Abstract This paper examines how relationships are ‘built’ among khwajasaras [non-normative non-binary persons] and female jouno karmis [sex workers] in two sites in Pakistan and India respectively. We focus on the non-normative nature of these relationships, first, to disassemble gender normativity itself; second, to argue that the colonial legacy of bureaucratic norming of kinship in South Asia, anchored in legal consanguinity and affinity on one hand, and territory and patriarchy on the other, erases these found relationships. Finally, in formulating what we term, ‘relative kinship’ –authen ..read more

Abstract The debate around abortion is often constituted in terms of a tension between fetal personhood on the one hand and the right to bodily autonomy on the other. The supposed personhood of the fetus is widely invoked to restrict the right to abortion. In India however, one sees a paradoxical situation. Not only is there wide legal access to abortion, but this also exists simultaneously with an active legal imperative to protect the female fetus. How did the Indian state allow access to abortion while protecting a unique fetus? This paper argues that the question of reproduction and aborti ..read more

Feminist Anthropology, Volume 4, Issue 1, Page 1-4, May 2023 ..read more

Feminist Anthropology, Volume 4, Issue 1, Page 5-7, May 2023 ..read more

ABSTRACT In 2009, French street artist JR appeared in the oldest favela in Rio de Janeiro and started taking photographs of women who were collectively mourning the recent slaughter of three teenagers. In a communal effort, these black-and-white portraits were reproduced at an enormous scale and pasted onto the favela's facade. Up close, the images were so big that they seemed to have no particular form. But from a distance, the faces assembled, revealing women's eyes gazing steadily at the city beneath the favela. In this article, I explore how the installation can be understood as a commenta ..read more

Abstract In this article we use our collaborative work with a support group for families of incarcerated people in upstate New York—including participant observation, interviews and focus groups from 2019-2020—to highlight how COVID-19 exacerbated challenges they already faced in caring for kin across walls. We focus specifically during the summer of 2020 when New York state prison visitation was closed to prevent the spread of COVID, showing how families struggled to stay connected and also organized to fight the carceral system. We suggest that through these acts of resistance and care, peop ..read more

Abstract This article examines the relationship between diversity and urban livability in Portland, Oregon, as ideological and pragmatic projects. I argue that diversity enregisters the city as livable, because the progressive ideals that diversity puts forth index one of many innovative approaches that Portland has taken to resolve the challenges of urban life. Black professional women are both rhetors and subjects of this enregisterment process. They are routinely called on to make public arguments about diversity. However, I show that diversity work just as routinely creates situations wher ..read more

Abstract In this article, I explore the affective landscape of matrifocal kinship in Brogodó to examine how the emotional intimacy that Black women shared with their women kin buffered the effects of unmet marital expectations, marital conflict, and divorce. I describe how women viewed their relationships with their families as a source of love and emotional intimacy that was more reliable and fulfilling than what they could expect from husbands who did not meet the romantic love ideal. Research that relies too heavily on functional assumptions about the relationship between matrifocality and ..read more

Abstract Parenthood is a transforming and enduring experience worldwide, yet it occurs in culturally distinctive ways. Anthropologists’ analyses of this aspect of social life need to attend to these distinctions by applying concepts that are flexible but offer meaningful insights. This article investigates the complexities of modern parent–child relations, making two propositions that expand the concept of parenthood. I begin by arguing that the term parenthood should be more widely utilized by anthropologists when investigating kinship, due to its specificity and ability to address and contes ..read more

Abstract This article offers the device as a methodological tool and concrete space for feminist praxis that can challenge the order of a world that is patriarchal, racist, and organized around capital extraction. Material or immaterial in form, a device is a tool through which different actors ground, produce, and concretize technological, legal, scientific, and political work. Many objects can become devices when pragmatically activated toward a particular effect; the challenge is to grasp them as such in the field and assess them for their political power and potential to bring forth possib ..read more