Anthropological Perspectives on Care and Kinship

Anthropological enquiry into care and kinship has shifted from treating these as fixed cultural institutions to understanding them as dynamic processes that articulate moral responsibility, social belonging and collective survival. Care is no longer viewed solely as a set of prescribed tasks or benevolent impulses; instead it is understood as an ethically charged practice that unfolds through relational labour, emotional labour and embodied exchange. Kinship, once equated with biological descent or legal ties, is reconceived as a multiplex of social connections—ranging from adopted siblings and migrant networks to chosen families formed around shared vulnerability. Across diverse settings, scholars highlight how population ageing, global labour migration and evolving gender norms produce novel care architectures that both reinforce and subvert traditional kin obligations. Temporal dimensions of care, from anticipatory arrangements through life-course transitions to end-of-life interventions, illuminate the continually negotiated nature of dependency and autonomy. Attention to ambivalent and contested forms of care reveals how institutions, households and communities grapple with shifting expectations and economic pressures. By foregrounding interdependence and relationality, anthropological studies underscore care and kinship as co-constitutive phenomena that shape moral personhood, social equity and collective resilience in a rapidly changing world.

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Anthropological Perspectives on Care and Kinship publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in anthropological perspectives on care and kinship across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Kinship: A system of social relationships defined by culturally recognised ties of descent, marriage and alliance, often extending beyond biological connections.

Care ethics: A normative framework emphasising the moral importance of relational responsibilities, emotional engagement and the context-sensitive nature of caregiving practices.

Relationality: The quality of interdependence and mutual constitution among individuals, institutions and environments in social interactions.

Reproductive chronicity: A condition of persistent reproductive suffering that accumulates over time and shapes women’s embodied experiences and care decisions.

References

1. Older People Reimagining and Envisioning Preventive Care Through Land Acquisition: Evidence From Rwanda. Social Inclusion (2024).
2. Patient patients: middle-aged British Pakistani women and the intuition of limits to care. Anthropology and Medicine (2023).
3. “I Do Not Have to Hurt My Body Anymore”: Reproductive Chronicity and Sterilization as Ambivalent Care in Rural North India. Medical Anthropology Quarterly (2022).