Preface

This special issue on transnational adoption focuses on matters that have received considerable public attention in recent years. The contributors to this issue, mostly professional anthropologists and adoptive parents, are intimate with the phenomenon and offer a fine-grained account of the complexities too often missing from conventional portrayals. Their claims for transformed relations of kinship stand in critical relation to norms of national patrimony and reflect both a commitment and a politics that has not been without controversy. In a subsequent issue of Social Text, we will publish additional essays in this area that will explore different lines of engagement and other dimensions for what could be considered national and transnational spaces of adoption.