Law and the Unexpected: Relatives are Always a Surprise

Marilyn Strathern0521849926, 9780521849920, 9780511345142

Marilyn Strathern takes up an issue at the heart of studies of society–anthropologists using relationships to uncover relationships. The role of relations in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society. This argument takes the reader through current issues in biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, as well as intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere.

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Table of contents :
Half-title……Page 3
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Contents……Page 7
Preface……Page 9
Debts……Page 10
Manda……Page 12
Part one Divided origins……Page 13
Introduction: Divided Origins……Page 15
The child’s two bodies……Page 16
A tool……Page 18
Divided origins……Page 21
Acknowledgements……Page 26
An age of individualism……Page 27
Adding debate……Page 29
Individual and common interests……Page 32
Recombinant families……Page 34
Thinking about relatives……Page 37
Acknowledgements……Page 44
2 Embedded Science……Page 45
Isolated knowledge……Page 47
Relations everywhere……Page 49
Kinship uncovered……Page 55
Caveat……Page 58
Acknowledgements……Page 61
3 Emergent Properties……Page 62
Multiple Origins……Page 63
An Analogy……Page 67
Offspring into Property……Page 70
Information into Knowledge……Page 73
Relations into Relations……Page 76
Kinship and Knowledge……Page 79
The Informational Family……Page 83
Acknowledgements……Page 89
Part 2 The arithmetic of ownership……Page 91
Introducing the body……Page 104
Enchantment……Page 106
Return to New Ireland – 1……Page 108
Patenting technology……Page 111
Return to New Ireland – 2……Page 116
Acknowledgements……Page 121
I……Page 123
The Terms of an Agreement……Page 124
Tradition and Modernity……Page 126
II……Page 128
Body Ownership……Page 130
Whole Persons: Things……Page 132
Part-Persons: Agents……Page 137
III……Page 141
Decontextualisation……Page 142
Acknowledgements……Page 145
I……Page 147
Counting People: Murik……Page 150
Analogous Worlds……Page 152
Counting Ancestors: Omie……Page 154
Owners and Makers……Page 156
Propagating Images……Page 159
Intellectual Products?……Page 161
Ownership of Persons?……Page 163
Single and Multiple Origins……Page 167
Applied Maths……Page 169
IV……Page 172
Acknowledgements……Page 174
Introduction: The Arithmetic of Ownership……Page 93
Conception by intent……Page 94
Leaving ‘knowledge’ to one side……Page 95
The arithmetic of ownership……Page 99
Acknowledgement……Page 103
Notes……Page 175
References……Page 213
Author Index……Page 229
Subject Index……Page 232