British Academy Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology
- Title
- British Academy Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology
- Speaker(s)
- Speaker: Professor Susan McKinnon # University of Virginia
- Date and Time
- 11th Oct 2018 17:30 - 11th Oct 2018 19:30
- Location
- Seminar Room 2, Chrystal Macmillan Building, University of Edinburgh
- URL
- http://www.san.ed.ac.uk/events/other_events/2018_2019/british_academy_radcliffe-brown_lecture_in_social_anthropology
Cousin Marriage, Hierarchy, and Heredity: Contestations over the Domestic and National Body Politic in Nineteenth-Century America
How did cousin marriage—an institution that had been not only common, but also emotionally resonant, culturally validated, and economically productive in America—come to be recast as emotionally repugnant, medically dangerous, and politically backward? Anthropologist Susan McKinnon explores this radical transformation in American ideas about marriage through an examination of two intertwined debates—one political and one medical—that unfolded over the course of the nineteenth century. These political and medical deliberations addressed problems relating to hierarchy and heredity in a political union conceived as a democratic republic; and they helped shape American ideas about what it means to be a modern, progressive nation.
Chaired by Professor Janet Carsten, FBA
Susan McKinnon is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia. Her writings have focused on systems of kinship and marriage, on the history and contemporary transformations of kinship studies, and on the symbolic use of kinship and marriage in scientific narratives of social evolution and modernization.
Janet Carsten is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh
