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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

26 Carsten


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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



10/21

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

28 Carsten


11/21

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



12/21

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


19/21

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


20/21

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


21/21

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

carsten_substance and relationality

Documents