ABSTRACT
What is thicker-blood or water? Why do we even compare the two and what does this mean for families that form affi nities based on water (social ties)—not blood (biological ties)? The seemingly casual expression “blood is thicker than water” is part of a network of discourses, which together make up what I have chosen to call the politics of biology, discourses that grant legal and cultural priority to biological ties in kinship networks.
