Cousin Marriages: Between Tradition, Genetic Risk and Cultural Change

Juxtaposing contributions from geneticists and anthropologists, this volume provides a contemporary overview of cousin marriage and what is happening at the interface of public policy, the management of genetic risk and changing cultural practices in the Middle East and in multi-ethnic Europe. It offers a cross-cultural exploration of practices of cousin marriage in the light of new genetic understanding of consanguineous marriage and its possible health risks. Overall, the volume presents a reflective, interdisciplinary analysis of the social and ethical issues raised by both the discourse of risk in cousin marriage, as well as existing and potential interventions to promote “healthy consanguinity” via new genetic technologies.
 

Alison Shaw is Professor of Social Anthropology in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on ethnicity and health; social aspects of genetics; kinship, gender and transnational marriages. Her publications include Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain (2000) and Negotiating Risk: British Pakistani Experiences of Genetics (2009).

Aviad E. Raz is Professor at the Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University. His research focuses on how various ethnic/religious communities confront tradition and modernity, normative life process and medicalization, as well as migration and politics. He has written seven books and more than 45 articles and chapters on topics in organizational and medical sociology, anthropology, culture, and science.