The new age of the molecular family: an anthropological view on the medicalisation of kinship

Abstract

Now that genetic inheritance is featuring more and more as an explanation of disease and human behaviour in general, a question that needs to be asked is how such explanations affect people's perceptions of family and kinship and to what extent genetic explanations conflict with broader social developments. Ideas about the genetic inheritance of disease place the family and kin group in the spotlight, requiring all its members to be scrutinised. Research on inheritable diseases entails a medicalization of kinship that reflects and promotes a view of family relationships at odds with the ongoing changes in the structure of families. At a time when family structures are more fluid and less determined by "blood" relationships than ever before we have an increasing emphasis on genetic inheritance as the transmitter of both human behaviour and kinship. Embedded in concepts of genetic inheritance is thus the notion that family and kin are the medium through which inheritance flows. Two cases from an anthropological study will illustrate how genetic mapping leads to the medicalization of kinship.