Close Relations

This book speaks to the meanings and values that inhere in close relations, focusing on 'family' and 'kinship' but also looking beyond these categories. Multifaceted, diverse and subject to constant debate, close relations are ubiquitous in human lives on embodied as well as symbolic levels. Closely related to processes of power, legibility and recognition, close relations are surrounded by boundaries that both constrain and enable their practical, symbolical and legal formation. Carefully contextualising close relations in relation to different national contexts, but also in relation to gender, sexuality, race, religion and dis/ability, the volume points to the importance of and variations in how close relations are lived, understood and negotiated.
Grounded in a number of academic areas and disciplines, ranging from legal studies, sociology and social work to literary studies and ethnology, this volume also highlights the value of using inter- and multidisciplinary scholarly approaches in research about close relations.
Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Examines central topics in family and kinship studies, combining perspectives from humanities and social sciences

Demonstrates close relations' pervasiveness and their mutability across cultures in contemporary contexts

Investigates close relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives using diverse theoretical and methodological approaches

Autorentext

Helena Wahlström Henriksson is Professor of Gender studies and Associate Professor in American literature at Uppsala University. Her research interests are feminist cultural studies, masculinity studies, and critical kinship studies. She has published widely on fatherhood, mother-child relations and orphanhood. She coordinated the Swedish Network for Family and Kinship Studies (2014-2019), and its international conference Close Relations (2018). Her current project, "Single Parents in Swedish Media" investigates conteporary representations of "lone" parenthood in life writing, film, and newspapers.
Klara Goedecke is a postdoc at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research focuses on men and masculinities from intersectional perspectives, and includes work on homosociality, men's friendships, postfeminism and gender equality. Her current project, "High stakes. Men, masculinities and gambling as cultural phenomena," investigates gender constructions, affects and class politics in Swedish gambling.

Inhalt
Close Relations and Boundary Work: Family, Kinship, and Beyond.- Conceptualizing Close Relations.- Querying Lesbian Fatherhood.- Gay and Lesbian Collaborative Co-Parenting: Recognising Multiple Parents in the Netherlands and the UK.- Forgetting Gender While Desexualizing Friendship? Heteronormativity and Everyday Practices of Cross-gender Friendship Among Adults in Germany.- The Search for Self: Adoption Reunions Kinship Matters, and Donor-conception.- Negotiating Trans/National Kinship.- Narrative Kinning in Contemporary Memoirs of Korean Adoption.- The Power of Ordinary Things: How Parents' Support of Refugees Shape Mothering and New Forms of Kinning.- 'My Mother Laughs, But She Never Smiles': Children, Mothers, and Migration in Contemporary Swedish Life Writing.- Theorizing Parenting practices and parent-child relations.- Polyamorous Parenthood: Kinship, Gender, and Morality.- Cultivate and Constrain: Swedish Middle-Class Parents Negotiate Ideals about Children's Emotions and Parents' Responses to them.- Childless Women's Relationships with Children of Others: Narratives from Two Generations In Lithuania.- 'Mums are Mums': Negotiations of Parenthood Ideals among Swedish Mothers with ADHD.- Morphing Together: Motherhood, Old Grievances, and Corporeal Materiality in Deborah Levy's Hot Milk.