultural History.