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Substance and Relationality:Blood in Contexts
Janet Carsten
School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LScotland, United Kingdom; email: [email protected]
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2011. 40:19–35
First published online as a Review in Advance on June 10, 2011
The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at anthro.annualreviews.org
This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.105000
Copyright c 2011 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
0084-6570/11/1021-0019$20.00
Keywords
kinship, body, personhood, medical technologies, donation,symbolism
Abstract
This article examines the way bodily substance has been deploythe anthropology of kinship. Analytically important in linking kin
with understandings of the body and person, substance has highligprocesses of change and transferability in kinship. Studies of organ
nation and reproductive technologies in the West considered herelenge any simple dichotomy between idioms of a bounded indiv
body/person and immutable kinship relations in Euro-American texts and more fluid, mutable bodies and relations elsewhere. Focu
on blood as a bodily substance of everyday significance with a pecu
extensive symbolic repertoire, this article connects material propeof blood to the ways it flows between domains that are often kept a The analogies of money and ghosts illuminate blood’s capacity to pa
ipate in, and move between, multiple symbolic and practical spher
capacities that carry important implications for ideas and practicrelationality.
19
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INTRODUCTION
Long ago, Claude L´ evi-Strauss alerted us to the
idea that some things, in particular, are “goodto think” (L´ evi-Strauss 1969 [1962], p. 162;
Tambiah 1969) and drew attention to the role
of metaphor as “a primary form of discursivethought” (L´ evi-Strauss 1969, p. 175). Around
the same time, Victor Turner’s classic study of Ndembu symbolism (1967) highlighted the
condensed nature of ritual symbols. A symbolmay represent many different things, and these
may be linked together by analogous qualitiesor associations (1967, p. 28). These insights in-
form much of what follows below. The Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED)
(2009) entry for blood runs to some 31 pages
when printed out (including draft additions, March 2009), beginning with “the red liquid
circulating in the arteries and veins of man andthe higher animals, by which the tissues are
constantly nourished and renewed” and finish-ing with its many combinatory and attributive
meanings. From blood agar to blood-wound, via (to pluck just a few examples) blood-bath,
blood brother, blood count, blood-frenzy,blood line, blood-lust, blood orange, blood
pudding, blood-sausage, blood transfusion,and blood-wealth, these compounds gesture
to the extraordinary breadth of meanings
and associations of this one bodily substance.Encompassing blessing and sacrifice, kinship
connection, the culinary arts, medicine, andlife itself—as well as its negation in acts of
violence—the terms seem to pile in on eachother to create a veritable excess of associations.
Is there something about bodily substancesin general that lend themselves to such remark-
able elaboration? What kinds of relations canthe flows and transfers of such substances set
in train? And what do these properties tell us
about relationality or how it may be envisaged?Exploring these questions, this article begins by
reviewing examples from the anthropologicalliterature on bodily substance. Examining the
way substance has been deployed, it notes theimportance of this concept as an analytic device
that links the anthropology of kinship with un-
derstandings of the body and the person. Mo
obviously, references to bodily substance brinto the fore ideas about process, change, vitali
and decay in accounts of kinship. Discoursabout material transferssuch as those that occ
in organ donation and reproductive technol
gies in Western contexts appear to undermi
any simple dichotomy between an emphasis ofluid, mutable bodies premised on a pregivrelationality in non-Western contexts and o
more fixed Euro-American idioms of a boundbody and immutable kinship relations.
In the light of this discussion, the latter parof this article focus on blood as a particul
bodily substance of everyday significance—othat also has a peculiarly extensive symbo
repertoire. “Some objects,” suggest Bowk
& Starr, “are naturalised in more than on world” (1999, p. 312). But what kinds
object are these, and how does this multipnaturalization contribute to their symbolic
metaphorical power? Which material qualitiof blood (Fraser & Valentine 2006) mig
be important here? Looking beyond blodonation and the idiom of the gift to t
way in which blood participates in differesymbolic and practical spheres, the artic
considers how blood functions as a vectbetween domains that in other contexts a
actively kept apart. A search for analogies f
the extraordinary polyvalence and plasticity blood and its idioms (Edwards 2009, Frankl
2011) takes us, perhaps unexpectedly, into tterrain of money and ghosts. It suggests th
the unusual capacity of certain kinds of objecto travel between domains carries importa
implications for how relations are conceiveIn keeping with its flexible subject matt
rather than focusing on a particular subthemin anthropology, this article traverses sever
terrains to grasp how ideas about substancontribute to understandings of relationality
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF SUBSTANCE
Although the term substance has been wideused in the recent anthropology of kinsh
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(Sahlins 2011), what this term actually refers
to has not always been clear (Carsten 2001,2004; Thomas 1999). One might imagine that
substance could be used for all kinds of bod-ily fluids or tissue—bones, flesh, saliva, blood,
organs, breast milk, semen, and female sexualfluids, as well as hair, skin, and nails—either
singly or in combination. Often it appears that it is precisely this nonspecificity that is beingput to work. Interestingly, there is a tendency
for the liquid, or at least the softer, squishier,and more internal bodily matter, to be loosely
denoted by substance, whereas more clearly de-lineated, harder and bonier bodily material, as
well as that which comes from the exterior sur-face of the body, such as nails, hair, or skin,
are referred to by their specific terms. I re-turn to these material properties of substance
below.Substance made its appearance in the an-
thropological literature in connection with par-
ticular regions: most notably Euro-America,South Asia, and Melanesia. David Schneider fa-
mously argued that in American kinship “rela-tives” were defined by “blood,” or “biogenetic
substance”—terms that he equated. He empha-sized two properties of blood relations: first,
that blood relations were enduring and couldnot be severed, and second, that “kinship is
whatever the biogenetic relationship is. If sci-ence discovers new facts about biogenetic re-
lationship, then that is what kinship is, and
was all along, although it may not have beenknown at the time” (Schneider 1980, p. 23).
Blood and biogenetic substance [or “naturalsubstance,” as he sometimes renders it (1980,
p. 24)] are, however, left strangely unexploredas symbols, as is the analytic shift from blood to
biogenetic substance—which, one might argue,is itself a symbol for heredity in American kin-
ship (Carsten 2004, p. 112; Wade 2002, pp. 81–83). Schneider proposed that relationships were
built out of two orders in American culture,
nature and law, from which were derived twoelements, substance and code. Whereas some
relationships (a spouse or an illegitimate child)existed byvirtue ofone ofthese only, “blood rel-
atives” derived their legitimacy from a combi-
nation of nature and law or substance and code
for conduct.It was crucial to Schneider’s argument that
substance and code were clearly distinct andthat they could occur alone or in combination
(Schneider 1980, p. 91). The categorical separa-
tion of the orders of nature and law and of sub-
stance and code may, however, be considerably less easy to distinguish in practice than Schnei-der proposed. Indeed, some kinds of kinship in
North America and Britain involve an explicit blurring, mixing, or interpenetration of these
idioms (Baumann 1995; Carsten 2000, 2004;Edwards 2000; Edwards & Strathern 2000;
Weston 1991, 1995). These studies of kinshipalso demonstrate that the straightforward link
Schneider proposed for North American kin-
ship between the order of nature (or biogeneticsubstance) and fixity or permanence was highly
questionable when applied to kinship in partic-ular ethnographic contexts in the United States
or Britain. As Wade (2002, pp. 69–96; 2007) hasargued, the idea that nature may be more flex-
ible and malleable than is sometimes assumedalso has important implications for understand-
ings about race, which draw on the overlappingrealms of kinship and heredity.
Schneider’s analytic frame was transferredto India in the form of an ethnosociological
model of South Asian transactions and person-
hood (Marriott 1976, Marriott & Inden 1977),but here, in contrast with North America, bod-
ily substance and code for conduct were arguedto be both inseparable and malleable. Con-
duct and interpersonal transactions, includingsex, the sharing of food, coresidence, and gift-
giving, transmit moral and spiritual proper-ties of the person (Daniel 1984). This model
has been critiqued for its oversystematization,its tendency to ignore regional variations, and
the radical opposition proposed between In-dian monist and Western dualist notions of
the person (Barnard & Good 1984; Barnett
1976; Good 1991, 2000; McGilvray 1982; Parry 1989).
Discussions of Indian transactions andnotions of the person made reference to both
substance and code, sometimes in the form
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of “code-substance” or “substance-code” to
emphasize their inseparability (Marriott 1976,p. 110). Accounts of Melanesian kinship,
personhood, and gender framed in termsof substance, however, largely omitted the
reference to code. Here substance has beenseen as intrinsically exchangeable and mal-
leable. Strathern (1988), building on Wagner’s(1977) analysis of “substantive flows” andthe substitutability of substance, focused on
the “analogizing” properties of substance, itsgenerative capacities, and its ability to take a
range of forms, such as blood, milk, food, andsemen. These data had obvious resonances
with the Indian material. As well as flow andfungibility, Strathern’s analysis also rested on
the disjunction in English between form andsubstance or content. Thus, in her reanalysis of
Trobriand material, a mere replication of form(not involving exchange or transformation of
substance) is not seen as a substantive connec-
tion, which contrasts with Malinowski’ s (1929,p. 3) earlier assertion about the relation be-
tween a Trobriand mother and child (Carsten2004, pp. 121–26; Strathern 1988, pp. 231–40;
Weiner 1976). It is the substitutability or analo-gizing property of substance that Strathern
(1988, p. 251) sees as enabling a transformationof form into content, or inner substance.
These understandings are comparable to theSouth Asian models cited, although differences
remain in terms of ideas about gender and the
person and therefore in the relations that en-sue from exchanges of substance (Busby 1997).
Strathern’s model rests on the idea of partiblepersons, composed of elements of male and
female substances, and gender here is unsta-ble and must be elicited through performance.
Cecilia Busby suggests that Indian persons arepermeable andconnected through exchanges of
substance that merge within the body. Thesesubstances, however, retain their male or fe-
male essence. Whereas in Melanesia, “the body
is a microcosm of relations” (Strathern 1988,p. 131, cited in Busby 1997, p. 273), in South
India, flows of substance “are a manifestationof persons rather than the relationships they
create” (Busby 1997, p. 273). In Melanesia,
Busbysuggests, relationships are foregrounde
whereas in India the focus is on persons.Following these discussions, it is wor
noting that substance as an analytic terunderwent a shift in its migration from Nor
America to Melanesia. Whereas Schneid
emphasized the immutable nature of substan
as opposed to code, Strathern suggested thin Melanesia what was not immutable counot be considered as substance. The importa
move signaled by using substance as an analyterm was attention to bodily flows andtransfe
thus highlighting fluidity, transferability, antransformability in the analysis of kinship an
linking these to ideas about the body. That suprocesses should be highlighted in analyses
South Asian, Melanesian, and Euro-Americ
kinship was not coincidental because the were regions where anthropologists had foun
it problematic or impossible to apply earlimodels based on unilineal descent (Barn
1962, Strathern 1992). The emphasis on fungbility also signaled a wider dissatisfaction wi
kinship models that emphasized permaneor unchanging aspects in the structure
kinship relations (Carsten 2004, Kuper 1988 Analysis of ideas about reproductive processe
the body, and gender in Africa that builds oan earlier generation of Africanist schola
(Beidelman 1980, 1993; Richards 1982; Turn
1967, 1969) and is influenced by the woof Strathern and others reveals how bod
processes here too are linked to wider socand cosmological understandings of fertili
(Broch-Due 1999; Devisch 1993; Hutchins1996, 2000; Jacobson-Widding 1991, 199
Kaspin 1996, 1999; Moore 1999; Taylor 1992 The fact that the meaning of substan
in English makes no explicit reference fungible or transferable qualities suggests th
the cooption of this term had less to do wiits meaning than with an analytic space
the study of kinship. The centrality of ide
about substance in Christianity, particularthe connotations of transubstantiation
the Eucharist, in which physical or spiritutransformation is precisely at issue (Bynu
2007, Feeley-Harnik 1981), may, howev
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have implicitly influenced how the term has
been deployed by anthropologists. Cannell’s(2005) comments on the “Christianity of an-
thropology” draw attention to the significanceand silences surrounding such linkages.
Bamford’s suggestion, that recent analysesof kinship have been too prone to assume
that kinship necessarily involves embodiedconnection, bears on this problem of theincorporation of Western ideas, although
it ignores how, rather than being imposedanalytically, this emphasis may be present in
the ethnographic data (Bamford 2004, 2007,2009; Bamford & Leach 2009b; Carsten 1995,
1997, 2004; Weismantel 1995). Among theKamea of Highland New Guinea, Bamford
notes, “while both parents contribute sub-stance to the child, this is not seized upon as a
salient feature of the parent-child relationship”(2004, p. 291). Bamford (2007) elucidates
an important distinction between Western
ideas about blood, biogenetic substance, andpedigree, which incorporate directionality and
temporality into ideas of flow (Cassidy 2002,2009; Edwards 2009; Franklin 2007; Strathern
1992), and Kamea understandings in whichideas about substance do not have this temporal
dimension. Where siblingship takes priority over filiation (as in the Malay or Kamea cases),
it follows that siblings (rather than parentsand children) may be understood as having the
closest substantive connection, and this notion
has implications for ideas about genealogy.Continuity in kinship may be evoked not
through ancestry but through (gendered) tiesto land—as in the Kamea case—and the growth
andconsumption of staple foods produced fromland that is itself seen as generative may be the
dominant idioms for shared substance or may complement procreative ties (Carsten 1997;
Freeman 1970; Godelier 1998; Leach 2003,2009; Li Puma 1988; Merlan & Rumsey 1991;
Munn 1986; Strathern 1973). The diversity of
these ideas underscores not only that commonsubstance may be defined in many different
ways, but also that it is “[n]either a universalnor an essential condition of kinship” (Sahlins
2011, p. 14).
MATERIAL QUALITIES; METAPHORICAL ELABORATION
I suggest above that we make connectionsbetween material qualities of substances and
the relations that their transfers set in train.Such connections may, however, be implicit
in anthropological accounts (Carsten 1995,
1997, pp. 107–30). It is partly the link betweenphysical properties of substance and the rela-tional forms envisaged by their continuities,
transfers, and transformations that interests mehere. Color and liquidity may, as in the Malay
case, invite a commentary on health, vitality,kinship connection, and the role of blood in
reproduction.
Color was, of course,at the heart of Turner’s(1967) discussion of ritual symbols. The effi-
cacy of his tripartite structure of white, red,
and black rested on its reference to bodily fluids“whose emission, spilling, or production is as-sociated with a heightening of emotion” (1967,
pp. 88–89). Furthermore, Turner (1967, p. 89)underlined how fluids such as semen, milk, and
bloodthatarereferencedbythesecolorsevokedexperiences of social relationships. Jacobson-
Widding (1999, p. 291) also notes the emotional
force and dynamic potential of red in Central Africa. Others have seen liquidity rather than
color as a key property. In a wonderful explo-
ration of the “gift logic” of precolonial Rwan-dan social relations, Taylor (1992) shows how the mobility of liquids, their capacity to flow,
encapsulated the openness and dynamic quali-ties of exchange. Here people “construct social
relations through the fluids they exchange incelebration, hospitality, and ordinary interac-
tion” (1992, p. 105). Because bodily fluids, such
as blood, semen, or milk, “social fluids,” suchas beer or porridge, and rainfall are analogs of
each other, their flow establishes connections
among body, society, and cosmos (1992, p. 105;see also Wagner 1986). The “spirit of the liquidgift” (1992, p. 207) on which this logic rested
could, however, be undermined by witches withthe power to poison and cause death by block-
age and by a capitalist logic alternative to that of the gift economy in which accumulation and
profit are positively valued.
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Such associations might prompt further
questions about the explicit or implicit con-nections between physical properties of bodily
substances and relations among persons. Herepermanence andtransience come into play. The
permanenceoflineages,forexample,maybein- voked by references to continuities of bone be-
tween lineage members. By contrast, the softer,fleshier parts of human bodies that are less en-during may be metaphorically attached to as-
pects of relations that cease with death (Bloch1988, Thompson 1988). And of course, similar
kinds of dichotomous associations of soft fleshand hard bone with relative impermanence or
permanence occur in the absence of lineages,as in the Malay or Euro-American examples.
These ideas highlight the metaphorical poten-tial of bodily material ( Jackson 1983, Lakoff
& Johnson 1980) and suggest that this poten-tial is partly linked to its physical attributes
but also to associations that may be readily
made with vitality itself. The OED list of com-pound words involving blood, cited above, un-
derscores the association of blood with life andalso, contrastingly, with death-dealing acts of
violence. But this point also makes clear that some metaphors are more metaphorical than
others. Blood seems to occupy a protean role inits capacity to be both metaphor and metonym
(M. Mayblin, personal communication). De-bates about transubstantiation in the Eucharist
(Bynum 2007) or the presence of blood in acts
of martyrdom (Castelli 2011) indicate that thesymbolic potential of blood can be conceived in
a highly literal manner, whereas in other con-texts (such as heredity or relationships) it may
be more removed from what it signifies. To some extent, all bodily substances can be
associated with vitality, and this notion may beone source of their aptitude for metaphorical
extension. But some seem to be more “good tothink”—or good to enact—than others. Blood
may be the most obvious example, but certain
organs, such as the heart or liver, and somebodily fluids, such as breast milk or sexual flu-
ids, have more symbolic potential than others.Considering their attributes together, the vivid
color and the liquidity of blood, the obvious
importance of its internal flow to health, an
its external flow to reproduction, wounding, death, as well as blood’s ready alterability, see
to give a unique range and power to its immdiate associations and its potential for furth
elaboration. The symbolic weight and range
associations of the heart and/or liver as the vi
organ par excellence and also the seat of emtions could be explained in a similar way. Athough less obviously striking in appearanc
the association of sexual fluids and breast m with life itself and, as Turner suggested, the p
tential emotional resonance of processes of sereproduction, andmaternal breast-feeding co
nect to the capacity of these bodily substancfor symbolic elaboration. In considering wh
makes these particular objects the subject of r
lational speculation, we need to take into acount material qualities, the contexts in whi
they naturally occur, and the readiness wi which they can be associated with life itself
qualities of animation.Blood may be particularly apt for this kin
of metaphorical extension because it scores highly in all three respects: It is visually strikin
it can be seen inside and outside the bodyboth routinely and in exceptionally dramat
circumstances—and it can be obviously assocated with life or life’s cessation. The example
blood also underlines how these three differe
aspects are, in fact, inseparable and reinforeach other. I return to the special qualities
blood below after considering transfers of othkinds of bodily matter.
BODILY TRANSFERS;RELATIONAL MOVES
The rather unsubtle connection I have mabetween what we might think of as the li
eral qualities of bodily substances and thmetaphorical associations becomes immed
ately more complex if we explore the relationdimensions of how they are apprehended. Th
complexity reflects the fact that relationshi
and their qualities cannot really be grasped these terms: How would we tease apart liter
or metaphorical dimensions of relationship
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Here, the animating qualities of bodily sub-
stance may suggest a way to explore what isbeing transferred.
Sexual intercourse and breast-feeding aretwo of the most common and obvious ways
that bodily fluids are transferred from one per-son to another. Nor is it surprising that they
are often surrounded by an elaborate discourseabout the possible results of mixing or trans-ferring bodily material from one person to an-
other. The consequences of the physiologicalprocesses of intercourse,pregnancy, and breast-
feeding in terms of relations between sexualpartners, spouses, parents andchildren, andsib-
lings seem almost too obvious to mention. But in fact the symbolic elaboration of such pro-
cesses is extraordinarily varied. Ritual proscrip-tions of caste appear to be at one extreme of a
cultural elaboration concerned with controllingthe possible consequences of too much mixing
(Daniel 1984, Lambert 2000, Marriott 1976,
Marriott & Inden 1977). But Christian dis-courses about the creation of one flesh between
husband and wife and its implications in termsof the potential for incest between siblings-in-
law suggest here too a profound concern about therelationaleffectsof mixingbodilysubstance.
The long-running nineteenth-century Britishparliamentary debate over the possibility of
marriage to a deceased wife’s sister is one ex-ample of this (Kuper 2009).
In many cultural contexts, transfers of sex-
ual fluids, breast milk, or saliva are understoodto have a directly transformative effect on the
nature of the person and that person’s rela-tions with others. As in the case of the con-
troversy over marriage with a deceased wife’ssister, often there are further repercussions of a
more indirect kind. Thus Malay women whomI knew in the 1980s spoke anxiously about the
potential consequences of breast-feeding other women’s children in terms of Islamic proscrip-
tions against marriages between them as adults
(Carsten 1995; Parkes 2004, 2005). Perhaps it is not surprising that media reports of New
York chef, Daniel Angerer, who made cheesefrom his wife’s surplus breast milk, described
the responses as ranging from “mild yuckiness
to sheer revulsion” (Saner 2010, p. 3). Angerer
himself reflected, “I suppose any kind of hu-man liquid takes on a weird, almost sexual, as-
pect. But we drink milk from animals and, tome, this isn’t that different” (p. 3).
Concern about incest, although common, is
of course not the only register of transforma-
tions effected by the transfer of bodily matter. The literature on the social implications of re-cent medical advances, including organ trans-
plants and reproductive technologies, providesilluminating material. Studies of patients who
have undergoneorgantransplantsreveala strik-ing tendency of many recipients to speculate on
the origins of donated organs in terms of thepersonal attributes of the donor and to under-
stand transformations of themselves as an effect
of incorporating these (Fox & Swazey 1992,2002; Lock 2002; Sharp 1995, 2006; Waldby
2002). As Lock writes, “Body parts remain in-fused with life and even personality” (2002,
p. 320).Sharp’s study of organ donation in the
United States (2006) beautifully documentshow recipients of cadaveric organs articulate
connections to the kin of deceased donors interms of kinship, the role of the donor mother
being particularly crucial for participants insuch relations. Recipients speak of the “natu-
ralness” of using the idiom of kinship in this
context, and Sharp, following Schneider (1980,1984), underscores how the centrality of bio-
genetic concepts of relatedness in Americankinship makes the idiom of blood ties partic-
ularly apt in cases of organ transfer. Her study also suggests that heart transplants are partic-
ularly likely to be understood to effect pro-found personality changes (Fox & Swazey 1992,
Pearsall et al. 2002) and are prone to rela-tional elaboration in Western contexts. And
this connects with the idea that the heart isthought to contain “the greatest amount of the
donor’s essence” (Sharp 2006, p. 200) and is
linked to understandings of it as the seat of theemotions, which have a surprising endurance
in Western contexts (Bound Alberti 2010), as well as to its direct association with sustaining
life.
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Such examples illuminate how transfers
of bodily material are imagined in relationalterms, which may be elaborated in more cre-
ative and imaginative ways than the rather flat anthropological trope of “fictive kinship” im-
plies. Adopting the term biosentimentality, indistinction to Rabinow’s (1992) “biosociality,”
Sharp highlights how the positive overtonesof these relations may subvert the potentialof biosociality to reshape social relations in
dangerous or threatening ways (Rapp 1999). The importance of such multiple and layered
associations thus plays a role in how a medicalprocedure (albeit a serious and dramatic one)
can become the subject of what we could termrelational speculation and of negotiation of
ideas of personhood. Such negotiations of theperson andrelationality are brought into play in
decision-making at the beginnings and ends of life (Kaufman 2005, Kaufman & Morgan 2005)
and in considering the implications of fertility
treatment. Edwards (1993, 2000) has high-lighted concerns about the possible adulterous
connotations of gamete transfers as well as theopportunities for incest to occur unwittingly
between those who may not know they aresiblings. But, as in the case of those undergoing
surrogacy, participants may, in fact, avoid thedisturbing implications of such procedures
and instead emphasize and extend normativeaspects of family ideology (Ragon´ e 1994).
Research carried out among patients receiving
or donating gametes, however, demonstratesthat relational moves can also be innovative
(Konrad 1998, 2005) and include stratagemsthat have the effect of excluding inappropriate
adulterous or incestuous connotations. This“flexible choreography” (Thompson 2001,
p. 198; Thompson 2005) between elementsof nature and culture suggests a subtle and
imaginative process of accommodating existingand future relations to quite new situations.
Some have suggested that recent advances in
genetic medicine encourage a move away fromthe malleability of blood in kinship thinking
to a more fixed genetic essentialism (Finkler2000, 2001), or literalization, particularly in
medical contexts. Growing evidence indicates,
however, that confronted by incomplete
indecipherable genetic information, those cocerned revert to more familiar tropes, buildin
on the plasticity of historically prior idiomof blood and family (Bestard 2009; ˇ Cepaitie
2009; Edwards 2009; Franklin 2003, 201
Lock 2005; Porqueres i Gen´ e & Wilga
2009; Rapp 1999). “Blood,” as Franklin (201memorably puts it, “is thicker than genes.”
TRANSFERS OF BLOOD
Although studies of organ donation and fetility treatment are highly suggestive of co
cerns about the effects of transfers of bodsubstance, they arise in rather special circum
stances. In placing such medical proceduralongside more everyday matters of brea
feeding or sexual intercourse, we could considthese processes as a continuum encompassin
at one extreme, fleeting kinds of physical co
tact, such as concerns about touching or feediand, at the other, the most radical transfers re
resented by organ donation. Blood would seeto occupy a paradoxical place in such a conti
uum. Blood flows are common and minor ocurrences, but they can also signal extreme ac
of violence, illness, or death. Flows of blood cbe intentionally elicited for ritual, medical,
other purposes andcan also occur involuntariSuch flows are thus at once both more everyd
than donations of gametes or organs, but al
have unique qualities.In keeping with the range of contexts
which blood is found, the relevant literatuis dispersed across many subfields, includin
religion, symbolism, kinship, politics, amedical anthropology (Bynum 2007, Copem
2009c, Feeley-Harnik 1981, Hugh-Jones 201Knight 1991, Schneider 1980, Starr 1998). A
this is testament not just to blood’s importanas a bodily substance but also to its potent
“catchiness” in metaphor (Sperber 198
Blood donation is of particular interest becauit encompasses many of these association
including medical, moral, personal, polical, national, kinship, and religious aspec
(Anagnost 2006; Baud 2011; Busby 200
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Chaveau 2011; Copeman 2004, 2005, 2008,
2009a,b; Reddy 2007; Sanabria 2009; Simpson2004, 2009; Street 2009). Although such asso-
ciations can be morally positive, it important to note that, partly through the overlap of
ideas of kinship, nation, and race—in both of which blood and heredity are central (Wade
2002, 2007; Williams 1995)—the flow of blood through transfusion or heredity andintermarriage may also be blocked in exclu-
sionary moves (Dauksas 2007, Lederer 2008,Poqueres i Gen´ e 2007, Strong 2009, Valentine
2005, Weston 2001). Such linkages, whichmay be highly politically charged, have long
and specific histories in European cultures(de Miramon 2009, Nirenberg 2009), but
neither historically in Europe nor elsewhereis it necessarily the case that the symbolism
of blood connotes immutable essence ratherthan a substance subject to change depending
on environment, moral state, climate, sexual
contact, food consumption, or other influences(Stoler 1992, 1997; Wade 1993, 2002).
Titmuss’s foundational study of blood do-nation, The Gift Relationship (1997), compared
the policy implications of the altruistic unpaiddonation of blood under the British National
Health Service with the payment of donorsin the United States and elsewhere. His con-
clusion, that a system of unpaid donation wassafer because it ruled out the intrusion of com-
mercial interests into blood donation, has, in
the light of infected blood scandals set in trainby the HIV/AIDS pandemic in France, China,
the United Kingdom, and elsewhere proven tobe an oversimplification (Baud 2011, Chaveau
2011, Feldman & Bayer 1999, Laqueur 1999,Shao 2006, Shao & Scoggin 2009, Starr 1998).
Nevertheless, Titmuss’s insistence on the im-portance of attempting to ring-fence a purely
altruistic system of blood donation to ensurethe safety of transfused blood is worth consid-
ering more closely.
The difficulty of insulating a morally charged altruistic sphere of donation is not, of
course, confined to medical contexts (Douglas1990, Weiner 1992). Studies of organ donation
illuminate the complex play of motivations
that underlie acts of donation as well as the
profound guilt or obligation often felt by recipients, leading Ren´ ee Fox to write of the
“tyranny of the gift” (Fox 1978, p. 1168; Fox &Swazey 1992, 2002, p. 199; see also Das 2010;
Lock 2000, 2002; Simmons et al. 1987; Sharp
1995). Whereas such studies show the intense
pressure relatives may feel to donate a kidney to a close family member, the more diffusenexus of discourses and connotations of blood
donation as good citizenship, nationalism,histories of kinship, health, and other matters
suggests the potential fruitfulness of analyzingblood or organs through the lens of the
“entangled” and plural meanings of particularobjects as they travel through biographical
and social contexts (Appadurai 1986, Hoskins
1998, Kopytoff 1986, Thomas 1991), a kind of “thinking through things” (Henare et al. 2007).
Assumptions about the adequacy of nonpay-ment of donors to ensure safety are based on the
ideathatpaymentistheonlyorthemostseriouspotential intrusion into the pure altruism of the
gift. But of course moral acts may bring theirown significant rewards; blood donors as well
as those who take blood from them, and those who administer and run blood transfusion ser-
vices, have their own interests and histories of relationships that may constrain or dictate their
behavior. In Malaysia, many donors to whom I
spoke situated their acts of donation in storiesabout their own families, including the previ-
ous illnesses of close family members. Sometook obvious pride in the small gifts or mate-
rial forms of acknowledgment given to regulardonors. Some describedhowtheir donation was
woven into their employment history; othersknew or were connected in some way to blood
bank staff who took their blood. These layeredentanglements make clear that it would be ex-
tremely difficult to construct a system of blooddonation divorced from human interest. Such
a system would have to be run by robots in a
world immune from human intervention. The multiple imbrications and associations
of donating blood have significant policy im-plications, but they also provide clues for un-
derstanding the links between relationality and
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bodily substance. Although the gift relationship
may be a fertile trope through which to ana-lyze relations between donors and recipients or
acts of donation, and also fits neatly into an al-ready well-worked seam of anthropological dis-
cussion about the gift, it may also obscure thesignificance of other kinds of relations that en-
able blood transfers to occur.
BLOOD FLOWS: DONATION, MONEY, AND GHOSTS
Probing further the uncontained quality of blood that is revealed in studies of blood do-
nation, we could seek analogies in other objectsor beings that have similar unbounded proper-
ties without blood’s liquid form. Here I briefly consider just two: money and ghosts. Although
these parallels may seem counterintuitive be-cause they are drawn from outside the realm
of bodily substances, the propensities of money
and ghosts to move between domains help il-luminate our understandings of substance and
relationality.Given the sharp antipathy between com-
merce and transfers of blood in at least some Western contexts, a comparison between blood
and money might seem paradoxical. But theproblematic status of payment in the context
of blood donation, highlighted by Titmuss,recalls another sphere in which monetary pay-
ment raises moral and categorical issues: sex.
And here too bodily transfers are involved. Sexand money are commonly deemed antithetical
in the West, partly because payment for sexis redolent of a breach between the world of
family and that of work, or the private and thepublic (Day 2007). Payment for blood would
breach another closely related boundary:between a sphere of altruism and one of
commercial interest (see also Ragon´ e 1996 onthe similar tensions of commercial surrogacy
arrangements). Giving blood also traverses the
boundary of the body/person andits inalienableparts. That bodily exchangesshouldbe involved
in both sex work and blood donation, and that altruism is strongly evoked in the ideology of
the family, whereas the world of work is one of
monetary renumeration, suggests resonanc
between the two cases. Whereas payment fsex characteristically remains hidden or secr
however, blood donation is imbued with tpositive moral values of public giving.
Pursuing for a moment the analogy b
tween blood and money, one key attribute
the latter has been taken to be its functioas a means of exchange. Famously, money fcilitates exchanges between spheres that m
be, to some degree, insulated from each oth(Bohannan 1959, Maurer 2006, Parry & Blo
1989, Strathern & Stewart 1999). Althouthis is clearly not the prime function of bloo
(despite the suggestive metaphor of the bloobank), we could nevertheless see some simila
ity to money in the propensity of blood to flo
from one domain to another (Copeman 2009Street 2009).
But we can discern another quality that thhold in common. If the metaphorical capaciti
of blood derive partly from its contribution vitality and animation, it is worth noting th
money, although part of a world of inanimaobjects, is also prone to be “enlivened” throug
metaphors of growth and fertility. Here, Mar(1954, pp. 76–87) observations on fetishis
are pertinent. And of course these qualities money derive from its abilityto acquire intere
to seed commercial or other projects, to gro
in itself, or to make other things grow. In doing, it travels between persons, institution
and projects.Likeblood, money may flow andperceived as generative. It thus seems plausib
to link this flow, and the processes of increaor depletion that thereby ensue, to the qua
ity of animation with which it is metaphoricaendowed.
The commonalities between blood anmoney thus derive from two linked attribute
their circulation among different domains antheir (incomplete or unstable) properties of a
imation. Movement among domains that
other contexts are kept separate and a quetionable status of animation suggest one fu
ther analogy: ghosts. If blood is alive only tolimited extent—it cannot by itself sustain li
and donated blood and blood products have
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relatively short shelf-life—ghosts can be viewed
as incompletely dead. Unable to “rest in peace,”they seek to intrude in the lives of the living.
But one might also reverse this proposition be-cause it is not necessarily clear whether it is the
dead or the living who are the most unwill-ing to give up their connection. Intriguingly,
Sharp comments on the persistent appearanceof ghosts in the narratives of the kinof cadavericorgan donors in the United States, “extending
the life,” as she puts it, “of a donor beyond thegrave” (2006, p. 155). But the capacity of ghosts
to make their presence felt is limited by variousfactors, including the particular locations with
which they are associated and the times whenthey may appear.
The most well-known tendency of ghosts istheir ability to pass through solid objects and
to inhabit different spheres: the worlds of thedead and that of the living. Like blood, one
might almost say ghosts flow between domains.
Vampire spirits are, of course, a special class of ghosts with an affinity for blood (White 2000).
Perhaps it is not coincidental that a contem-porary efflorescence of vampire stories in the
popular culture of the United States, UnitedKingdom, and elsewhere has closely followed
widespread public anxiety about infected bloodin the context of HIV/AIDS andbovinespongi-
form encephalopathy (BSE) epidemics. As en-thusiasts of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer se-
ries and many other such modern tales know
all too well, the quality of blood that vampiresseek above all is its animation. Fresh supplies of
living, human blood keep vampires going. Al-though much about this genre can be the sub-
ject of enjoyable innovation, the desire for thisanimation remains constant.
CONCLUSION
Any attempt to link together ideas about bodily
substance with understandings of relatedness isat risk of being either too general or too par-
ticular. Not only are these topics very broad,but the ways in which they manifest themselves
seemall tooobviouslyculturally andhistorically
situated. Negotiating between specific cases to
find the threads that might connect these ideas,
I have set out some points for comparison. Sug-gesting that a consideration of the metaphor-
ical capacity of different substances is linkedto their material and sensual properties is one
such avenue for comparison. Relative density,softness or hardness, color, smell, and alterabil-
ity or permanence may play a role in just how “good to think” a substance is. But the contextsin which substances occur, their bodily associ-
ations, seem to be another crucial vector in theaptitude of particular substances for metaphor-
ical elaboration, and here flow and transfer-ability enhance such capacities. Breast milk and
sexual fluids stand out as substances whose oc-currence involves being passed between bodies
(in contrast, say, to saliva or urine). Althoughthey originate within bodies, these substances
flow between bodies and persons—sometimesin emotionally charged contexts—and are par-
ticularly prone to invite speculation about the
relations enabled by such transfers. Crucially,they may be literally life-giving.
I have suggested that, by virtue of its many extraordinary qualities, blood is worthy of spe-
cial consideration. Perhaps most significant of all is the fact that its flow within and from the
body is closely bound up with life itself. If ex-cessive bleeding is closely connected with death
(I was told by Malay informants in the 1980sthat death occurred when all blood had left the
body, whether or not this was visible to the hu-
maneye),transfusionsofbloodaretheapotheo-sis of that which is life-saving. It is perhaps not
surprising that blood donation is often takento be a supremely altruistic act that can be at-
tributed with all the values of secular good citi-zenship, religious giving, and familial duty. The
uniquely animating properties of blood are as-sociated with the properties of flow and move-
ment that connote vitality. Through the analo-gies of money and ghosts, I have underlined
the ways in which transfers and flow between
domains entail both physical and imaginativeconnections among objects, bodies, or realms
that are linked by such media. The ways in which relationality is under-
stood to derive from flows of substance are
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heightened by the polyvalent properties that I
have described. Thus striking material quali-ties, special contexts of occurrence or a close
association with life itself or life-giving proper-ties, may together enhance the emotional reso-
nance as well as the tendency for metaphoricalextension of particular bodily substances, and
hence the likelihood of their being a vehicle forthe elaboration of ideas about relatedness. Suchqualities, I suggest, tend to pile in on eachother,
creating and extending further resonances andassociations in a self-fulfilling manner. Some
objects are indeed naturalized in many worlds.In writing this review, I have been struck by
how often, and in how many contexts, I havecome across such phrases as “blood relations”
or “blood ties” used by anthropologists in unre-flective or unanalyzed ways, without specifying
if these locutions are their own or those of their
informants, and as if such usages did not com
already encumbered by peculiarly weighty (anculturally particular) baggage (see Ingold 200
pp. 110–11). Trying to disinter these mulple associations has involved picking apart d
ferent properties whose co-occurrence is n
always coincidental. The quality of animati
that is above all signaled by flow and movment (just as being at rest or immobile can sugest its opposite) perhaps accounts for a ve
widespread connection that can be made btween substances that flow within and betwe
bodies and relations that are apprehended terms of such flows. That such connections a
prone to be made in diverse cultures should nhowever, blind us to the equally striking cu
tural and historical specificity of how they cbe constantly elaboratedandreimaginedin ne
ways.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that mig
be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very grateful to Jacob Copeman, Sarah Franklin, Ian Harper, Toby Kelly, Rebecca Marslan
Maya Mayblin, and Jonathan Spencer for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of th
article andto Julie Hartley andJoanna Wiseman for help preparing the bibliography andcollectimaterials. Writing was made possible by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
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Annual Review of
Anthropology
Volume 40, 2011 Contents
Prefatory Chapter
Anthropological Relocations and the Limits of Design
Lucy Suchman
Archaeology
The Archaeology of Consumption
Paul R. Mullins
1
Migration Concepts in Central Eurasian Archaeology
Michael D. Frachetti 1
Archaeologists and Indigenous People: A Maturing Relationship?
Tim Murray 3
Archaeological Ethnography: A Multitemporal Meeting Ground
for Archaeology and Anthropology
Yannis Hamilakis 3
Archaeologies of Sovereignty Adam T. Smith 4
A Century of Feasting Studies
Brian Hayden and Suzanne Villeneuve 4
Biological Anthropology
Menopause, A Biocultural Perspective
Melissa K. Melby and Michelle Lampl
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding
of Links Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Associated Conditions
Tessa M. Pollard 14
From Mirror Neurons to Complex Imitation in the Evolution
of Language and Tool Use
Michael A. Arbib 2
vi
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From Hominoid to Hominid Mind: What Changed and Why?
Brian Hare 293
The Human Microbiota as a Marker for Migrations of Individuals
and Populations
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello and Martin J. Blaser 451
Linguistics and Communicative Practices
Publics and Politics
Francis Cody 37
Ritual and Oratory Revisited: The Semiotics of Effective Action
Rupert Stasch 159
Language and Migration to the United States
Hilary Parsons Dick 227
The Balkan Languages and Balkan Linguistics
Victor A. Friedman 275
International Anthropology and Regional Studies
Central Asia in the Post–Cold War World
Morgan Y. Liu 115
The Ethnographic Arriving of Palestine
Khaled Furani and Dan Rabinowitz 475
Sociocultural Anthropology
Substance and Relationality: Blood in Contexts
Janet Carsten
19Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides
T.M. Luhrmann 71
Phenomenological Approaches in Anthropology
Robert Desjarlais and C. Jason Throop 87
Migration, Remittances, and Household Strategies
Jeffrey H. Cohen 103
Climate and Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary
Climate Change
Susan A. Crate
175
Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality
of Immigration in Dark Times
Didier Fassin 213
Contents vii
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The Cultural Politics of Nation and Migration
Steven Vertovec 24
Migrations and Schooling
Marcelo M. Su ´ arez-Orozco, Tasha Darbes, Sandra Isabel Dias, and Matt Sutin 3
Tobacco
Matthew Kohrman and Peter Benson 3
Transnational Migration and Global Health: The Production and
Management of Risk, Illness, and Access to Care
Carolyn Sargent and St´ ephanie Larchanch´ e 34
Concepts and Folk Theories
Susan A. Gelman and Cristine H. Legare 3
Migration-Religion Studies in France: Evolving Toward a Religious
Anthropology of Movement
Sophie Bava 4
Theme I: Anthropology of Mind
Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides
T.M. Luhrmann
Phenomenological Approaches in Anthropology
Robert Desjarlais and C. Jason Throop
From Mirror Neurons to Complex Imitation in the Evolution of
Language and Tool Use
Michael A. Arbib 2
From Hominoid to Hominid Mind: What Changed and Why?Brian Hare 2
Concepts and Folk Theories
Susan A. Gelman and Cristine H. Legare 3
Theme II: Migration
Migration, Remittances, and Household Strategies
Jeffrey H. Cohen 1
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding of Links
Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and AssociatedConditions
Tessa M. Pollard 14
Migration Concepts in Central Eurasian Archaeology
Michael D. Frachetti 1
viii Contents
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Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality
of Immigration in Dark Times
Didier Fassin 213
Language and Migration to the United States
Hilary Parsons Dick 227
The Cultural Politics of Nation and Migration
Steven Vertovec
241
Migrations and Schooling
Marcelo M. Su ´ arez-Orozco, Tasha Darbes, Sandra Isabel Dias,
and Matt Sutin 311
Transnational Migration and Global Health: The Production
and Management of Risk, Illness, and Access to Care
Carolyn Sargent and St´ ephanie Larchanch´ e 345
The Human Microbiota as a Marker for Migrations of Individuals
and Populations
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello and Martin J. Blaser
451
Migration-Religion Studies in France: Evolving Toward a Religious
Anthropology of Movement
Sophie Bava 493
Indexes
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 31–40 509
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 31–40 512
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Anthropology articles may be found at
http://anthro.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml