Kinship, law and the unexpected

Part I touches on contexts in which the new medical technologies have posed questions for families and relatives. These contexts become, in Part II, a foil for comparative analysis. The essays thus move from materials lodged largely in the United States and the United Kingdom, and in the first chapter white Australia, to creating the grounds for talking about Melanesia, Amazonia and (briefly) Aboriginal Australia. They describe the consequences of relationality, both in the data and in the organisation of it; several of the Part I touches on contexts in which the new medical technologies have posed questions for families and relatives. These contexts become, in Part II, a foil for comparative analysis. The essays thus move from materials lodged largely in the United States and the United Kingdom, and in the first chapter white Australia, to creating the grounds for talking about Melanesia, Amazonia and (briefly) Aboriginal Australia. They describe the consequences of relationality, both in the data and in the organisation of it; several of the Part I introduces Euro-American law on its own home territory, so to speak, in both creative and regulative mode, whereas Part II shows legal categories being introduced in situations otherwise foreign to them, in some cases in the name of governance, in others as an analytical device on the part of the observer. Either way, one should not overlook the imagination and ingenuity of lawyers in dealing with new issues. Concepts developed in the name of intellectual property offer a rich seam for mining here and are in the foreground or background of several chapters. "The law" is thus depicted in different guises, whether contributing to the conceptual resources through which people approach problems entailing ownership or rights, or intervening in disputes, crystallising certain cultural moments for the sake of advocacy, and so forth. This book is not only about kinship, and there are other debts; for the stimulus of many conversations, Françoise Barbira-Freedman, Debbora Battaglia, Joan Bestard-Camps, Barbara Bodenhorn, Corinne Hayden, Caroline Humphrey, Alain Pottage, Paul Rabinow, Christina Toren, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Benedicta Rousseau is owed special thanks. Much of the thinking occurred in the environs of Ravenscar in North Yorkshire, under Jenny Bartlet's stimulating hospitality, and it is not inconsequential that Ru Kundil and Puklum El from Mt. Hagen have stayed there too.

Chapter Three and the three chapters of Part II were first written under the auspices of Property, Transactions and Creations: New Economic Rela tions in the Pacific. This was a three-year investigation (1999-2002) funded by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (award Rooo 23 7838), and acknowledgement is gratefully made. The arguments here owe much to Eric Hirsch, co-convenor, and to Tony Crook, Melissa Demian, Andrew Holding, Lawrence Kalinoe, Stuart Kirsch, James Leach and Karen Sykes, as well as to Lissant Bolton and Adam Reed, and to the ephemeral association that called itself the Trumpington Street Reading Group.