Description
Book SynopsisWhat if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? In
The Politics of Kinship, Mark Rifkin shows how ideologies of family, including notions of kinship, recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention. Centering work in Indigenous studies, Rifkin illustrates how conceptions of family and race work together as part of ongoing efforts to regulate, assault, and efface other political orders. The book examines the history of anthropology and its resonances in contemporary queer scholarship, contemporary Indian policy from the 1970s onward, the legal history of family formation and privacy in the United States, and the association of blackness with criminality across US history. In this way, Rifkin seeks to open new possibilities for envisioning what kinds of relations, networks, and
Trade Review“
The Politics of Kinship is a new and exciting contribution to the field that raises productive questions about the relationship and distinction between family and kinship. As part of his larger project, developing a queer critique of settler colonialism, Mark Rifkin here homes in on discourses of family and kinship to examine how these conversations have often elided underlying questions of governance and sovereignty.” -- Manu Karuka, author of * Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad *
“Distinctly and importantly drawing on Indigenous intellectual frames in order to rethink racialization in the United States, Mark Rifkin makes a powerful contribution to the robust body of scholarship on family, kinship, and race.
The Politics of Kinship is a fantastic book.” -- Jennifer C. Nash, author of * How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Enfamilyment, Political Orders, and the Racializing Work of Scale 1
1. Kinship’s Past, Queer Interventions, and Indigenous Futures 43
2. Indian Domesticity, Setter Regulation, and the Limits of the Race/Politics Distinction 93
3. Marriage, Privacy, Sovereignty 145
4. Blackness, Criminaltiy, Governance 199
Coda: Inside/Outside State Forms 257
Notes 271
Bibliography 343
Index 379
