TY - JOUR

T1 - Spectral kinship

T2 - Understanding how Vietnamese women endure domestic distress

AU - Gammeltoft, Tine M.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the American Anthropological Association

PY - 2021/2

Y1 - 2021/2

N2 - Endurance is a key term used by women in contemporary Vietnam to characterize the moral persistence that their marital lives demand. Accounting for women's endurance requires, as fieldwork in Hanoi indicates, ethnographic attention to how kinship can be temporally and spatially capricious, exceeding the immediately manifest. The concept of spectral kinship aims to capture these latent aspects of kinship and their groundings in people's imaginative lives. Defining relatedness as an imaginal accomplishment, an analytic of spectral kinship draws attention to aspects of social existence that are neither “real” nor “delusional” yet socially powerful nevertheless. Approaching Vietnamese women's endurance through the lens of spectral kinship highlights the invisible, imaginal efforts that women make to cope with the vulnerabilities and contingencies of kinship, thereby bringing into analysis crucial yet often undervalued forms of gendered kin-work. [domestic distress, endurance, gender, imaginal, hauntology, kinship, spectrality, Vietnam].

AB - Endurance is a key term used by women in contemporary Vietnam to characterize the moral persistence that their marital lives demand. Accounting for women's endurance requires, as fieldwork in Hanoi indicates, ethnographic attention to how kinship can be temporally and spatially capricious, exceeding the immediately manifest. The concept of spectral kinship aims to capture these latent aspects of kinship and their groundings in people's imaginative lives. Defining relatedness as an imaginal accomplishment, an analytic of spectral kinship draws attention to aspects of social existence that are neither “real” nor “delusional” yet socially powerful nevertheless. Approaching Vietnamese women's endurance through the lens of spectral kinship highlights the invisible, imaginal efforts that women make to cope with the vulnerabilities and contingencies of kinship, thereby bringing into analysis crucial yet often undervalued forms of gendered kin-work. [domestic distress, endurance, gender, imaginal, hauntology, kinship, spectrality, Vietnam].

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106882042&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/amet.13002

DO - 10.1111/amet.13002

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85106882042

VL - 48

SP - 22

EP - 36

JO - American Ethnologist

JF - American Ethnologist

SN - 0094-0496

IS - 1

ER -