Interest in the study of kinship, a key area of anthropological enquiry,
has recently reemerged. Dubbed 'the new kinship', this interest was
stimulated by the 'new genetics' and revived interest in kinship and
family patterns. This volume investigates the impact of biotechnology on
contemporary understandings of kinship, of family and 'belonging' in a
variety of European settings and reveals similarities and differences in
how kinship is conceived. What constitutes kinship for different
publics? How significant are biogenetic links? What does family
resemblance tell us? Why is genetically modified food an issue? Are
'genes' and 'blood' interchangeable? It has been argued that the recent
prominence of genetic science and genetic technologies has resulted in a
'geneticization' of social life; the ethnographic examples presented
here do show shifts occurring in notions of 'nature' and of what is
'natural'. But, they also illustrate the complexity of contemporary
kinship thinking in Europe and the continued interconnectedness of
biological and sociological understandings of relatedness and the
relationship between nature and nurture.