Introduction
The editors introduce the main questions explored in this issue on Making families.
Adoptions, bonds and imaginaries in a global perspective. They argue that family
is at the core of all contributions, while taking a critical view of recent international
historiography. A vibrant field of research in the Eighties and Nineties, the European
family appears to have lost much of its analytical appeal and is therefore a field in
need of renewal. The four essays in this special issue situate themselves within a new
agenda where coresidence, blood lines and patrilinear ties are marginalized in favor
of a non- biological notion of family structure and relationships. They highlight a long
diachrony, from the early modern period in Italy and colonial Peru, to Egypt, Cameroon,
Austria and Germany in the second half of the XIX century during German
colonialism. The analysis focuses on case studies centered on the transfer of children
among families, between families and single men and women or institutions, within
a growing space scale. They shed light on a wide variety of practices of filiation and
fosterage connected to specific European and non European contexts. This approach
allows for narratives of interconnectedness and agency and of deep emotional involvement
and imaginaries relating to parenthood, the survival of lineages and names,
expectations and desire. Unequal relationships of power and authority are also taken
into account. Owing to a lack of historical evidence, the issue does not fully acknowledge
the dark side of adoptions taking place in many areas of the world today where
gender is a crucial aspect. Recent anthropological research indeed illustrates the ways
in which unmarried mothers in South Asia, pressured into abandoning their newborns,
resist and choose to keep their children with them transgressing local codes of family
honour and social shaming.