Kinship historically meant logical relations, not just family ties

Evidence

In her essay “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Donna J. Haraway reminds us that relatives in British English meant “logical relations” until the seventeenth century, when they became “family members.” Haraway is less interested in individuals and genealogical families than in symbiotic configurations of different kinds of beings maintained through the practice of care—asking us to “make kin, not babies!” Citing Shakespeare’s punning between “kin” and “kind,” she writes, “I think that the stretch and recomposition of kin are allowed by the fact that all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense, and it is past time to practice better care of kinds-as-assemblages (not species one at a time). Kin is an assembling sort of word.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 124

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines the extended notion of kinship Odell draws on for her ‘protection of alliances’ argument.
• XREF: Ties to bioregionalism and Deep Listening — the reader’s judgment of whether Odell’s mixed method is capacious or evasive.