edited by Toby Alice Volkman contributions by Barbara Yngvesson, Eleana J. Kim and Kay Johnson
Duke University Press, 2005 eISBN: 978-0-8223-8692-6 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-3576-4 | Paper: 978-0-8223-3589-4 Library of Congress Classification HV875.5.C86 2005 Dewey Decimal Classification 362.734
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
During the 1990s, the number of children adopted from poorer countries to the more affluent West grew exponentially. Close to 140,000 transnational adoptions occurred in the United States alone. While in an earlier era, adoption across borders was assumed to be straightforward—a child traveled to a new country and stayed there—by the late twentieth century, adoptees were expected to acquaint themselves with the countries of their birth and explore their multiple identities. Listservs, Web sites, and organizations creating international communities of adoptive parents and adoptees proliferated. With contributors including several adoptive parents, this unique collection looks at how transnational adoption creates and transforms cultures.
The cultural experiences considered in this volume raise important questions about race and nation; about kinship, biology, and belonging; and about the politics of the sending and receiving nations. Several essayists explore the images and narratives related to transnational adoption. Others examine the recent preoccupation with “roots” and “birth cultures.” They describe a trip during which a group of Chilean adoptees and their Swedish parents traveled “home” to Chile, the “culture camps” attended by thousands of young-adult Korean adoptees whom South Korea is now eager to reclaim as “overseas Koreans,” and adopted children from China and their North American parents grappling with the question of what “Chinese” or “Chinese American” identity might mean. Essays on Korean birth mothers, Chinese parents who adopt children within China, and the circulation of children in Brazilian families reveal the complexities surrounding adoption within the so-called sending countries. Together, the contributors trace the new geographies of kinship and belonging created by transnational adoption.
Contributors. Lisa Cartwright, Claudia Fonseca, Elizabeth Alice Honig, Kay Johnson, Laurel Kendall, Eleana Kim, Toby Alice Volkman, Barbara Yngvesson
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Toby Alice Volkman is Deputy Provost at New School University. She is the author of Feasts of Honor: Ritual and Change in the Toraja Highlands.
REVIEWS
“This outstanding collection—a rich mix of analyses and first person accounts—offers insights into an under-reported aspect of globalization: the ever-increasing circulation of children around the globe through transnational adoption. The kinship relations created through such processes have taken a distinctly postmodern turn as adoptive families nurture rather than sever their new children’s cultural connections to birth countries. All of this is greatly facilitated by the Internet, video technologies, and the creation of social worlds that underwrite these new forms of cultural making.”—Faye Ginsburg, New York University
“This valuable collection offers an ethnographically rich, theoretically sophisticated, and engagingly written set of contributions to the interdisciplinary literature on transnational adoption.”—Pauline Turner Strong, University of Texas, Austin
“[A] well-designed volume of essays. Cultures of Transnational Adoption does the important work of interrogating the permeable boundaries between personal and national identity as defined by kinship. . . . In compelling ways, the essays in Cultures of Transnational Adoption unsettle comfortable notions of home and homeland, speak to postmodernist notions of shifting identities, and demonstrate the power of adoption to reshape cultural and national landscapes of kinship.”
-- Carol J. Singley Women's Studies Quarterly
“The book consists of Volkman’s own interesting and timely introduction and eight additional well-written, imaginative and thought-provoking essays based by- and- large upon anthropological ethnographic research and animated by recent cultural studies perspectives. . . . The elegant theorizing and, in particular, the use of innovative concepts, such as that of ‘disidentification’ and an ‘intuited self’ in the interpretation of their data, make this collection of essays compelling reading.”
-- Barbara Ballis Lal Ethnic and Racial Studies
“This rich collection of essays brings the study of kinship into the realm of international politics, economics, media studies, and literature. It is ethnographically informed and while not attempting to be comprehensive in terms of geography, illustrates the benefits of taking a broadly anthropological, cultural approach to the rapidly changing world of child-circulation and international adoption.”
-- Fiona Bowie Anthropological Quarterly
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: New Geographies of Kinship / Toby Alice Volkman 1
Part I. Displacements, Roots, Identities
Going “Home”: Adoption, Loss of Bearings, and the Mythology of Roots / Barbara Yngvesson 25
Wedding Citizenship and Culture: Korean Adoptees and the Global Family of Korea / Eleana Kim
Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America / Toby Alice Volkman 81
Part II. Counterparts
Chaobao: The Plight of Chinese Adoptive Parents in the Era of the One-Child Policy / Kay Johnson 117
Patterns of Shared Parenthood among the Brazilian Poor / Claudia Fonseca 142
Birth Mothers and Imaginary Lives / Laurel Kendall 162
Part III. Representations
Images of “Waiting Children”: Spectatorship and Pity in the Representation of the Global Social Orphan in the 1990s / Lisa Cartwright 185
Phanton Lives, Narratives of Possibility / Elizabeth Alice Honig 213
Contributors 223
Index 225
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
edited by Toby Alice Volkman contributions by Barbara Yngvesson, Eleana J. Kim and Kay Johnson
Duke University Press, 2005 eISBN: 978-0-8223-8692-6 Cloth: 978-0-8223-3576-4 Paper: 978-0-8223-3589-4
During the 1990s, the number of children adopted from poorer countries to the more affluent West grew exponentially. Close to 140,000 transnational adoptions occurred in the United States alone. While in an earlier era, adoption across borders was assumed to be straightforward—a child traveled to a new country and stayed there—by the late twentieth century, adoptees were expected to acquaint themselves with the countries of their birth and explore their multiple identities. Listservs, Web sites, and organizations creating international communities of adoptive parents and adoptees proliferated. With contributors including several adoptive parents, this unique collection looks at how transnational adoption creates and transforms cultures.
The cultural experiences considered in this volume raise important questions about race and nation; about kinship, biology, and belonging; and about the politics of the sending and receiving nations. Several essayists explore the images and narratives related to transnational adoption. Others examine the recent preoccupation with “roots” and “birth cultures.” They describe a trip during which a group of Chilean adoptees and their Swedish parents traveled “home” to Chile, the “culture camps” attended by thousands of young-adult Korean adoptees whom South Korea is now eager to reclaim as “overseas Koreans,” and adopted children from China and their North American parents grappling with the question of what “Chinese” or “Chinese American” identity might mean. Essays on Korean birth mothers, Chinese parents who adopt children within China, and the circulation of children in Brazilian families reveal the complexities surrounding adoption within the so-called sending countries. Together, the contributors trace the new geographies of kinship and belonging created by transnational adoption.
Contributors. Lisa Cartwright, Claudia Fonseca, Elizabeth Alice Honig, Kay Johnson, Laurel Kendall, Eleana Kim, Toby Alice Volkman, Barbara Yngvesson
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Toby Alice Volkman is Deputy Provost at New School University. She is the author of Feasts of Honor: Ritual and Change in the Toraja Highlands.
REVIEWS
“This outstanding collection—a rich mix of analyses and first person accounts—offers insights into an under-reported aspect of globalization: the ever-increasing circulation of children around the globe through transnational adoption. The kinship relations created through such processes have taken a distinctly postmodern turn as adoptive families nurture rather than sever their new children’s cultural connections to birth countries. All of this is greatly facilitated by the Internet, video technologies, and the creation of social worlds that underwrite these new forms of cultural making.”—Faye Ginsburg, New York University
“This valuable collection offers an ethnographically rich, theoretically sophisticated, and engagingly written set of contributions to the interdisciplinary literature on transnational adoption.”—Pauline Turner Strong, University of Texas, Austin
“[A] well-designed volume of essays. Cultures of Transnational Adoption does the important work of interrogating the permeable boundaries between personal and national identity as defined by kinship. . . . In compelling ways, the essays in Cultures of Transnational Adoption unsettle comfortable notions of home and homeland, speak to postmodernist notions of shifting identities, and demonstrate the power of adoption to reshape cultural and national landscapes of kinship.”
-- Carol J. Singley Women's Studies Quarterly
“The book consists of Volkman’s own interesting and timely introduction and eight additional well-written, imaginative and thought-provoking essays based by- and- large upon anthropological ethnographic research and animated by recent cultural studies perspectives. . . . The elegant theorizing and, in particular, the use of innovative concepts, such as that of ‘disidentification’ and an ‘intuited self’ in the interpretation of their data, make this collection of essays compelling reading.”
-- Barbara Ballis Lal Ethnic and Racial Studies
“This rich collection of essays brings the study of kinship into the realm of international politics, economics, media studies, and literature. It is ethnographically informed and while not attempting to be comprehensive in terms of geography, illustrates the benefits of taking a broadly anthropological, cultural approach to the rapidly changing world of child-circulation and international adoption.”
-- Fiona Bowie Anthropological Quarterly
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: New Geographies of Kinship / Toby Alice Volkman 1
Part I. Displacements, Roots, Identities
Going “Home”: Adoption, Loss of Bearings, and the Mythology of Roots / Barbara Yngvesson 25
Wedding Citizenship and Culture: Korean Adoptees and the Global Family of Korea / Eleana Kim
Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America / Toby Alice Volkman 81
Part II. Counterparts
Chaobao: The Plight of Chinese Adoptive Parents in the Era of the One-Child Policy / Kay Johnson 117
Patterns of Shared Parenthood among the Brazilian Poor / Claudia Fonseca 142
Birth Mothers and Imaginary Lives / Laurel Kendall 162
Part III. Representations
Images of “Waiting Children”: Spectatorship and Pity in the Representation of the Global Social Orphan in the 1990s / Lisa Cartwright 185
Phanton Lives, Narratives of Possibility / Elizabeth Alice Honig 213
Contributors 223
Index 225
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE