Ambiguous Belongings
Barbara Yngvesson, Hampshire College
Location: 219 Aaron Burr Hall
Date/Time: 02/18/10 at 4:30 pm - 02/18/10 at 6:00 pm
This talk will explore the connections and junctions between lived experiences of belonging/not belonging reported by transnational adoptees and the ambiguous properties (as national asset, expendable resource, as "priceless in the full possible sense of the term") that structure the adopted child's relationship to "sending" and "receiving" nations and to birth and adoptive kin. Professor Yngvesson is intrigued as well by the overlaps between "ambiguous belongings" and "ambiguous properties," and by the connection of these ambiguities to legal technologies that strip the adoptable child of properties that connect him or her to the specific family and nation, so that the child can become another family's and nation's "own". She considers the tensions between ownership and belonging and the implications of transnational adoption of illuminating (and expanding) conventional understandings of these concepts.
Category: Event
Department: Anthropology