Introduction: 1. Conceiving kinship in the twenty-first century Sandra Bamford; Part I. Opening Frameworks: 2. The seeds of kinship theory Carol Delaney; 3. Descent in retrospect and prospect Gillian Feeley-Harnik; 4. The alliance theory of kinship in South Indian ethnography Isabelle Clark-Decès; 5. The anthropology of biology: a lesson from the new kinship. Studies Sarah Franklin; 6. The stuff of kinship Janet Carsten; Part II. The (Non)Biological Basis of Relatedness: 7. Embodied relationality beyond 'nature' vs 'nurture': materializing absent kinships in Japanese child welfare Kathryn Goldfarb; 8. Kinship in the Andes Mary Weismantel and Mary Elena Wilhoit; 9. Kinship and place: the existential and moral process of landscape formation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea James Leach; 10. Adoption Christine Gailey; 11. Natural achievements: how lesbian and gay families in North America make claims to kinship Ellen Lewin; Part III. Reproducing Society: Gender, Birth and Power: 12. Kinship, knowledge and the state: the case of Argentina's adult 'living disappeared' Noa Vaisman; 13. Kinship, affliction, proximity, and unfinished healing in India Sarah Pinto; 14. Reproductive remix: law, kinship and origin stories Valerie Hartouni; 15. Selecting for sons: kinship as a product of desire Tine Gammeltoft; Part IV. Transnational Connections: 16. Maids, mistresses and wives: rethinking kinship and the domestic sphere in twenty-first-century global Hong Kong Nicole Constable; 17. Transnational adoption J. Leinaweaver; 18. Kinship in transnational encounters: Filipino migrants as 'ideal brides' in rural Japan Lieba Faier; 19. Un/making family: relatedness, migration, and displacement in a global age Deborah Boehm; 20. My folder is not a person: kinship, knowledge, biopolitics and the adoption file Eleana Kim; Part V. Technological Conceptions: 21. Surrogate motherhood and transforming families Janet DolginI; 22. Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, Soraya Tremayne and Zeynep Gurtin - kinship and assisted reproductive technologies: a Middle Eastern comparison Marcia Inhorn; 23. A comparison of kinship understandings among Israeli and US surrogates Elly Teman and Zsuzsa Berend; 24. Self, personhood and belonging: the role of technology in childhood disability Gail Landsman; 25. Paid and unpaid gestational labor: pregnancy and surrogacy in anthropological studies of reproduction Tsipy Ivry and Elly Teman; Part VI. Kinship and the Nation State: 26. Reading the contested forms of nation through the contested forms of kinship and marriage Susan McKinnon; 27. The prison as a technology of care in North-East Brazil Hollis Moore; 28. The interface between kinship and politics in three different social settings Signe Howell; 29. A global family: kinship, nations, and transnational organizations in Botswana's time of AIDS Koreen Reece; 30. Kinship, world religions and the nation state Fenella Cannell.