C4: Verwandtschafts-Kulturen

This sub-project investigates kinship as a central element of the representation of social order within the development of European societies from an ethnographic perspective. During the first research period, the project generated qualitative case studies in Istanbul and Berlin - as well as in transnational spaces. These case studies reconstruct the coming into being and the establishment of parent-child relationships and networks of kinship and relationality following the use of assisted reproductive technologies or adoption. In our study kinship is conceptualised not primarily as a system of classification or "hidden grammar" but, rather, in an active and interactive mode: as a resource and potential for social organisation and as a dynamic "structuring structure".

During the second research period (2008-2012) the project continues to ethnographically accompany its protagonists from the original case studies – aiming to generate longitudinal ethnographic data – but its analytical attention will shift towards the nexus of knowledge and kinship. We are currently particularly interested in how findings from the natural and social sciences on technologically assisted reproduction and adoption (plus legal and ethical forms of its regulation) shape everyday experiences of lived "relationality". The project's empirical work is devoted to the observation of relational performativity in the longue durée of family biographies. One set (n = 30) of the case studies already generated (n = 70) is to be further examined through continuous recurrent narrative interviews and serial situation-centred forms of participatory observation in an ethnographical longitudinal study. Additional use will be made of expert interviews, analysis of documents and newspapers, and internet-based methods. The comparative perspective for Germany, Turkey and the transnational space is supplemented by case studies in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is pursuing an explicitly pragmatic regulatory path which differs from Germany's principle-oriented regulatory philosophy and the regulatory principles in Turkey which are founded on Kemalist reasons of the state as well as on religious motives. Regulatory initiatives at a European level are also observable with regard to their effects on various everyday forms of kinship practice. On the basis of the empirical finding that patients and families, medics and experts are closely following scientific and regulatory trends in other countries and localities, the comparative practices and representations of everyday actors are utilised as a "para-ethnographic source" (Holmes/Marcus) through a combination of comparative and transfer approaches and simultaneously interpreted as transfer phenomena themselves.

Two exemplary case studies are being pursued in addition to the main study:

1st study: PhD project Maren Klotz:
"Knowing kinship. Familial and regulatory knowledge management in the use of assisted reproduction, specifically donated gametes"

The project investigates knowledge management practices within British and German families whose children were conceived via gamete donation. From an ethnographic perspective, it will reconstruct how these families actively and creatively deal with the rapidly changing legal basis of donor anonymity and a purported "right to genetic knowledge". The project will also focus on the regulatory regimes which potentially shape these families' access to kinship knowledge – such as data storage and information management practices in clinics and regulatory bodies.

2nd study: PhD project Nurhak Polat:
"Knowledge production/knowledge management and affected persons' activism in the area of assisted reproductive technologies: Organisations for the involuntarily childless in Turkey"

The production, communication and popularisation of knowledge about reproductive technologies and changing images of the family, kinship and infertility are examined with reference to the example of ÇIDER (Çocuk Istiyorum Dayanisma Dernegi) and similar groups.