New kinship, Islam, and the liberal tradition: Sexual morality and new reproductive technology in Lebanon

Recent kinship studies take interest in new reproductive technologies (NRT) such as in vitro fertilization. Such studies are frequently situated within a larger body of work, 'the new kinship studies', that follows David Schneider in challenging the notion of 'natural' foundations of kinship. In the course of my own research into NRT in Lebanon, I found many examples of the 'elective', non-biogenetic relations that are foregrounded in these recent kinship studies. However, such relations are confidential, in public conformity to an ethic of sexual propriety. Sexual morality is also a central theme of political polemic in the wider Middle East, locally perceived as under threat from 'Western immorality'. I suggest that we should be wary of an ethnocentric over-emphasis on data challenging such notions of propriety. Further, the role of sexual morality in the constitution of kinship might usefully form a more prominent part of the theoretical agenda. © Royal Anthropological Institute 2008.