NEUROBIOLOGY AND THE QUEERNESS OF KINSHIP 97kinship. In the first story, articulated in contemporary rights movements,
kinships are made through social structures imbued with power relations.
This view has roots in structuralism and social constructionism. In her
seminal essay from 1975, “The Traffic in Women,” Gayle Rubin follows Lévi-
Strauss and Engels in describing kinship as the effect of the cultural and
economic organization of social life. Lévi- Strauss saw kinship as the result of
universal cultural rules underlying patterns of marriage and reproduction,
whereas for Engels it is tied to the organization of labor. Rubin’s crucial
insight is that through these mechanisms, kinship is also responsible for
constructing gender. The primary target of Rubin’s essay, which remains
influential for its forceful articulation of the social construction of a “sex/
gender system,” is biological determinism. She ultimately defines kinship
as “the imposition of cultural organization upon the facts of biological
procreation” (G. Rubin 1975, 170 – 71, cited in E. Wilson 2010, 201). Crucially
for Rubin, if culture rather than biology provides the rules for kinship, then
kinship structures, and thus gender, are amenable to social and political
transformation. (It is this sort of view that rankles conservatives.)
The second account, the biological tradition contested by Rubin, is
rooted in Western conceptions of kinships as organized exclusively through
blood ties and reproductive marriage. Unlike numerous examples de-
scribed in cultural anthropology where kinship and blood are not faithfully
coupled, the Western mode of determining kinship has long been focused
on consanguinity and is now predominantly genetic. The biogenetic ac-
count is heteronormative, that is, seeing kinship as inherently heterosexual
and reproductive. It assumes that males and females have bifurcated roles,
which are universal and immutable. Social neuroscience is both extending
and shifting this biological account. Social neuroscientists working on neu-
rohormonal systems articulate kinship not in terms of immutable genes,
but neural systems that generate feelings of attachment. Some social neuro-
scientists argue that humans and other mammals are able to experience
kinship bonds through the involvement of neural systems linked to affect
and memory. Of special interest is the role of the neurohormone oxytocin
in the experience of attachment, defined as “the dispositions to extend care
to others, to want to be with them, and to be distressed by separation”
(Churchland 2011, 201). Ignoring the social, legal, and economic hierar-
chies of human kinship structures, social neuroscientists have emphasized