Cousin Marriages: Between Tradition, Genetic Risk and Cultural Change

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Series

Volume 28

Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives

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Anthropology Journals

Cousin Marriages

Between Tradition, Genetic Risk and Cultural Change

Edited by Alison Shaw and Aviad Raz

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248 pages, 9 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-78238-492-2 25% OFF! $120.00/£85.00 $90.00/£63.75 Hb Published (January 2015)

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Reviews

“The editors should be congratulated for expertly steering a course through a highly complex, sensitive, and increasingly politicised area of enquiry. This is a mature volume which navigates a range of often taboo and stigmatised practices and identities with diligence and a sense of ethical responsibility. One major contribution is in detailing just how legislation or debate concerning cousin marriage is frequently less to do with health, and more bound up with anxieties about nationalism and the politics of integration.” · Sociology of Health & Illness

“…an engaging multi-disciplinary reflection on a common theme, namely, cross-cousin marriage. The collection offers perspectives – sociological, anthropological, historical, clinical and political – on the practice of cousin marriage and particularly as this distinctive marital strategy gains visibility.” · Bob Simpson, Durham University

“This book deals with an important, rich and understudied topic: the impact of new genetic understandings of close marriage and its possible health risks on marriage practices and understandings of kinship in cross-cultural perspective. It offers valuable new material, and has [to be considered] a pioneering work.” · Morgan Clarke, Oxford University

Description

Juxtaposing contributions from geneticists and anthropologists, this volume provides a contemporary overview of cousin marriage and what is happening at the interface of public policy, the management of genetic risk and changing cultural practices in the Middle East and in multi-ethnic Europe. It offers a cross-cultural exploration of practices of cousin marriage in the light of new genetic understanding of consanguineous marriage and its possible health risks. Overall, the volume presents a reflective, interdisciplinary analysis of the social and ethical issues raised by both the discourse of risk in cousin marriage, as well as existing and potential interventions to promote “healthy consanguinity” via new genetic technologies.

Alison Shaw is Professor of Social Anthropology in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on ethnicity and health; social aspects of genetics; kinship, gender and transnational marriages. Her publications include Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain (2000) and Negotiating Risk: British Pakistani Experiences of Genetics (2009).

Aviad E. Raz is Professor at the Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University. His research focuses on how various ethnic/religious communities confront tradition and modernity, normative life process and medicalization, as well as migration and politics. He has written seven books and more than 45 articles and chapters on topics in organizational and medical sociology, anthropology, culture, and science.

Subject: Medical Anthropology

Subject Codes

LC: GN480.4.C68 2014

BISAC:
SOC026010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Marriage & Family;
SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural

BIC:
PSXM Medical anthropology;
JHMC Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography