Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Krista E. Van Vleet is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Her scholarly interests in adoption and fostering have developed from long-term ethnographic research on the social and linguistic production of relatedness in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. In Performing Kinship: Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power (2008), and in several articles published in journals such as American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, and Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Van Vleet explores the hierarchies and intimacies of everyday social life. Her current research focuses on transnational discourses of gender, religion, and family in Cusco, Peru. She teaches courses on Gender and Family in Latin America, Global Sexualities, Language and Identity, Religion in the Andes, and Anthropological Research. She received her PhD in Anthropology from The University of Michigan in 1999.
This Section Includes:
I. Brief Table of Contents
II. Detailed Table of Contents
I. Brief Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Adoption Across Cultures
Chapter 2: Adoption in the United States: Historical Perspectives
Chapter 3: Adoption: Private Decisions, Public Influences
Chapter 4: Race. Racism, Adoption, and Fostering
Chapter 5: The Practices of Transnational Adoption
Bibliography
II. Detailed Table of Contents
*Each chapter includes a Conclusion
Introduction
Chapter 1. Adoption Across Cultures
Ethnographic Cases
The Preference for Fostering in West Africa
The Commonality of Child Circulation in the Andes
The Stigma of Adoption in the Middle East
Exploring the Significance of Cases
Debunking the Opposition Between “Natural” and “Adoptive” Parents
Who is Responsible for Raising Children?
History Comes Up Behind Us: Fostering and Adoption as Shaped by Context
Chapter 2. Adoption in the United States: Historical Perspectives
Children’s Role in Society
What Makes a Family? Contradictions and Controversies in American Adoption
The Growing Demand for “Adoptable” Babies and the Increased Regulation of Adoption: Who Makes the “Best” Mothers?
Adoption Secrecy in the Formation of “As If” Families
Making Families through Adoption in the Post-War Period
Adoption in the United States Today
Open Adoption
Chapter 3. Adoption: Private Decisions, Public Influences
Who Adopts? Who is Adopted?
The Children: Characteristics of Adopted Children
The Parents: Marital Status and Sexual Orientation
What Makes a Proper Family? Interpreting Social Norms
The Role of the State
Comparative Perspectives on Government’s Role in Adoption
Adoption in China
Adoption in Norway
Chapter 4. Race. Racism, Adoption, and Fostering
Race–A Social Construct, A Forceful Reality
Race in U.S. Adoption History
Transracial Adoption
Fostering and Adoption in the United States at the End of the Twentieth Century
American Indians, Adoption, and Community Control
Chapter 5. The Practices of Transnational Adoption
The Global Transfer of Children
Rules Governing Intercountry Adoptions
The Receiving Countries
Early International Adoption as Humanitarian Aid
The United States
Adoption in Norway
Sending Countries
Korea
Romania
Guatemala
China and Its Abandoned Girls
After Adoption: The Making of Transnational Families
Bibliography
- Presents the most current research on families and adoption.
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Addresses the fundamental question "How does a child born into one family come to be raised by another family?"
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Looks at two broad aspects of adoption: the ways in which adoption reflects attitudes about families and family making on the one hand and, on the other, the ways in which adoption rests on unequal relations of power.
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Chapter 1 examines adoption and fostering practices in several societies in order to show how these practices illuminate the ways families are naturalized, reflect broader social and behavioral norms, and are shaped by local and global relations of power.
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Chapter 2 traces the history of adoption in the United States, noting how adoption practices have changed over the last two hundred years in ways that have sometimes reflected ongoing debates about families and sometimes pushed debates into new areas.
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Chapter 3 looks at contemporary patterns of adoption in the United States. Considering the general patterns of adoption brings to light the ways that adoption is a process engaged in by individuals but also strongly influenced by social norms and state policies.
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Chapter 4 focuses on the ways in which racial discourses shape adoption and fostering in the United States.
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Chapter 5 explores transnational adoption and the ways that patterns of adoption across state borders have mirrored the more general difficulties faced by poorer and less politically stable countries.
- Provocative questions at the end of each chapter encourage students to think critically.
Families and Adoption is part of "Families in the 21st Century", a Pearson series of short texts that focus on critical issues facing families today.
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Krista E. Van Vleet is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Her scholarly interests in adoption and fostering have developed from long-term ethnographic research on the social and linguistic production of relatedness in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. In Performing Kinship: Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power (2008), and in several articles published in journals such as American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, and Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Van Vleet explores the hierarchies and intimacies of everyday social life. Her current research focuses on transnational discourses of gender, religion, and family in Cusco, Peru. She teaches courses on Gender and Family in Latin America, Global Sexualities, Language and Identity, Religion in the Andes, and Anthropological Research. She received her PhD in Anthropology from The University of Michigan in 1999.