How DNA Can Get in the Way of History, Sometimes: Family Historians as Kinship Artisans across both ‘Religious’ and ‘Secular’ Contexts

This paper considers two sets of amateur genealogists as specialized kinship artisans. My two sets of informants describe their projects in contrastive terms. Family historians in East Anglia (United Kingdom) explain that they are doing history (not ‘religion’), while for American Latter-day Saints genealogy is an explicit religious duty that cannot be separated from their Church’s salvific mission. Despite this difference of outlook, there are important overlaps in the way each group practices and experiences connections with related others across mortality. I argue that the rapid expansion of commercial DNA-tracing companies within genealogy appears to be affecting each group in different ways. English amateurs are currently capable of relativizing DNA-based information where it does not mesh with the narratives of family, local, and class history in which they are interested. Latter-day Saints’ distinctive genealogical cultures may be less easy to defend against the priorities of DNA-genealogy companies, both because of internet linkages sanctioned by the Church leadership, and because the attempt to trace all souls who have ever lived is vulnerable to the unlimited ambitions of profit-driven logics.This paper considers two sets of amateur genealogists as specialized kinship artisans. My two sets of informants describe their projects in contrastive terms. Family historians in East Anglia (United Kingdom) explain that they are doing history (not ‘religion’), while for American Latter-day Saints genealogy is an explicit religious duty that cannot be separated from their Church’s salvific mission. Despite this difference of outlook, there are important overlaps in the way each group practices and experiences connections with related others across mortality. I argue that the rapid expansion of commercial DNA-tracing companies within genealogy appears to be affecting each group in different ways. English amateurs are currently capable of relativizing DNA-based information where it does not mesh with the narratives of family, local, and class history in which they are interested. Latter-day Saints’ distinctive genealogical cultures may be less easy to defend against the priorities of DNA-genealogy companies, both because of internet linkages sanctioned by the Church leadership, and because the attempt to trace all souls who have ever lived is vulnerable to the unlimited ambitions of profit-driven logics

‘Forever Families’; Christian individualism, Mormonism and collective salvation.

Latter-day Saints are only truly saved when they are saved together, as a “forever family.” Unlike most forms of Christianity (and much American mainstream thought), Mormonism is monistic; body and spirit are of one nature. Mormonism also reframes the temporality of kinship, since family relations in this life may reflect choices and connections from a premortal existence before birth on earth. As a result, conversion to Mormonism usually downplays the element of solitary Pauline “rupture” central to the analysis offered by Joel Robbins and others, emphasising instead conversion as the “grafting” of new families onto a sacred root

Latter-day saints and the problem of theology

This chapter reveals that contemporary American Latter-Day Saints lead lives shaped by a conscious, often partially conflicted, relationship to the authoritative teachings of their church hierarchy. This doctrine represents the power of present-day revelation channeled through the current Prophet; however, many Latter-Day Saints believe that prophets may also make human mistakes. For an important minority, including some feminist intellectuals, these tensions have been experienced as an attempt to prohibit the development of theology. The problematic status of Mormon theology may be one reason why many church members seek to reconcile doctrine with personal experience by means of narrative and autobiography, producing a culture of Mormon stories. This chapter considers how some Mormon feminist excommunicates attempted to project religious authenticity against the grain of the institution. Mormon ethnography thus provides an instance of the anthropological approach to theology as a lived category, including the contestation of the space for theology itself

Good and ‘bad’ deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic: insights from a rapid qualitative study

Dealing with excess death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the question of a good or bad death' into sharp relief as countries across the globe have grappled with multiple peaks of cases and mortality; and communities mourn those lost. In the UK, these challenges have included the fact that mortality has adversely affected minority communities. Corpse disposal and social distancing guidelines do not allow a process of mourning in which families and communities can be involved in the dying process. This study aimed to examine the main concerns of faith and non-faith communities across the UK in relation to death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team used rapid ethnographic methods to examine the adaptations to the dying process prior to hospital admission, during admission, during the disposal and release of the body, during funerals and mourning. The study revealed that communities were experiencing collective loss, were making necessary adaptations to rituals that surrounded death, dying and mourning and would benefit from clear and compassionate communication and consultation with authorities

'A good death' during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK: a report on key findings and recommendations

Dealing with death and bereavement in the context of the Covid-19 Pandemic will present significant challenges for at least the next three months. The current situation does not allow for families andbcommunities to be involved in the process of death in ways in which they would normally hope or expect to be. In addition, mortality rates will disproportionately affect vulnerable households. The government has identified the following communities as being at increased risk: single parent households; multi-generational Black and Minority Ethnic groups; men without degrees in lone households and/or in precarious work; small family business owners in their 50s; and elderlyhouseholds. Our study focused on these groups. This report presents a summary of findings and key recommendations by a team of anthropologists from the London School of Economics who conducted a public survey and 58 cross-community interviews between 3 and 9 April 2020. It explores ways to prepare these communities and households for impending deaths with communications and policy support. More information on the research methodology, data protection and ethical procedures is available in Appendix 1. A summary of relevant existing research can be found in Appendix 2. A list of key contacts across communities for consultation is available on request. Research was focused on “what a good death looks like” for people across all faiths and for vulnerable groups. It examined how communities were already adapting how they dealt with processes of dying, burials, funerals and bereavement during the pandemic, and responding to new government regulations. It specifically focused on five transitions in the process of death, and what consultation processes, policies and communications strategies could be mobilised to support communities through these phases

A right to care: the social foundations of recovery from Covid-19

This report presents key findings from a 6-month ethnographic study on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on disadvantaged households and communities across the UK conducted by anthropologists from the London School of Economics, and associates. This research involved in-depth interviews and multiple surveys with people across communities in the UK, with particular focus on a number of case studies of intersecting disadvantage. Crucially, our research has found that Government policy can improve adherence to restrictions and reduce the negative impacts of the pandemic on disadvantaged communities by placing central importance on communities, social networks and households to the economy and social life. This would be the most effective way to increase public trust and adherence to Covid-19 measures, because it would recognise the suffering that communities have experienced and would build policy on the basis of what is most important to people - the thriving of their families and communities

'A tragedy as old as history':Medical responses to infertility and artificial insemination by donor in 1950s Britain

This chapter will explore how the infertile patient was characterized, perceived, and treated by the medical profession in 1950s England and Scotland. Such was the concern that this subject engendered in postwar Britain that a Departmental Committee was appointed in 1958 (known as the Feversham Committee) to investigate infertility and its treatment through artificial insemination. The written and oral evidence submitted by medical witnesses to that Committee offers rich insights into medical thinking and practice, and into the complex sociomedical politics and ethical anxieties which surrounded the topic. The testimony of legal and religious witnesses will also be explored to a more limited extent in order to offer some context to medical understandings and treatments of infertility. It will be considered how women’s bodies, personalities, and even agency in proactively seeking motherhood through artificial insemination were heavily pathologized in medical and religious discourses, but also how the men involved – husbands, sperm donors and even doctors – did not escape this tendency to pathologize

Bodies of emotion: rethinking culture and emotion through Southeast Asia

Feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood but social practices organized by stories that we both enact and tell. michelle rosaldo 1984:14