The modernity of milk kinship

In Islamic law, breastfeeding institutes a type of kinship relation (ridā', 'milk kinship'), historically a medium for complex social and political networks in the Middle East, although of diminished frequency in modern times. My research focuses on Islamic Middle Eastern reactions to new reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation: for Muslim religious specialists, milk kinship provides a way of thinking through and resolving the ethical dilemmas of the use of donor eggs and surrogacy arrangements. Rather than disappearing under modernity, then, milk kinship endures as a resource for the mediation of social relations and intellectual challenges. © 2007 European Association of Social Anthropologists.