ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the world of the adoptive family advocates a reappraisal of the bureaucratic construction of the adoptive family. The adoptive family as the "pure" type of nonconsanguineal family ties develops relevance structures whose validity could be examined with respect to other types of constructed family. One of the guiding principles of the evaluation was the attempt to utilize the deviant case of the constitution of family, with its different awareness of familial structures of meaning, as a means of gaining access to the normal case. The feasibility of family life even if the husband is sterile or the wife are likely to seem less impressive feats of technological progress if the complications involved in structuring awareness contexts or the child's identity formation are considered. The concepts derived from the field of adoption could also prove useful for the analysis of social processes outside of the familial context.
