Belonging and belongings: kinship narratives and material anchors at a second home in Kazakhstan

Journal article

This article examines the way narratives of kinship come to constitute and sustain kin ties for children growing up apart from their families. At a temporary, state-run group home for children under seven years old in Kazakhstan, teachers and children construct narratives that include parents whom the children may not have seen for months, but who have promised to resume care of them by school age. In contrast to dominant characterizations of orphanages as sites of material and social poverty, I show how materials – from playground equipment to gifts, real and imagined – play an important role in narratives of belonging. Through their own narratives of giving, receiving and losing, moreover, children creatively incorporate into their stories other relationships of belonging between individuals that are never explicitly identified as kin.

Authors: Barker, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 65-82
• Publication date: 2017-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-2zwdvyyae
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO