Kinship and Family as a Category of Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Previous issues of Genealogy have explored how genealogy, as a theoretical tool, has been used in philosophical and political discourse and how it can go further (“Beyond Foucault: Excursions in Political Genealogy,” Genealogy, October 2018). This Issue is less concerned with genealogy of thought or ideology and more interested in the direct application of genealogy to the theory and practice of historical kinship studies.

Over the past two decades, family and kinship have been popular topics for professional historians, but studying kinship as a categorical lens, and not just a topic, offers richer opportunities for consideration and analysis.

In a 2005 seminal essay, Lenore Davidoff argued for kinship as a category of analysis to join more widely recognized historical analytical categories such as race, gender, and class. Davidoff further explored these ideas in her 2012 book, Thicker than Water: Siblings and Their Relations, 1780-1920. Though speaking about nineteenth-century Britain, her call for scholars to better understand “the complicated interconnections between the economic, social, and political changes . . . on the one hand and the reach, shape, and meaning of familial/household belonging on the other,” is well taken (Thicker than Water, 27-8). Race, gender, and class as analytical categories have become regular parts of the historian’s toolkit. More recently, categories such as marital status and age have joined that list. However, these are insufficient to adequately capture how kinship and family ties shape decisions, within families, across social groups, and even at the highest political levels.[1]

Articles in this Issue will explore Davidoff’s concept further. How can genealogical tools and research shape our interpretations of kinship’s long-lasting influence on decisions and actions? What does using kinship as a lens do to our understanding of historical events, actors, or to our understanding of things like nationality, race, gender, and class?

We invite contributions that explore kinship as a category of analysis in a variety of ways. Possible areas include:

• Applying the tools of genealogy to explore kinship as an analytical category—whether in case studies of how genealogical information combined with attention to kinship as a category can generate new insights and new questions, or how genealogical expertise can affect theoretical approaches to historical events.
• How does focusing on kinship affect interpretations of actions in the past? For example, Davidoff used kinship as an analytical lens to trace how a sense of family, lineage, and heritage affected politicians’ careers. 

Authors submitting to this special issue will not be charged any Article Processing Charges (APCs).

[1] Davidoff, Leonore. 2005. Kinship as a Categorical Concept: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Siblings. Journal of Social History 39: 411–28.

Dr. Amy Harris
Guest Editor

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• kinship
• historical analysis
• family
• theory
• history
• categories of analysis genealogy