Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper critically examines an influential line of thinking used to critique progenerativism and support performativism that (...) cites cross-cultural diversity in what I will call kinmaking. I challenge several key assumptions made in moving from this appeal to ethnography to conclusions about kinship and progeneration, arguing that closer scrutiny of both the ethnographic record and inferences that draw on it in fact support progenerative views of both kinship and kinmaking. (shrink)

If all origins of life or of any new grade, level, or major transition as such begin with “competitive development”—with juveniles rather than adults, and multiple individuals rather than a single one—then the evolution of progeneration and of replication always requires an explanation. This article proposes that principles of evolutionary ecology such as density-dependence can be used to explain three kinds of developmental repetitions, viz., sequences of inductive and niche-constructing interactions between the ecological environment and population members, which take (...) place in such a way that the sequence is repeated: individual or somatic repetitions, discussed in Section 1, demographic or progenerative repetitions , discussed in Section 2, and replicative repetitions , discussed in Section 3. This results in a statement of the evolutionary process that includes rather than excludes development and ecology, but one which requires some additions to Van Valen’s aphorism that evolution is the control of development by ecology. (shrink)

This article briefly traces newer kinship studies at the edges of kinship formations and argues that a feminist, decolonial examination of kinship interrupts cultural relatedness as a capital set of social relations meant to satiate the ache to belong to or progenerate a group. Examining the coordinated relationship between kinning and de-kinning, the author exposes the suffering the social contract fails to register but reinscribes. Central to this analysis is kinship's global colonizing matrix dominated by white-heteronormative ableism that shapes and (...) prices commodified belonging and generation. This global colonizing matrix is the focus of this inquiry, examined through a cursory consideration of the author's lived experience as a transnational and transracial adoptee and racial minority scholar who teaches majority BIPOC students. This account theorizes a specific experience of kinship to broaden the analysis for others to locate their narratives and ongoing contributions to the deformation and reformation of kinship studies. (shrink)

Cet article traite du concept de « dégénérescence », importé dans la psychiatrie française par Benedict-Auguste Morel dans les années 1850, et largement diffusé par la suite, dans ce champ ainsi que dans celui de la criminologie. On tente d’analyser la reconfiguration qu’impose ce concept au savoir psychiatrique en dégageant la manière dont il permet d’intégrer en un ensemble cohérent plusieurs modèles théoriques: un paradigme neurologique, une théorie de l’automatisme morbide, un certain évolutionnisme. Sur ces bases, on essaie d’établir les (...) similitudes de fonds existant entre les conceptions psychiatrique et criminologique de la dégénérescence, en montrant qu’elles mobilisent le même réseau « structurant » d’analogies entre les figures de l’anormal (le fou, le sauvage, l’enfant, la femme, l’animal); et l’on s’efforce de montrer que ces théories promeuvent une logique dans laquelle les infractions aux différents types de normes (biologiques, sociales, morales, juridiques, psychologiques, économiques) sont susceptibles de faire systématiquement référence les unes aux autres, de se traduire les unes dans les autres. Puis l’on caractérise les transformations que ce nouveau paradigme impose aux principes de la thérapeutique, de la pédagogie et de la prise en charge des malades mentaux et des déviants. Pour finir, on présente les éléments latents qui dans ce paradigme préparent et indiquent déjà sa remise en cause et son renversement à venir. (shrink)