2 - How Social Science Separated Families from Political Order

Summary

This chapter demonstrates how old the idea that families do not belong to political orders is in Western thinking. This idea has dominated anthropology, political science and sociology. Despite its popularity, the idea of an opposition between kinship and states is built on problematic notions about the state and kinship and it ignores empirical evidence. The ambition to describe kinship-based groups as obstacles to political development began with early modern thinkers like Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes but it was reinforced in the nineteenth century by sociologists as well as anthropologists. Understanding how the expulsion of kinship from our ideas of political order was essentially a political project, not the result of academic analysis, helps us to view European and Middle Eastern history with fresh eyes.