Queer Kinship: South African Perspectives on the Sexual Politics of Family-making and Belonging

What makes kinship queer? This collection from leading and emerging thinkers in gender and sexualities interrogates the politics of belonging, shining a light on the outcasts, rebels, and pioneers. Queer Kinship brings together an array of thought-provoking perspectives on what it means to love and be loved, to ‘do family’ and to belong in the South African context.

The collection includes a number of different topic areas, disciplinary approaches, and theoretical lenses on familial relations, reproduction, and citizenship. The text amplifies the voices of those who are bending, breaking, and remaking the rules of being and belonging. Photo-essays and artworks offer moving glimpses into the new life worlds being created in and among the ‘normal’ and the mundane.

Taken as a whole, this text offers a critical and intersectional perspective that addresses some important gaps in the scholarship on kinship and families. Queer Kinship makes an innovative contribution to international studies in kinship, gender, and sexualities. It will be a valuable resource to scholars, students, and activists working in these areas.

Tracy Morison is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at Massey University (New Zealand) and an Honorary Research Associate in the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University (South Africa). Tracy’s research interests are in gender, sexuality, and reproductive health. She works with critical feminist theories and qualitative methodologies. She is a co-author of the book Men’s pathways to parenthood (Morison & Macleod, HSRC Press, 2015).

Ingrid Lynch is a senior research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and an Honorary Research Associate in the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University. Ingrid’s areas of research interest include: genders and sexualities; feminist approaches to researching sexual- and gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Prior to joining the HSRC she worked as the research, advocacy and policy manager at the Triangle Project (an NGO concerned with LGBTI rights and wellbeing) and as a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) during which time she also completed a research residency at the University of Michigan (United States) as part of the African Presidential Scholar programme.

Vasu Reddy is a professor and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. His research interests include human development and identity marker issues (notably genders, sexualities and HIV and AIDS), and broader issues of social justice. In addition to the social sciences, Vasu is also deeply interested in the broader humanities. Previously, Vasu has worked as an executive director at the HSRC and as an associate professor of Gender Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa). He has also served on several boards and committees, including the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project. He is a co-founder of the Durban Lesbian and Gay Centre (with Nonhlanhla Mkhize and the late Ronald Louw). Vasu has published widely on topics related to gender, sexuality, and HIV and AIDS, in local and international journals. He has co-edited several volumes, including: From social silence to social science: Gender, same-sex sexuality and HIV/AIDS in South Africa (with Theo Sandfort & Laetitia Rispel, HSRC Press, 2009) and Care in context: Transnational gender perspectives (with Stephan Meyer, Tammy Shefer & Thenjiwe Meyiwa, HSRC Press, 2014). He is a co-author of The country we want to live in: Hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans (with Nonhlanhla Mkhize, Jane Bennett & Relebohile Moletsane, HSRC Press, 2010). Vasu was a visiting professor at the University of Basel (Switzerland) in 2009 and a visiting scholar at the University of California (Berkeley, United States) in 2002